* * *
Confession: As a 7-year-old, I dreamed of being an Olympic pairs figure skater. I loved the grace of the female skaters, how they were lifted and thrown, how they spun. I loved it all. When I told my mom and my figure skating coach my wish to try pairs figure skating, they couldn’t contain their amusement. I was already as tall as my coach and was still growing. Sure I was coordinated and had strong legs, but I definitely did not have the build of a figure skater.
I took figure skating lessons for
another year, but ultimately went on to compete in a variety of other sports.
Still, I loved skating, and I loved
the Winter Olympics. In fact, it was the 2006 Torino Olympics that first
inspired my novel Podium Finish. As
interesting as the sports were, I found the athletes’ life stories even more
fascinating.
While I knew what it felt like to win
and lose, how much it hurt to break a bone, and though I had some idea of what
it meant to train twice a day multiple days a week, I realized very quickly
that I didn’t really know what it was like to be an Olympic hopeful, nor did I
know that much about the winter sports I wanted to write about. This meant one
thing: I had to do research.
GET
ORGANIZED
The
first thing I did was buy a 3 ring binder and dividers. I wanted to
research 5 sports, so each sport had its own section. I made lists of the
things I didn’t know, starting with a
bulleted list of broad topics such as rules, gear, or training, and then
started writing specific questions.
I
also made “character sketches.” So much of what drew me to wanting to
write about the Olympics in the first place were the different life stories of
the athletes. This notebook was a good place to develop their character and
plotlines before I even started writing.
GET
ANSWERS
The
internet was a great resource for answers, especially my questions
about ice dance. Image searches helped with ice dance costume ideas for Alex’s
character. The images were also helpful for when I needed to explain certain
body positions.
I watched
footage from different skating competitions, always making sure I had a pen
and paper at hand. Watching skating competitions gave me a feel for how the
skaters moved and acted. Plus, televised skating competitions have
sportscasters, some of whom were skaters themselves. They explain what is going
on for an audience of non-experts. They make skating accessible to those who
have never skated before. This is similar to what an author does, so it was
incredibly useful to hear how the sportscasters described the rules and routines
and borrowing their jargon added a sense of authenticity to the book.
Nonfiction
books are another great source of information. I read several
autobiographies of athletes from various winter sports. These books captured
the hard work, sacrifice, and daily struggles of an Olympian. Plus, they
answered questions I didn’t even know I had. Turning to autobiographies has
also proven helpful in the research I’m doing for another manuscript I am
currently working on. This story involves various medical components—comas,
organ transplant, hospital regulations, etc.—and while some of this information
is on the internet, autobiographies give a closer and more insightful look,
because they tell of a more in-depth personal experience.
GET
TO KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
It’s important to know your market.
Where does your book fit?
The
best way to figure this out is to read other books in the genre. When I was
writing Podium Finish, there weren’t many other young adult books out there
that dealt with winter sports, let alone the Olympics, so my work offered
something new. However, there were some wonderful young adult books that had
sporty female protagonists, such as Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen series and Miranda Kenneally’s
Catching Jordan. Know what’s out
there. Know what these authors do well and see if your book has these elements.
Sometimes doing book research involves improving your craft.
GET
MORE FROM PEOPLE WHO KNOW
Initially, I had intended for the book
to take place in Torino, as this was what sparked the premise of Podium Finish
in the first place, but an agent told me
that using a real Olympic location would date the book. She recommended I
change the location to some place real, but a place that had not recently
hosted/was not scheduled to host the Olympics. I had traveled to Iceland in
2010 and was able to use bits and pieces of that experience in the book.
After
reading and scouring the internet, I still had some unanswered questions, so I contacted
some Olympians and Olympic hopefuls. I emailed them explaining that I was doing
research and asked if they would have time to answer a few questions for me. I
had some wonderful responses. I wanted my book to portray their sports as
accurately as possible. The accuracy was something important to the athletes
too. I was writing about sports that most people only pay attention to every
four years, so this was a way to get the athletes’ voices out there as well.
Plus, I was 16 at the time. I used my age to my advantage. While some adult
athletes might have been skeptical of helping a young, budding writer, I found
that teen athletes and athletes in their early twenties were very interested in
helping out. They were trying to build their career just like I was trying to
build mine, so we could relate to one another. And, the characters in my book
were 17-year-old Olympic hopefuls. Interviewing teen Olympic hopefuls about
their experience made the most sense.
GET REAL
As a final note,
it’s important to remember that not all research will end up in the book. For
example, I interviewed a snowboarder, Brooke Shaw, who, fingers crossed, will
make the 2014 Olympic team—she’s awesome and I loved interviewing her—but I
ultimately decided to cut the snowboarder character from the book, so I could
focus more on Alex and Harper. This research wasn’t in vain. I learned a lot,
and who knows, I might use it an upcoming project.
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