I’m writing my third book live on the Internet, and you can follow along! Today: Researching the details.
If you missed the previous parts of this story, the first post describes how to collect ideas. The second post is about outlining. In the third part, we expand the outline using the hero’s journey. In the fourth part, we talk about how to make the plot stronger.
The second round of research
We already talked a bit about research in a previous post. The important takeaway from these posts about research is that:
You should always do only as much research as necessary.
It’s too tempting, but in the end a bad idea, to spend half a year researching the Amazon tribes before one even has an outline of the story. This is something that I have learned writing academic papers: one needs to know in advance what the thesis is, and then research in order to prove or disprove it. Even the narrowest research area in philosophy (my field) is so flooded with literature today, that trying to read aimlessly guarantees that one will drown in material and be unable to proceed to ever writing anything. This has happened to multiple PhD candidates I knew over the years. The only solution is to know exactly what one wants to say before any research is done, and then to do the research specifically to find the information one needs.
So first comes the rough outline (that we now already have), and then one can read specifically to research particular points. In our case, we’re writing about the Amazon tribes, so we’ll need to know more specifically:
- How does the social structure of the Yanomami work? Do they have leaders, kings, wise men?
- Are their leaders young and strong, or old and wise?
- How do they live their everyday lives? They hunt, I guess, but what? What do they eat?
- How are the relations between the tribes? Between men and women?
- And, finally, are there any stories of real fights between tribes and loggers?
Growing up Yanomamo
Looking around at Amazon, I discovered a great book about the tribe: Growing up Yanomamo by Mike Dawson, who recalls his childhood growing up as one of them. I’m working my way through the book now. It’s a real treasure, full of detailed and vivid descriptions of life in the Amazon jungle.
A few minutes of googling brings up another interesting document: Yanomamo — Sociopolitical Organisation. We also find a PDF file: Social and cultural anthropology — The Yanomamo. And the University of Manitoba has a few pages on the Yanomamo too. There’s also an article about Yanomamo Social Organisation and Warfare by Napoleon Chagnon, who seems to be one of the leading experts in this field. This should be enough for the purpose of writing a children’s story.
Loggers and Fighters
Now let’s see if there were any conflicts with loggers in the past.
Googling “amazon tribe illegal loggers” brings up a few interesting results. A 2015 article describes the Brazilian Ka’apor, who fight against illegal loggers in a way that’s quite similar to what happens in my outline. That’s a stroke of luck, of course, since I didn’t know anything about the Ka’apor when I came up with the story!
National Geographic, in January 2016, published an article online about the same tribe and its fight against illegal logging. And there’s a BBC video about them from June 2016. The Guardian covered them in September 2015, and the Washington Post mentions some other groups involved in fighting loggers.
So there is a lot of detail already to be found on the Internet about fights between tribes and loggers. It will not be hard to use such details to give colour to the descriptions in my book.
The fight of the Yanomami
All these sources are about other tribes. For the purposes of a children’s book, there’s probably not much difference between one tribe and another. Still, it would be nice to see if the Yanomami also have any history of fighting illegal loggers. Turns out, they do.
The Sidney Morning Herald has an article about how the Yanomami use modern media to communicate their message. Survival International has an article about logging close to uncontacted tribes. There’s an article about the Yanomami’s history of contact with the Brazilian authorities. All these are not very specific about conflicts, though. But here is an article that specifically lists conflict cases between miners and Yanomami people.
That should be enough for the book. In the next instalment, we’ll create the final outline as a phase outline that will directly guide the writing of the first draft.
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In the next instalment we will write the detailed phase outline for the book! Read on here!