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Challenge #362
Jun. 20th, 2024 07:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivverToday's challenge is research! Or rather, using what you've researched. Take a cool fact and express it in a scene.
You could use a cool fact from a show. For example, in "Pyramids of Mars" (we just rewatched this; can you guess why?), the Doctor mentions to Sarah that he survived being strangled by a mummy because of his respiratory bypass.
You could use a cool fact that you already know from your real life - your home life, your job, etc. I work in software and happen to know what computer languages are good for what purposes, so in one of my stories, I had my computer programmer character Will express confusion as to why someone would use Java for the purpose he was looking at. Just a throwaway line, but it's an enjoyable joke for a reader who knows this kind of thing.
You could pick up an everyday object, look for an interesting fact about it, and write a scene with it. For example, did you know that dip pens (like quill pens) write better if they're held more horizontally than vertically, because the ink doesn't flow too fast and flood the paper? That's why, if you look at old artworks of monks writing books, they're working on a surface slanted like an easel, rather than on a flat table. You could write a scene of the Doctor visiting a monastery and describe a monk working at one of those slanted writing desks. It doesn't need to be the focus of the scene, but the fact that the table's not horizontal shows that you've done the research.
You could use a cool fact from a show. For example, in "Pyramids of Mars" (we just rewatched this; can you guess why?), the Doctor mentions to Sarah that he survived being strangled by a mummy because of his respiratory bypass.
You could use a cool fact that you already know from your real life - your home life, your job, etc. I work in software and happen to know what computer languages are good for what purposes, so in one of my stories, I had my computer programmer character Will express confusion as to why someone would use Java for the purpose he was looking at. Just a throwaway line, but it's an enjoyable joke for a reader who knows this kind of thing.
You could pick up an everyday object, look for an interesting fact about it, and write a scene with it. For example, did you know that dip pens (like quill pens) write better if they're held more horizontally than vertically, because the ink doesn't flow too fast and flood the paper? That's why, if you look at old artworks of monks writing books, they're working on a surface slanted like an easel, rather than on a flat table. You could write a scene of the Doctor visiting a monastery and describe a monk working at one of those slanted writing desks. It doesn't need to be the focus of the scene, but the fact that the table's not horizontal shows that you've done the research.