Strangest Browser Searches Tag

Way back in the days of cave paintings and sabre-toothed tigers (ahem, last July) Madeline J. Rose tagged me with a thingamajig of her own creation, the Strangest Browser Searches tag! It's so fun when blogger friends make up their own tags, isn't it? And this particular tag is pretty entertaining too.

The rules:

• Get access to your browser history, and look through it
• Pick at least 5 of the strangest searches you've had to look up as a writer
• List them below with a short explanation as to why exactly you had to look them up
• Tag 2-5 other bloggers

I apologize in advance--due to my slow writing lately, most of my Google searches were boring things like "how to calculate equal payments" (for math class) and "what is a contra account" (for accounting class) and "who retains rights in traditional publishing" (for a paper I wrote in business communication class). I dug through THREE MONTHS of history for these, guys, and most of them aren't even that spectacular.


If you don't have anything better to do with the next three minutes of your life, read on!


Note: they're almost all related to my Snow White retelling, so perhaps you'll glean some interesting tidbits of previously undisclosed knowledge. Or just random trivia, but pffft, what's the difference?

snow white original version

I looked this up because it's been a long time since I read the real thing, and I always go back to the source material before writing a retelling.

list of cold words

Snow. Frost. Shiver. Ice. Blizzard. Wow, what a great list. I must've been in a writing slump if I needed synonyms for cold.

norse mythical creatures

I found me a fearsome lindwyrm, thanks to this search!

how big is a hamlet

I don't remember the answer, but Skadi's home (in my inconsistent first draft of Snow White) goes back and forth between a hamlet and a village, so . . . methinks the research wasn't very effective.

how to skin a rabbit

I found some kind of hunting website and actually scrolled through bloody pictures of every step in the rabbit-skinning process. Be very proud of me.

scandinavian sailing medieval times / medieval animal skin canoes

Skadi paddles around a fjord while thinking gloomy thoughts, so I wanted to be able to visualize her vessel.

mbti and guilt

Because Skadi wrestles with more than her fair share of guilt, and I wanted to see how her personality type deals with it. (What is her personality type again? I forgot.)

how long should a chapter be in a ya novel

Short answer: nobody knows! Suggestion: 2500-5000 words.

how serious is a wound to the side

Because what would a fantasy novella be without a stabbing?!

do big five publishers accept christian manuscripts

I don't think I dug deep enough to find the answer, but I think I was contemplating the great big world of publishing that day, and simply looked this up out of curiosity.

tips for fast signature

You should see the margins of some of my notebooks, or the scrap paper I used for math equations back in high school--I'm not ashamed to admit that I've practiced my signature for future book signings. Still not happy with it, and still wondering if I should change the style of it so that it's different from what I use to sign important documents. o_O But on another note, HOW do authors manage to sign hundreds of books in an hour?

lies characters believe

I remembered reading a couple of blog posts on the subject, but didn't know where they were, so I searched them down again to help develop Skadi's inner conflict.

meaning of Skadi / Wilhelmina name origin

Meaningful names are important to me! I love hiding symbolism in my stories--it's just another secret that only I know. That is, until I blog about it or until sharp-eyed readers pick up on it. But half of the fun of these secrets is divulging them, so I don't mind. Anyway, Skadi is my Snow White character, and her name belongs to a Norse goddess of winter and archery! Wilhelmina is a German name meaning willing to protect; it fits pretty well with a secondary character who's come up in two of my stories, yet has never been "on screen."

aurora winter bird lyrics

I'm pretty sure it was Katie Grace who introduced me to AURORA, a young Norwegian singer with an ethereal voice and songs that inspire my writer brain. This particular song, Winter Bird, reminds me of my Snow White story!

sinew bowstrings

Skadi is an archer (and no, I shan't apologize for using that cliché), so I took some time to research more primitive forms of bows and arrows. I also needed to know what kind of bowstring she'd likely have access to . . . and what kind of bowstring might snap under extreme heat. *insert malicious smile*

why don't i like my protagonist

You've heard me grouse about that issue more than once here, so I won't go over it again! Since reading over my novella, I think much of my problem was imagined/the result of less-than-ideal writing circumstances, so hopefully whatever small issues are left can be corrected when I edit.

other odd things I've researched in times gone by:

This was YEARS ago, but one time I spent an afternoon performing mathematical equations for my dragon novel, The Prophet's Quest. Two characters are given special seeds they're instructed to plant in a long, continuous line across one corner of the country, and it occurred to me about five million drafts later that I'd never actually figured out how many seeds they would need. So I:

• guesstimated the size of said fantasy country by comparing it to real life Britain or something like that
• decided how long dragon's tails are (because the dragons are told to plant the seeds one dragon tail-length apart)
• calculated how many dragon tails it would take to stretch across the section of land I'd drawn out . . .
• . . . which equals how many seeds are needed
• then I figured that the seeds were about the size of kidney beans
• so I went to the kitchen and counted out how many kidney beans fill one measuring cup
• converted cups to gallons
• estimated how many gallons of seeds each dragon could carry
• realized they needed A LOT OF HELP to transport all these seeds
• and so I invented a species of birds called seolfor that could each carry a gallon's worth of seeds, and threw a whole flock of them into the story to solve the problem
• WHEW.

And of course I've researched other, more typical writerly things like:

• gunshot wounds
• types of guns
• types of swords
• infection
• injuries
• facial burn scars
• healing herbs
• how far a human can walk in a day
• how far a horse can run in a day
• how long a person can survive without food/water
• how far a league is (because there's no better way to jerk a reader out of your epic high fantasy story than to have the king say, "I shall travel thirteen miles to thy secret abode of magical trees," so leagues it is)
• old cars from the 90's most likely to have engine trouble
• blood types
• what happens when you get a blood transfusion of the wrong type (bad stuff, okay)
• how long it takes to fly to _____
• how far a Beaver plane can fly on one tank of fuel
• how many people can a dragon carry if they're about four or five times the size of a horse
• how would a psychologist diagnose a kid who says he was a hero and fought battles on another bacon-flipping WORLD (answer: he's schizophrenic or has delusions of grandeur)
• ETC.

In short, the life of a writer involves many questions. Sometimes Google has the answers, sometimes not. I used to think that writing fantasy was a good way to avoid research, but HA, I've never been more wrong! At least I get to research pretty cool stuff this way.


(Sorry, I've run out of time to tag anyone today, since I have to run off to work, but if you like this tag, by all means snatch it!)

What's the weirdest thing YOU have ever researched, in the name of writing or not?