My Process: Research

So my last post was originally intended as the first incarnation of this one, but I meandered away from the original topic just a bit. This post also a bit out of order, as research and preparation should come before the outlining part of the planning process. However, my research has turned into ongoing study rather than just a starting point, as I feel I can only absorb so much analysis of Greek mythology at a time. Also, I think it’s been helpful to continue sifting through information as I’m preparing the outline, to see if there’s anything about what I’ve planned so far that needs a bit of tweaking and whatnot.

As I’ve hinted at before, I’m doing an adaptation of a few Greek mythological stories, with focus in particular on The Rape of Persephone. All in all, it’s presented as a fairly straightforward story, a kidnapping that results in vengeance and compromise with Hades as the cruel antagonist, Persphone as the innocent victim, Demeter the anguished hero, and Zeus the ambivalent puppet master. However, in it straightforwardness, it ignores both Zeus’ and Hades’ motivations in orchestrating Persephone’s kidnapping. It noticeably omits Persephone’s own feelings toward her mother, her kidnapper, and the ultimate compromise the two come to about her that see her sharing her time between the underworld and the earth. It also paints Demeter as someone who feels nothing for anyone but her own daughter, and even those feelings themselves are incredibly problematic. In this myth alone there are so many possibilities to explore, characters to fill out into multiple dimensions, a different setting to expand into in terms of different cultural complexities. This is where I begin.

And, this is where my thoughts on authenticity in story-writing and my research have intersected. Obviously, the story I’m planning is not an original one; it’s an adaptation of a well known myth. So while I scour JSTOR and other literary criticism to inform the historical context of where this myth comes from (and learn all about pomegranates), I have also been reading a lot of fan fiction. And while this may seem laughable or even strange, it has been very informative as to how I want to shape my Persephone and my Hades, my Zeus and my Demeter (also, let’s be honest with ourselves, a good deal of what’s being written at this point in literary history is fan fiction in some way). It’s been so interesting to see how other writers develop the relationships (or don’t develop them) between the major players from the myth, how these relationship inform how the story ultimately plays out, what they add, what they take away, if they alter the plot at all. What I found most surprising is how very few of theses fan fiction authors don’t choose to change the setting of the story as I’ve planned to, and the ones that do have done so in very different settings than mine. This is where my discussion in the last post has given me comfort – I may not be writing something completely original, but I am writing something different.

And that gives me courage to keep going in the direction I’ve pointed myself in.