Google and Writing
There are a lot of fun memes out there about what writers use Google for and I am no exception. I thought it would be fun to share some of my search history with you.
Internet searches can be a bit convoluted. I tried to put these in a way you could understand. Hopefully it worked! I had to break up this idea into several different blog posts. I will link the others here in the future.
On to Google searching!
For the record, I'm 100% confident that the word I type most often into Google is Synonym.
HERBS
The book starts out with the MC hurt and using herbs to heal. My MC is the Fae Prince, so I specifically made his healing process center around flowers. There are several places in the story where herbs are used or mentioned.
Herbs that help with: bruising, nausea, bringing back consciousness. In the opening scene I mention Rose, Hibiscus, Honeysuckle, and Yarrow.
The MC has been drugged so I also looked up - Herbs that cause amnesia. I found Devil's Breath. Though recently I was told that this is a bit more complicated than the way I described it in the book.
Mercury poisoning is a major plot point in the story. Now, in real life you should go to a doctor to handle poisoning. However, in my story, I wanted to keep with the herbal theme and used; Rosemary, Juniper and Cypress. All of these herbs have been shown to help fight the effects of Mercury poisoning. Because Lia is getting regular exposure to mercury, I also gave her a face mask to wear which is infused with these herbs. You probably don't have to ask where I got the inspiration for that.
In the gardens of a vampire colony I needed to know which herbs grow well with beans and had to cross-reference that with the herbal list for fighting Mercury poisoning. It turns out that Rosemary grows well with beans. On that note, I also used Google to find out which fruits and vegetables replenish blood. The answer is Spinach, beans, melon, and legumes.
In the Fae Palace, I describe stone archways and open windows. So I needed herbs that grow as a vine. The prettiest ones I found were Jasmine.
I also needed to know what herbs help with too much iron intake. Google said Milk Thistle makes the biggest difference. When another character is exposed to Devil's Breath, I needed an herb that would help him get his head back in the game. I found one called Brahmi, or The Herb of Grace. Look that one up, it's pretty incredible!
I had some random searches as well, which include:
How to address royalty - This is surprisingly hard to get a straight answer for.
When to capitalize the word 'king' - It should come as no surprise that the answer to this question is 'When it's a proper noun.'
Did knights use spears - They did! I didn't end up using that in the book though.
How to choose names for fantasy towns- Here is blog all about making my map and choosing names for the towns and countries.
Mute Communication - the shapeshifters in my story can't speak. I am rarely quiet, so I had to do some research on this. I spent a day trying to communicate without words, which helped. Most of what's in the book came from ideas I had while reading about mute communication on Google though.
Map of Fort Collins CO - Even though I lived in the town where my story starts, I couldn't remember the street names or how far it was to the mountains. And, in case you're wondering, Avogadro's is a real restaurant in FoCo. It's my favorite place to eat.
Lastly, I attempted to look up, roughly, 100 things about the element Mercury. It was really difficult! Eventually, I abandoned Google and sent an email to my uncle who works as a Chemistry professor at a college. I think the main issue here was that I didn't know enough to search the topic correctly.
The next blog will include searches I did for chapters 6-10.