Interesting point of view, to which you are certainly entitled. Myself, I am not all that interested in what Joe **** the ragman writes about something he learned last week. If he doesn't know about it, why is he writing about it?
Well, he's probably writing about it to make his mortgage payment and buy groceries!
And to feel creative and fulfilled as a writer. We're artists of a sort, like sculptors and painters. Writers are seldom "ragmen". I think you're being a little harsh there...
The public likes stories/movies about dramatic things, usually where lives are at risk. But almost no one who really lives those adventures writes!
But when an intelligent author and researcher like David Lindsay rides repeatedly with homicide detectives, gets to know them, hears their stories and sees how they interact, tell morbid jokes, and investigate cases, he comes to know the field well enough to write very credible books about such activities.
Do you think those who write romances really date or marry the men in their stories?
Have adventures like their heroines do?
Robert C. Ruark wasn't a white hunter or Kenya farmer, but he got to know such men and interviewed police and authorities on Kenyan native tribes and their beliefs and activities to where he produced magnificent, quite accurate books. He did go on safari, learned how hunting was done there, and took his share of game, while studying what he saw along the way.
BTW, Jeff, don't just write this as a class paper. Post it on FanFiction.net or on their sister site for fiction not connected to books, TV shows, or movies.
If you write it as a case handled by the Criminal Minds FBI profilers, you can avoid the liberal agenda sometimes shown by the show's writers and make the case and the procedures more realistic. Your criminal(s) can be more realistic. I know a nurse who writes, Star Wars dramas using just characters from that fandom, but written as if they were also (mainly) characters in the film, Pretty Woman. She writes some hot stuff, well researched and believable. I like her mentions of cars, watches, luxury hotels and the rooms, etc. that make her stories come alive.
Her characters are named after Star Wars characters Rey and Ren, but otherwise have little connection to those movies. But it fits the genre enough to be accepted, and her tales are hot and interesting.
She's vacationing in London this week, and I bet she learns enough there to use British locations and cultural matters in her future fics. Among other places she'll be is Fortnum & Mason, the upscale dept. store. Her female characters want to marry billionaires, so that store becomes a likely setting in stories. She'll be able to describe it and unique things sold there.
British readers of my own stories suggested that I have Marguerite Krux Roxton in my, The Lost World stories shop there. It suits her nature perfectly. Harrod's is another likely store for both my and her characters, once mine left the mysterious Plateau of the TV series. My son has shopped in Harrod's and sent me some of their tea, store brand. Don't bother seeking it out. I found tea from both Twining's and Taylor's of Harrogate to be much better. But there's no doubt that Harrod's is justly among the most famous stores in the world, and the food sections at both stores are surely a delight to shoppers.
I can read Online about those shops and ask questions about them of my son and of my nurse friend and set scenes in them in my stories that seem very authentic, if I don't delve too much into detail, which isn't needed. In most cases, I could just have characters Marguerite Krux, by then Lady Roxton, Countess of Avebury and her friend Finn, by then Mrs. George Challenger (eventually Baroness Challenger), meet at the stores to shop or have tea there. If I want more intimate detail in a shop, they can be in their custom dressmaker's, Marie-Claire Dumont, a character and store that I created, so can describe well. I don't have to have shopped in or worked at Fortnum's, etc. to use the store in fiction.
