Inspiration from Author Lectures

I have a confession. I have always loved learning. That’s not to say that I’ve always loved school; although, if you take the number years I enjoyed school versus the number I hated it, I know I’d find there were more years that were good than bad.

As a writer, I get the opportunity to learn new things all the time. You know the old adage of write what you know. Well, my philosophy is that if I don’t know it, that’s not going to stop me from writing about it, I just have to research it until I know it.  As a reader, I get to fully take advantage of this. Even in my leisure, I’m reading fiction, and since that’s what I enjoy writing, I’m learning even while I’m relaxing and engaging in something fun.

So with this little tidbit about my love of learning, it may come as no surprise when I tell you I’ve discovered a new love, and that is attending lectures by authors. I’ve only attended two, both in the past six months (you can read about Douglas Preston’s lecture I attended in Author: The Chameleon Profession), but I can’t get enough of these. In fact, if you’re a writer, I highly recommend seeking and attending author lectures.

There are many writing events like workshops, conferences, and even writing groups that can help an author with their craft, provide inspiration, and add to your creative energy. And while all of these are commonly recommended as things that writers should participate in, I think author lectures are overlooked.

The interesting thing about author lectures is, that in my experience, most of the audience is compiled of professors and students. While this makes sense, since these are held on college campuses, these events are usually free and open to the public, yet I see very few writers in the audience.

While they speak about a specific field of study, these areas are significant to their careers and contributed to their writing. Often times you get to hear about the inspiration for their books and hear about another area that the author is passionate about. I can’t help but feel inspired when I hear someone speak passionately about a subject.

Which leads me to the most recent lecture I attended, where author Kathy Reichs spoke at a nearby university. If you’re unfamiliar with her, she is a crime fiction writer and forensic anthropologist, and she’s the author of the Temperance Brennan novels, which inspired the TV show “Bones.”

As a horror author, I can see forensic anthropology playing a small part of a story and contributing to the details that make a story believable. Regardless of whether there’s concrete information that came from the lecture that will be useful in a future story, or whether it will help give me ideas on what and where to research certain information, or perhaps just give me insight into other stories when I’m reading them, I feel this lecture was invaluable. There were so many things I learned in this lecture about forensic anthropology and cases that became the inspiration for some of her novels, but I’ll share two items about forensic anthropology that really stuck in my mind.

The first has to do with identifying the age of a person when all that remains are the bones. Reichs explained that the younger the bones, the easier it is to identify the age of the individual due to the changes in bone growth. When a person is between 25-30, bone growth is complete. The collarbone is the last to fuse. So for the bones of a child, a forensic anthropologist can determine their age at the time of death within a year of their actual age. By comparison, the bones of an adult are more difficult to pinpoint, and age ranges are not nearly as precise. Adult ages are only narrowed to a range of 10-15 years.

The second interesting bit I’ll share with you has to do with identification. When bones are discovered, a forensic anthropologist will create a biological profile consisting of sex, age, ancestry, height, and individuating characteristics. From that, police can compare missing persons to the profile, which can lead to a name that allows the remains to be compared to dental records and DNA. But they need a name to compare records. It’s not as simple as running the dental findings of the deceased to a national dental record database and have a name pop up.

The wonderful thing about author lectures is that the authors frequently have been immersed in another field of study, usually with a long professional history in that area before they began writing.  They are a wealth of information that may inspire a profession for a future character or give you ideas of where to conduct research for different topics.

I’d recommend starting with author lectures where the author writes in a similar genre that you write or read, and I personally think it’s of value to attend lectures in other areas that might be outside of your normal interest, because they might inspire you to write something unexpected. Granted, I wouldn’t attend a lecture on a subject matter that you find dull. That would not be enjoyable at all, but part of growing and learning is always pushing yourself and expanding your interests. It’ll make you a more rounded individual, and a better author.