Lock Picking – A Practical
Personal Guide to Book Research
By Raina Schell
Friday, October 31, 2014
Lock Picking – A Personal Guide to Book Research
Researching is one of my favorite aspects of
writing, it makes me giddy inside.
Elisabetta (Lizzy) Moretti, the 23 year old Sicilian woman
who is the protagonist in my Destiny Series was born on paper over 15 years
ago. Lizzy evolved again and again over the past years that I’ve been writing
her and she continues to evolve but one thing has remained the same, Lizzy is a
thief. She wasn’t born a thief but she fell in with the “wrong crowd” somewhere
along the way, you’ll have to read the book to find out the nitty gritty of how
and why; and she was well trained.
When Lizzy learned how to lock pick I learned how to lock
pick. I watched youtube videos
for hours and hours and because I didn’t have a lock picking set (yet) I made my
first picks out of paper clips. I
then proceeded to pick every lock in my house. Within a week I could pick the
deadbolt on my front door with a paper clip (actually 2 paper clips as one is
used as the tension wrench) in under 30 seconds. No, this did not make me feel
safe but it did make me feel quite accomplished. That’s when I realized I’ve
always been a lock picker. It started when I was a wee tot and would pick the
bathroom locks with broken off Q-tips, the cardboard ones, not the plastic
ones. I didn’t understand the mechanism of a lock (tumblers and the
shear line) then but I still had the innate ability to do it. Maybe it’s
because I was locked in my room without food for days as a child, true story.
Or maybe it’s because when I set my mind to do something I do it. Persistence-are-us.
Who knows why? It doesn’t really matter. 
What matters is throwing yourself headlong into that
research. Almost as if you’re an actor and you’re method acting.
You become your character. Lock picking can even be a metaphor for whatever it
is you need to learn in order for your character to be believable and well
rounded. You could go into your story and character development giving them a
skill you have already mastered, one you’ve always wanted to learn or one you
knew as a child but forgot somewhere along the way.
What I’ve learned from writing thus far is that a majority
of it crawls up from the deepest, darkest hidden parts of ourselves, clawing
and scratching its way to the surface in order to forever stain the whiteness of
screen or paper.
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