By which I mean, a guide for writers who don't drink to the kinds of alcohol their characters would be drinking. Growing up, I only encountered wine at Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve. My parents had a single bottle of brandy in the cabinet for twenty years. I had vodka once as a kid by sneaking a sip from my grandmother's gimlet (ick). Despite the fact I was born in the homeland of Pabst and Miller, the smell of beer makes me so nauseous that I can't imagine actually putting that crap in my mouth, though I did wind up with a glass of Guinness at a restaurant when I was seventeen through a misunderstanding with the waitress. And that's pretty much my entire experience with alcohol.
This becomes a problem when I'm writing about characters who drink. I don't mean chronic drunks; it's just that sometimes my characters will crack open a bottle to celebrate something, and I have no idea what they should be drinking. What would be available in their location and approximate time period? What are the implications of different types of alcohol? I'm half-minded to walk around with a survey, asking random people on the streets: "What would you think of a woman who, after successfully overthrowing the Empereror of Ajksodjifji, cracks open a bottle of brandy as opposed to vodka?" Wikipedia is only so helpful for these types of things.
Time to see if the INTERNETS!!! can come to my rescue.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
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