: Re: How do you verify information? This is a problem I usually come across with my stories. I often worry about whether the plotlines I introduce are realistic or not, and it's usually something

@Deb2945533

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Little Details is a livejournal fact-checking community for writers. They are not currently as active as I'd like, but you can find there huge amounts of tiny details for writers, sorted by topic. I have found them to be very useful. When they are active, they are happy to answer exactly the sort of questions you're asking about.

Some Stack Exchanges (SEs) do not like hypothetical questions, but others are very happy to give you the information you're looking for. Worldbuilding in particular deals with all kinds of theoretical situations, (though your specific question isn't really world-building related, so this one wouldn't fit there,) but here, for example, is me asking on Mi Yodeya about building synagogues on other planets. It's just a question of finding the right SE for your question.

TV Tropes can be a useful resource. Look, in particular, at analysis pages of tropes, and at Real Life examples. However, be warned - TV Tropes sucks you in, and then you emerge several hours later, reading something interesting but totally unrelated, while whatever you've left in the oven has long turned into charcoal.

There is, of course, the Right Honourable Lord Google, and his daughter, Lady Wikipedia.

And if you feel comfortable introducing yourself as a writer (even if in fact you are an aspiring writer), you can go and ask experts in the field. (Students count as experts, and they're less intimidating.) I've seen an epidemiologist squee in delight when I've asked her to help me find ugly diseases with potentially lethal sequelae.

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