Help Me I Am A Writer That Doesn't Like Research

***IF THERE ARE ANY SPELLING ERRORS I APOLOGISE I AM TYPING VERY FAST AND AM VERY STRESSED***

I have just entered this website on accident. It hasn't even been a month since I finished my last book and I am on to another. I have a lot of time on my hands. I have school, and swimming but other than that I am waiting for my publisher to respond after reading my novel. Even before I finished my last book I had this idea. My idea? Well, its vague but its basically about a boy (haven't decided his name but have considerations) and he lives the American Dream. By that I mean, middle-class, parents are together, education was fine etc. Well, lets just call him X for now. X finishes high school and ends up depressed by a series of pressure and stress put on by his judgmental family. X finds a group of extraordinary people, a group of about 4-5 people. They don't HAVE to be hippies. But I want them to be ambitious, adventurous, carless, and most of all free from what X is prisoned by. X decides to throw away his life plan to follow in the footsteps of a regular adult (i.e HIS PARENTS!!) And leaves with these people. I want these people to make a difference in X's life. They have to do weird things, and why do they do this? Because they are just as troubled as him. I want all of my characters to have SOMETHING that drags them down. By the end of the book, X will be free by all together they will be sad. Its like reverse asexual reproduction. X finds his whole cell. X is not alone fighting his parents wishes. X will fall in love. I WANT IT TO BE DRAMATIC! EXCITING!
I am trying to tame myself. I am one CRAZY writer; I want too many things. I do not know where to start!

By most of all I do not want this to be the stereotypical "lets-jump-into-a-bus-and-smoke-all-day" hippie book. I want to be legit. I am not a hippie. People identify me as a "hipster". My family says I am a renaissance-girl. Who knows...
Someone, ANYONE HELP ME! I am becoming X!!!! Please help me do this! OH and also what are some of your favourite names. I was actually thinking of naming the boy Charlie? Or Hugo? I love those names. I also need some hippie names but not too hippie. I have to like them- I am picky.
HELP ME
(by the way, no I am not going to research anything about hippies into Google. I need YOU guys to help)
- justawriter3
p.s.
You guys are all I have please help me. And please no hate. (hha)

 

What years is the book set in?

 

Havn't we all?

I like Sage and Sebastian. I once met a cute hippy boy named Jupiter when I was in high school...

 

Year: Close to now

 

Now.

 

Thanks!!

 

You need to do the research, you ain't gonna find any consensus about Hippiedom on this site.

I suggest you watch this documentary about real Hippies and beats when it was all happening: Magic Trip



Despite the recreational drug use, the group’s attempts at subversion seem tame by today’s standards – more like your run-of-the-mill, good-natured suburban kids with too much time on their hands and a penchant for unwise choices. As they roll through the countryside with the American flag flying, 60s teens chase the bus down the street as if it’s an overgrown ice-cream truck.


The voice-overs by the former Further riders gives the journey a lot of counterculture credit. “Ken really believed things could change, he saw himself as a liberator,” remarked one, while another boldly proclaimed, “What it meant is that everyone had to consider a new way for things to be.”

 

Why not actually go live it then write about your adventure... Go travel with the Rainbow tribe hippies...

 

There are no young hippies now.

 

If the date is close to now, I don't see how this website will help you, or how it's about hippies.

You're just going to have to research, there's a lot to know, about a lot of different groups, with different views and behaviors and such, all the way up to the present - but if you try to write about young "hippies", at best you could write a cynical (and oh-so-deserved) bit about rainbow family posers, and at worst you could write some totally serious shit based on some unified model hippie or hippie culture that you seem to be envisioning.

It's not something that someone can just give you sparknotes on - what kind of "writer" are you?

Hippies are this way, they use crystals that way, they live this way, now you're ready to write a novel.

 

("...why do you depend upon a publisher when there are more readers upon forumland itself than most elsewhere today, ah no you simply need to pull those readers towards you still, and then repeat that process across forum after forum after forum till they all clamor for your book I guess..." smiled the goblin guessing that it wouldn't make much sense straight off but then asking "...if you had the choice between reading and replying, which would you choose to do and why then...", where if there was one thing that the goblin really understood by now it was that the author who didn't have time for his readers lost out to any author who had that time there, repeating "...once you've published that book the readers will be here still, where the quickest way to fail is to advertise the book across these forums while not being on the forums for those readers should they take interest, repeating "...they want short interactive content first, just to see if you're worth following, then they want to converse with you, afterwhich they might read your book now, good luck then...")

 

Electric Cool Aid Acid Test. Read it.

 

if its set in the present time you shouldn't really focus too much on the hippie aspect. I mean, yeah there are still "hippies" who follow phish and wear patchouli but you're leaning too close to the cliches stereotype if you follow this route.

forget about trying to fit your characters into some hippie shell and simply aim to give them an element of free spiritedness. You can drop out of society, play music or do something you love, travel around, experiment with drugs, whatever, without ever wearing the label hippie.