In this series of articles, I draw from key excerpts of my textbook on how to write fiction The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now! whose 26 chapters go from A to Z on the key aspects of writing good and meaningful fiction.

W is for Who, Where, When and Why of Doing Research

Research is something many writers dislike and find daunting or even intimidating. In truth, as a writer, you are doing research all the time: when you’re riding the bus or train to work, when you’re traveling on vacation, when you’re having a lively discussion—or better yet an argument— with a friend or colleague. Everything you experience and observe is research. This is what I call non-directed research. It’s also called living. Writers, like all artists, are reporters of life, actively participating and passively observing. A writer is an opportunist, gathering her data through her daily life experiences. Writing fiction draws on this but also on much more…

When writing about a realizable and believable world, whether it takes place in contemporary New York or far future planet Zero, you will need impeccable world building (which includes setting, circumstances, surrounding characters and events) and that will always ultimately require research. you will find very quickly that in order to build a consistent world (even if it’s mostly from your own imagination), you will need to draw upon something real to anchor your imaginary world upon. Whether this reflects a powerful myth or forms an alternative version of a real society, you will still need to apply some rules to follow, so you don’t lose your reader.

With so many useful internet sites and search engines, research has become far easier. But there is also more risk. Finding and confirming information as reliable is an important aspect of doing research. When doing research, particularly on the Internet (but anywhere), you should do several things:

• Use more than one source, particularly for important things; this will give you a wider range of material from which to discern accuracy and reliability.

• Verify your sources and preferably cross reference to measure out objective “truth” versus bias.

• Try to use primary sources (original) vs. secondary or tertiary sources (original cited and open to interpretation); the closer you are to the original source, the closer you are to getting the original story.

• When going to more than one source, try to get a range of different source-types (e.g., conservative newspaper versus blog versus special interest site, etc.) to gain a full range of insight into the issue you’re researching.

Don’t forget that highly valuable and satisfying research can take on the form of interview. You can gain incredible insight into the subject of your research by using a live expert. The advantages he or she has to a book or online database is that they interact with you and may give you something you didn’t even know you needed. Experts include people in your community, your neighbors and friends, professionals in business and in the universities and other educational facilities. Special interest forums and sites can be used to access people to interview.

I keep a journal or scrapbook for every novel I write. This permits me to do several things:

1. Organize relevant research material into one place for easy access (which makes up for my appalling note taking practices).

2. Satisfy my inclination for info dump and expository back-story by providing a place to house it—in my journal, where it belongs, instead of in the story.

By the time I was through with it, the journal I’d kept of my last book—a historical fantasy set in medieval Prussia and modern-day Paris—was its own rich compendium of interesting information, lovingly put together with photos of Paris, drawings and sketches of castles, armour, and long swords, maps of great battles, spreadsheets of timelines and family trees and, of course, commentary on all the great cafés and patisseries in Paris between Rue Princess and Boulevard Saint-Michel.

“…Like the good Doctor’s Tardis, The Fiction Writer is larger than it appears… Get Get Published, Write Now! right now.”

David Merchant, Creative Writing Instructor

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