Today’s Words of Wisdom is a follow-up to my post from two weeks ago, this time focusing on advice on doing research for your writing. We have excerpts from posts by Kathleen Pickering, Linda Castillo and James Scott Bell. As always, the full posts are worth reading in full and each is date-linked at the bottom of its excerpt.
Personally, I prefer on-site research for my stories, and so far have been able to use that tool successfully. However, I do rely on the Internet for facts. Ironic as it sounds, I searched the Internet to find guidelines for researching reliable sources on-line. I found the most reliable tips from websites for university libraries. Since the first tip was to check the authority of a source, I thought colleges would offer the most unbiased tools for determining reliable information.
I found when choosing an article, blog, website, government document, historical journal or any resource posted online five key areas should be considered:
- The Authority of the author/publisher of information.
You should be able to identify the author of the work/site, his/her credentials, relevant affiliations, and past writings. The article itself should offer information, or sources like Who’s Who, the author’s home page, or Google search the publishers/author’s name to see what other works support their credentials.
- The Objectivity of the author.
What is the motive for your source’s article, blog, website? Does your source admit to a particular bias? Offer historical, medical or industry facts and not opinions, or affiliation viewpoints? Can you compare the information to other independent sites/articles to verify facts?
- The Quality of the information:
Do the facts agree with your own knowledge of the subject? Can you insure information is complete and accurate by comparing with other specialists in the field? Does this author list other sources for his/her information, as well? And, believe it or not, check the site, article or blog for grammatical and spelling errors, typos. These usually indicate a non-professional delivery of information, making the facts suspect.
- Evaluate Date of information:
When was the information published? Check the date on the web page for publication date and revision dates. Is the information current? Does it update old facts? Substantiate other materials you’ve read?
- Establish Relevance of the information:
Are these facts popular vs. scholarly? (Huffington Post vs. Wall Street Journal)Does the information use raw data, photographs, first-hand accounts, reviews or research reports? Has the information been analyzed and the resources cited? Are footnotes, endnotes or bibliographies listed?
Remember, Wikipedia is no the end-all of resources, since anyone can edit it. And, a rule of thumb is to ensure you tap at least five different sources to verify your facts before accepting your information as usable.
Kathleen Pickering—August 30, 2011
Nothing gets a writer’s creative juices flowing like research. Okay, that’s not exactly true for everyone, but the importance of solid research should never be underestimated.
There are three camps when it comes to that aspect of writing. First, there are the writers who love it. The obsessive-compulsive types who spend days or weeks or even months completely and happily immersed in whatever subject matter they’re about to embark upon.
Then there are writers like me, who walk a center line (not necessarily a straight line.) I research the central external theme of my book. For example, if the story involves a cold case and there’s a dead body in the mix, I’ll read everything I can get my hands on about decomp, forensics, and police procedure regarding old cases. For the smaller details, I research as I write.
And, finally, there are those writers who detest research. Writers who would rather . . . well . . . write than bury their noses in tomes of seemingly extraneous information for weeks on end. They want to get to the story already, and who can blame them if said story is burning—or a tight deadline beckons? Well, slow down, Mr. Type A, because in the end, solid research can save you hours of re-writing—and maybe even save the book.
One thing is certain: A writer can never know too much about his or her subject matter. That is an indisputable fact. Do your research and take the time to do it right. Thorough research will help you write the book. It can help you find that brilliant twist your story is begging for. It adds confidence to your voice. It adds power and credibility to your writing. In the long run, it can save you time. Knowledge and/or expertise cannot be faked, no matter how good a liar you are. If a writer tries to write about a subject he or she doesn’t know squat about, it will show. Readers will know.
A couple of quick caveats:
While it’s true that a writer can never do too much research, keep these two points in mind. Your research should never show. And you shouldn’t hide behind your research because you’re afraid to write the book. Writers, you know what I mean.
Linda Castillo—October 15, 2015
Some significant fakery occurs in the classic film, Casablanca. One of the screenwriters, Julius Epstein, once admitted:
There never were Letters of Transit. Germans never wore uniforms in Casablanca, that was part of the Vichy agreement. But we didn’t know what was going on in Casablanca. We didn’t even know where Casablanca was!
But Letters of Transit sounds real. Which is, of course, the key to fakery!
In the 1960s Lawrence Block wrote a paperback series about a world-roaming secret agent named Tanner. When he got the galleys for one of the books he saw an odd term in the text: tobbo shop. What? He checked his own manuscript and saw that he had written tobacco shop. The typesetter had made a mistake. But Block sat back and mused that tobbo shop had a realistic ring to it and besides, how many readers would have been to Bangkok? (I believe he even got some letters from readers who had been there, and did remember those “quaint tobbo shops.”)
Harlan Coben issues a warning about research:
“I think it’s actually a negative for writers sometimes when they’re writing contemporary novels to know too much. First of all, doing research is more fun than writing, so you start getting into the research and you forget to tell your story. And, second, which is on a very parallel track … sometimes you learn all kinds of cute factoids you think are so interesting that you include them in the book, but you weigh the story down. I try not to do that.”
One method I’ve used when writing hot (and not wanting to stop) and I get to a spot where I know I’ll need research, I’ll put in a placeholder (***) and keep writing. I’ll make my best guess about how the scene should go, then do any additions or corrections later.
On the other hand, when writing historical fiction, which demands detail precision, I have to do a lot of research up front. For my series about a young woman lawyer in turn-of-the-century Los Angeles, I spent many, many hours in the downtown L.A. library, poring over microfilm of the newspapers of the day. I have two huge binders full of this research, and I’m really proud of the results. But man, it’s hard work (am I right, Clare?)
But it’s worth it. When the first book came out almost twenty years ago it sold great and got uniformly positive reviews, several mentioning the historical accuracy. I did, however, get a physical letter (remember those?) from the curator of a telephone museum! He said he enjoyed the book, but there was one little detail about my lead, Kit Shannon, using a wall telephone, that I got wrong. The one guy in the United States who would have noticed this happened to read my book!
Naturally, it was not plausible to dump all the books in the warehouse to change that teeny, tiny thing. And who else was going to notice? But it rankled me, nonetheless.
When I got the rights back to the series, that was the only thing I wanted to change. All those years later I was still mad about it! Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the letter from the museum guy. I decided to try to find him online. Instead I found another museum and emailed somebody there, explaining the detail. In return, I got a nice email back telling me there was a model of telephone that operated exactly like I had it. It would have been used only by very wealthy people.
Which is how it was in my book. Kit lives with her wealthy great aunt in the posh section of town known as Angeleno Heights.
***
Today, there are areas in your fiction that you’d better get right or you’ll hear about it, boy howdy. Perhaps the biggest of these is weapons. If you have your hero cocking the hammer of his Glock, expect a flood of abuse letting you know that a Glock has no hammer. (And if Gilstrap reads your book, duck, because he’ll be throwing it at you.) If you have your hero shoving another clip into his Beretta, you’ll have an irate horde telling you to shove … never mind, just note that a clip is not a magazine.
If you’re not accurate about a place, you’ll hear from people who live there. This is partly why I base most of my books in my hometown of Los Angeles. I grew up here. I know it. That it also happens to be the greatest crime-noir city is a bonus.
But sometimes I want to venture forth. In some instances, to save me from a cumbersome research trip, I simply make up a town and slap it down somewhere. If people want to take the time to look it up and find out it doesn’t exist, they’ll know I made it up and accept it. Ross Macdonald and Sue Grafton set their series in Santa Teresa, a stand-in for Santa Barbara that allowed them plenty of leeway to make up locations within. No one’s complaining.
James Scott Bell—May 10, 2020
***
- What’s your approach to researching a subject for your own writing? Do you do a deep dive beforehand, or leave that for after?
- How do you verify your research?
- Have you ever fallen down a research rabbit hole?
- Do you invent places such as letters of transit or the wonderfully accidentally “Tobo shop?” If so, any advice?
I’m at my annual Rainforest writer’s retreat this weekend, so my internet access will be spotty, but I’ll try and pop in when I can. In the meantime, please comment on your own approach to research.
“What’s your approach to researching a subject for your own writing? Do you do a deep dive beforehand, or leave that for after?”
I tend to do a deep dive before hand. I LOVE researching–too much–but for me, while I love that idea of inserting a place-holder in your manuscript to continue your writing, what I have often found for me is that it’s difficult to continue writing till I clear up that missing bit of historical info. That does not mean, of course, that I get all my research done before hand. It’s an ongoing process.
“How do you verify your research?”
I tend to try to verify with a couple of sources and ensure they are reputable and not some off-the-cuff resource. As I always write historical, and my most frequent focus is 19th century American history, when it comes to historical books I tend toward historical reference books published in the 1950’s – 1960’s. I’m very cautious about more recently published historical reference as they have a tendency to try to ‘re-write’ history in ways that to me are unacceptable.
“Have you ever fallen down a research rabbit hole?”
I ***LOVE*** to research. Just as much if not more than the writing itself and it is waaaaay too easy to fall down rabbit holes. I also admit I resonated with Linda Castillo’s note in the post that says “And you shouldn’t hide behind your research because you’re afraid to write the book.” I have a book series project I’ve been wimping out on because it is an ambitious effort that involves elements of spying and intrigue in a historical setting–it’s very real to be fearful that you won’t be able to write a historical spying concept as well as people who write spy-type novels set in a more modern era. Especially given that those spy activities are taking place at a time when travel and communication occur so much slower than we are accustomed to in the modern age.
“Do you invent places such as letters of transit or the wonderfully accidentally “Tobo shop?” If so, any advice?” I use real places the majority of the time but do invent a fictional setting if better warranted.
One of the items I find surprisingly hard to research is something mentioned in this post — details about weapons. Maybe I just don’t know the right places to look but it always seems like a struggle to find details and info on various weapons from a historical perspective.
And this post would seem a good time to throw out a question: One of my goals is to read a good objective biography of each of the U.S. Presidents. If anyone has one they’d recommend for any particular president, I’d love to hear it.