I knew a novelist, a good one, who believed in research. For her first book, she made notes so extensive that they were longer than the book itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I do not recommend this approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no research? None at all? I don\u2019t recommend that either. Even if you write straight-up fantasy, that\u2019s probably not the right approach to take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Research falls, I think, into two broad categories. One optional, one really not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The optional kind of research is the sort you might do for a university dissertation. Ages ago, I wrote a book about the oil industry in the interwar years. I needed to know which oilfields were opened when, and by who, and how it was done. I needed to know about the major companies and the struggles for rights and the advances in technology. When it came to my climactic chapters around the Second World War, I needed to find out about PLUTO, the PipeLine Under The Ocean \u2013 which pumped fuel from England to Normandy, in the wake of D-Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All this is Sensible, Serious Stuff. If you\u2019re writing historical fiction, you know you need to do it, and you don\u2019t need me to lecture you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that kind of work simply means that your novel won\u2019t end up being defective at a broad historical level. It\u2019s research that ensures you don\u2019t have your heroes drilling in Saudi Arabia, when they should have been drilling in Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second \u2013 more interesting \u2013 category of research falls under the general heading of \u201cdigging around to see if you can find details to enrich your story.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Words flavour a text. My oil book was peppered with terms like anticline (\u2018an arch-shaped structure buried deep beneath the ground\u2019). Hog-nosed skunk. A coring barrel with jammed flaps. Baling tool. Prime steam coal<\/em>. Meat cakes and yogurt<\/em>. Calico flags. Wellhead pressure.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Those words deliver flavour \u2013 excitement even. The smell and feel of a place and time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Readers don\u2019t even have to know exactly what these things are. When I spoke about the coring barrel, my text dwelled mostly on the fact that the flaps had jammed and needed to be forced open. If my readers had been asked to sketch a coring barrel, they\u2019d have been unable to do so. But it didn\u2019t matter. It felt real, felt exotic,felt authoritative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That book also had a surprising amount of numerical detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What pressure does oil exert at the wellhead? What was the going rate per acre for land around the Signal Hill oil strike? How high was a gusher capable of throwing oil? What length were drill pipes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the book was also full of food details, transport details, military details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All these things act as authenticators (\u201cthis guy knows what he\u2019s talking about\u201d) and as flavourings, lifting the whole text. Readers don\u2019t in fact become expert on a place and time by reading fiction \u2013 but they feel as if they almost do. They get that excitement of new discovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That oil book borrowed freely from life. The description of at least two of the oil-discoveries were based very closely on what actually happened. But often the details that really work are genuinely tiny \u2013 wholly immaterial to the story. So here, for example, is a piece of dialogue \u2013 an oilman telling a story (drawn from fact) about a recent incident:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey were bringing pipes up, so one of the roughnecks had run up eighty foot to rack \u2019em as they came. But he musta lost a hold of the ladder or something, because the next thing I hear is a yell. Guy comes tumbling down from eight feet up, hits a beam in the derrick, spins over and lands on the pump shed, new tin roof, nice and springy. He looks at me. I looks at him. He says \u2018Gotta cigarette?\u2019 I only had my chew-tobacco, so I says, \u2018No.\u2019 He looks at me, real sad, and says, \u2018Well, don\u2019t just stand there. Go get a smoke for this dumb, broken-assed son-of-a-bitch.\u2019<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That kind of loveliness, in my experience, comes more often from research than from pure imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now I said, up top, that you should do your research even if your book doesn\u2019t obviously demand it. And you should.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s say your book is set in a location you know well \u2013 Berlin, London, New York, wherever. You still need to find the little bits of glitter that bring those places to life. Contrast these alternatives:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey passed by a chunk of the old Berlin Wall, left standing as a reminder of how things were.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey passed by a chunk of the old Berlin Wall, graffitied and decaying.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA stump of the old Berlin Wall had been left standing. The old grey cement still bore its original graffiti. A spray of huge red-and-white magic mushrooms surrounding a man \u2013 Honecker? Brezhnev? \u2013 in a grey suit and a bewildered expression. The stump was only two panels wide and contained part of a slogan, \u2018Wer macht \u2026\u2019 They passed by in the silence those memorials still created.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, to be clear, any of those might be right for your book. Do you need to pass on fast through that moment, or do you need to dwell? That all depends on what weight you want to give it. But would your imagination come up with those magic mushrooms? The bewildered Honecker? I found those things by rooting around online. I don\u2019t think I\u2019d have come up with that idea myself. In fact, I didn\u2019t find the Honecker and the mushrooms in the same image, but that doesn\u2019t matter. Research is there to provoke the imagination. Your job is to go and hunt down those provocations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re writing about diamond trading in Antwerp, then learn about it. Not just the technicalities, but the details. How does a diamond get polished? How does the transport work? How do the bourses work? Find the details and pass them on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, and fantasy? You think that fantasy needs no research?<\/p>\n\n\n\nFinding details<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Finding anecdotes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Genres other than historical fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n