Hi Everyone! Sorry but this post isn’t going to be as polished as usual. I had a different post planned for this week and this post was supposed to be next week. But somehow, I realized that next weeks post needs a little more research done. Which brings us to today’s post….
Small Skills: Research
So, I know what everyone who’s been with my blog a while is going to say. “But JM, you’ve already written a post about research!” And that is true. I did write a post on research a while back. But there are three things about that post that I didn’t like and are going to be different.
1. It didn’t give advice about research, it just shared experience about things that I had researched for novels in the past.
2. It was not part of a series therefore it didn’t really have a direction to it.
3. It was written a long time ago therefore my writing style has changed, I have grown, and learned new things about writing that are more relevant to the topic.
So yes, I am redoing the post. Kind of. This post is focused more on the skill of writing. How to do it, where to search, and what sources are best. This of course is mostly personal experience that I’ve gathered from researching things for my own novels, science projects, and university papers. But still, research skills are helpful in writing as well, whether its historical fiction or not.
So, lets start with how to do research. How to do research is highly contested. I’ve seen this in simply the small ways that different teachers like you to organize your sources, or the rules different teachers have about what sites you should or shouldn’t visit. Simply put, researching isn’t easy. It takes time, effort, and conscious thought. But when something is researched properly the resulting project comes to life. I personally find research, when done well, can be quite enjoyable. There are several things that I have discovered that stop people from wanting to research at all.
First, they don’t like the topic that they are researching. This is pretty easy to solve. I’ll tell you one way to solve this problem. DON’T WRITE ABOUT STUFF THAT YOU DON’T ENJOY! If you don’t write about stuff you don’t enjoy then you won’t have to research stuff that you don’t find interesting. Problem solved.
Second, they don’t like organizing their sources and sifting through so much data. I don’t know if there’s a whole lot you can change about this problem. To research something you have to sift through information on a topic to find the stuff that is useful to you. But something that would make it easier is to find easier and more fun ways of organizing the information. When I did research for papers, I liked to have a working outline for the paper that I was writing so that I could add sources and quotes to it constantly so I wouldn’t have to go back and sift through all the documents I had again. I had a friend who, for every novel she wrote, she would literally do one of those detective boards that you see in crime films. It was so trippy to look at.
Third, it takes time. Sorry. This on is inevitable. Time is something that everyone in the world wishes they had more of. Research does take time. But I’ll tell you something that I’ve learned in the last yearish. If more time is spent in the planning (or the pre-writing research) the more effective the later time (i.e. the writing itself) becomes. Preparation is important.
And so, on that note, we’re going to talk a little more about the where to look for research. When I was in High School, every teacher I ever had told me not to look on Wikipedia. I’m going to give you a great secret to research. Look on Wikipedia. But don’t read the Wikipedia page! All the way down at the bottom of a Wikipedia page they have this section called sources. It had hyperlinks to websites or books that contain the accurate primary or secondary source information that is on the Wikipedia page. Many a required source for university papers where found by yours truly on a Wikipedia page. Wikipedia is a wealth of information but not always in the way that people think.
Another great thing to know about where to look is that primary sources are better than secondary sources, but secondary sources are still better than anything else. But what are primary and secondary sources you might ask? Easy. UNSW Sydney Library defines them as so, “Primary sources provide a first-hand account of an event or time period and are considered to be authoritative. They represent original thinking, reports on discoveries or events, or they can share new information. … Secondary sources involve analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of primary sources. They often attempt to describe or explain primary sources.” Any source that is not a primary our secondary source can still be a good source of information but isn’t always a perfect depiction of the thing that you are researching. There’s nothing wrong with taking information straight off the internet pages. But if you do this you should remember 1 thing. Always verify. Always double check the information that you found with information from somewhere else and make sure they match.
One more thought on sources that I’ve discovered form other young writers that I need to mention as caution. Do not read historical fiction novels and then take everything in the story that is stated as a fact as fact! Historical Fiction novels are laced with facts. That is true. Without them it wouldn’t be a HISTORICAL fiction novel. I would be just a fiction novel. But authors do tend to stick in interesting facts for themselves that make the story interesting. That’s the FICTION part of historical fiction. Be careful with those.
Lastly, I’m going to share one last writing experience I’ve had with research for writing. Research isn’t always the bare facts of things you need. It’s not always the scientific research to explain why your character can have the super power that they have. Sometimes the research is purely for you. Sometimes the things you research don’t even end up getting explained to the reader in the book. Sometimes you just need to explain it to yourself. If it makes sense to the writer, the God of this fictional world, then it makes sense to the world even if no one gets the rules explained to them. This has happened to me with the book that I have been writing for several years.
This book started as one simple plot line that didn’t intend to go anywhere. As I continued to write it, it has become a full blown 5 book series with at least 50 different characters, several different unique locations (including different planets), and hundreds of different species. This has required a lot of personal research. It requires a novel time line. My book takes place over a series of 12 years. That required character ages alongside the timeline. This requires me to create complex religious systems that my characters each understand differently. This requires me to re-science a few things. But while all of the research that I’ve done over the years has been interesting and fun and makes sense to me. Three fourths of it will never be directly stated in my novel. I’m never going to have each of my characters explain their different religious beliefs in detail as most of it isn’t even important to the story. But having those pieces of information makes it easier for me to understand how the characters would interact, what different countries and species would do, and how my world fits together as a whole.
Research is an important part of a novel. Without research a book doesn’t seem altogether real. Fiction is fiction. It’s not always real, even historical fiction is only based on the truth. It’s mostly fiction. But something about fiction that always seems to elude writers, including myself, is summed up in a statement by Terry Brooks. “The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction needs to make sense.” You can fudge a little in writing. But do it too much and your world becomes fake, it falls apart, and nothing seems to fall into place anymore. Fiction needs to make sense.
I hope that you all enjoyed this weeks post. Next week I’m going to talk a little bit more about a new topic that I’ve been thinking about. It’s something new I encountered. It’s called an idea board. This will still be a part of the pre-writing segment of the series so look forward to it. Please don’t forget to follow my pages and social media so that you can receive faster updates without subscribing to the email. And as always,
Get Up, Get Writing, And Get Published. See you next week!
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