Book Research: How to Do It, How to Use It, and Its Ultimate Purpose
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Whether you are writing a fictional recounting of the life of Vlad the Impaler (as I have) or the true-crime career of a shoplifter in Burnaby, B.C. (as I haven’t), the raw ingredients and building blocks of your writing—facts—will need to be discovered and dealt with. The self-imposed pressure to get the facts “right” is enormous. Most writers imagine a panel of experts ready to tear their manuscript to pieces. This terror is what prevents so many writers from even beginning on their dream project—the story they, and only they, can tell.
Let me share a secret with you: that panel of experts does not exist. Of the thousands of books I have sold, I have been emailed perhaps six times with queries as to my veracity. And of those six, three were correct: I’d got something wrong and I gratefully changed it for the next edition. The other three—perhaps these people needed to get out more!
Before I get into some research techniques, I’d like to delve into something equally important: its purpose. Many less-experienced writers think its purpose is to get the facts right. While that is good and necessary, I do not consider it the most important part.
The most important part of any piece of writing is to keep the reader entertained. It’s to make them want to keep reading—not to wow people with our deep knowledge. Knowing this takes a lot of pressure off the writer. When someone goes for the dreaded “info dump”—pages of arcane facts about, oh, the utility of horse husbandry in seventeenth century France—the reader switches off. If they’d wanted to read a book on horse husbandry, they would have.
What they want from you is a story. Characters’ lives and journeys, whether entirely invented or drawn from history. As soon as you think otherwise, and show off facts for their own sake, you lose the readers.
Now that we’ve discussed the purpose of research, let’s turn our attention toward research techniques. There are two distinct phases in research: the research itself, and then how you use it. Let’s start with the first.
When I am doing my background reading on a subject I plan to write about, I read widely and deeply. But I always keep this phrase in the forefront of my mind:
Of course, when you finally use a detail, you want to get it right. Whether it’s how to fight with a backsword and buckler (Shakespeare’s Rebel) or how to land a 1930s biplane in a crosswind (Chasing the Wind), you have made a pact with the reader that what you are telling them is accurate. But you can’t just present the facts of it. How the character uses it, what peril or thrill it puts them into—that’s what works.
For my initial research, I open a notebook and take notes on what I read, logging anything that interests me. But since I already have some idea of my story, my characters, and their journeys, I will highlight (usually in yellow marker) something that I can use to do all the other things any piece of writing needs to do: advance the plot, develop the characters, and (above all) entertain.
An example: Roxy Loewen is a 1930s aviatrix and a protege of Amelia Earhart. Learning that the pitch of the tension wires on a fuselage changed as the plane descended gave me the chance to have her just about survive a near-impossible jungle landing at night. More, it helped me place her in the time period and in her attitude when she likened the wire’s note to “Caruso hitting a top C at Carnegie Hall.” It was a flying fact, it made the reader feel they understood more about flying (and Roxy’s personality), it was dramatically exciting, and it moved the plot forward.
It was research serving as a springboard.
I could give you hundreds of examples where a great fact totally affected my writing but I won’t. Just remember: it’s not the fact itself but what it stimulates in you and then how you use it that truly counts.
However, what I also discovered when writing my first novel was this: research can be a form of procrastination. I researched The French Executioner for six years. I felt I needed to know everything before I began—had to impress that panel of experts, right? But what I was doing was putting off the moment when I actually had to write it. Once I finally began I discovered that 80% of the research I’d done was, if not useless, certainly inapplicable. The story didn’t need it. It didn’t enhance the characters’ journeys.
I had made my next great research discovery: research doesn’t end. It is ongoing. It just changes as you begin to write. The characters’ needs change it. The story itself changes what you need to know.
So read for a couple of days, or weeks, or months—enough time to get yourself going. Then have your reference books open on your desk, and leap onto those springboards.
In my new novel set in World War Two, the pilot is going to fly the Hurricane fighter. I know nothing about it . . . yet. But I am going to find out. And then use the facts to throw my character into peril, and keep my reader reading.
Having talked about the keystones of research, let me end with some practicalities:
Find the book. You’ll need to read lots but there’s usually one that provides the bulk of your inspiration. Scour the shelves of second-hand book stores. Talk to librarians.
When I was writing about Roxy, that pilot in the 1930s, I didn’t have her until I stumbled across a 1929 Aviator’s Manual. It taught me everything from training, to engines, to how to judge altitude from the note of a guide wire.
If you are writing about a specific place, go there if you can. Even if your story is set in ancient times, there will be something there that moves you. Some scent, some sound, some motion. When I was in Istanbul for my novel about its siege and fall, I found a jewel box of an Orthodox church that had been spared at the sacking during the city’s fall in 1453. Preserved specially by order of the Sultan. Why? I don’t know. But that location changed everything.
If you can’t go in person, go on YouTube. Okay, it’s hard to smell things over video. But there are remarkable discoveries to be made. I needed to learn about a horse–javelin game called jereed for my novel Vlad. They still play it in Uzbekistan. You can watch it on YouTube.
Use apps. I bought an app for $13 that was the complete 3D-rendered interior of the famous Zeppelin, the Hindenburg. It had every detail of the craft. I wandered from the balloons to the smoking room. (Though, being digitally challenged, my twelve year old often had to rescue me when I got stuck in the metal gantries.)
Read some of the poetry of a period for an idea of how people thought then, and period plays for how they spoke. But do not try to reproduce their dialogue exactly. It’s too hard for a modern reader. Giving them a flavour is sufficient.
In fiction or nonfiction, a well-deployed fact is a marvelous thing. A good fact places your reader in the times your characters inhabit. They stimulate you to find a way to use them—all while developing your character, driving your action, and keeping your reader reading, secure in the world you’ve created.
Chris Humphreys teaches writing when he’s not writing award-winning and bestselling novels of his own. Chris has authored more than eighteen published books over his two decade career, with such illustrious houses as Doubleday, Knopf, and Orion. Learn more about Chris on his website.
