How Much Research Should I Do?

Sounds silly, sounds entirely about face; but think about it -- how will you ever know the full extent of your ignorance of the subject material until you've actually written your story?

So this is what you do. Write your story first, and whenever you get to a point where your existing knowledge lets you down, make a note in your manuscript reminding you about what you need to find out. Your hero is a CIA agent, and he carries a gun, but you don't know what sort - make a note to find out. A doctor in your novel needs to prescribe a particular drug in order to alleviate a specific disease - make a note to find out. Sometimes you might find that you can actually invent something appropriate from your imagination, so put that in, too. (You'll be able to change it later if you find that your guess was completely wrong, but you'll be surprised by how close you can sometimes get.)

Then, when you have finished your manuscript, go back over it, picking out each of the notes that you have left for yourself. When you collect these notes together and sort them into a sensible order, you'll find that what you have actually done is compile yourself a research plan, a list of queries all of which need to be answered before you can finished your story.

Now you put your manuscript to one side and do your research, and as soon as you've found the answers to all the questions in your research plan, now you're ready to write your second draft. (You were planning to write a second draft, weren't you?). As you write this draft, you can slip in all the answers as you go along. Inevitably, writing this draft will throw up new questions, but these are just as easily dealt with. Just keep a note of what they are and remind yourself to find the answers before you start on the final polishing.

This way you will only do just enough research that you need to do, and no more. There's no danger of collecting reams of data that you're never going to use, and you'll also hopefully avoid the temptation of slipping in that one additional interesting fact that you thought was so fascinating, even though it has no place in your story.

All right, I know that very often the most wonderful nuggets of information can often emerge serendipitously from the driest of research material, and unexpected facts are thrown up that can change the entire course of a story. Indeed, in pursuit of your research plan you will inevitably uncover additional information that will add to the verisimilitude of your story. However, instead of being tempted to build a plot around your research, in which case the integrity of the plot will undoubtedly suffer, you simply need to find a suitable place in your existing plot and slot it seamlessly in.

Unless you are already fairly very familiar with your subject material, then a certain amount of additional background research before you start will probably still be necessary; but try to put off the bulk of your detailed research until you have at least completed a detailed outline of your story (or preferably the first draft) and discovered precisely where the gaps on your knowledge lie. In that way, whatever time you do spend on research will be spent as efficiently as possible.

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© 2002 Richard Young. All rights reserved.