On writing and research

JA June 24

So that was me, in April, reflecting on a poor choice of words when it came to some impromptu googling for the novel. (What I really wanted to check was whether you could eat mushrooms while pregnant. Answer, ordinary mushrooms, yes. Magic mushrooms? No so much).

Research has always been that old chestnut for me when it comes to writing. While the novel I’m working on isn’t really heavily researched based, unlike say historical fiction, I’ve come to realise that pretty much anything you write will involve extra fact-checking at some stage. As Alien Onion wrote a while back, if you don’t pick it up, a savvy editor/copyeditor will, and they’ll make you pay. Research, in short, is integral.

Yet I’ve been flummoxed about where and how to go about it more than once. For one, writing is a rather insular sport, so I’m always curious when others mention their techniques and methods. For another, creative writing courses (or the ones I’ve taken at any rate) don’t seem to focus much on this, or at all for that matter. This seems strange to me because incorporating the right amount of detail is a tricky thing and new writers are probably the ones that need the most guidance. Beyond reading, information-gathering always involves a certain amount of chutzpah – finding the right experts for example, and persuading them to give up a healthy amount of time to answer your questions. It took me ages to get over the squeamish factor of telling people who probably couldn’t give a damn about writing that I was trying to piece together a book and needed their help.

On this as well, I’ve discovered that many folks have the strangest hobbies – the most unexpected person can probably help you answer the most obscure question, if only you keep your ear out. Also, how you frame the question is almost as crucial as who you ask. More than once I’ve asked a doctor for a fact-check only to be bombarded with a white, rushing wall of medical jargon that I could neither make head nor tail of. (You treat WHAT-perosis with the WHAT-cicillin and through inserting the HUH-tube??) The best help I’ve had so far tend to be from ‘experts’ who are also writers themselves. For one they usually know how to explain things so that you don’t end up with a headache. And for another, they’re clued up enough to help you with the right details.

This is another thing I’m still trying to work out when it comes to research – how much detail to amass, and then how much to include. My early temptation is always put to cram a lot in, especially if something has a particular lyrical-yet-factual quality. For example, I once read in a book about fishing that instructed you to attach the bait by ‘corkscrewing it up the shank of the hook’. Even though I’m paraphrasing here, there’s something so basic yet almost poetic about that line. However, lately I’ve been trying to keep this instinct in check and kill some of my research darlings. Too much detail can be overkill. Usually, it’s just that one, vital image or description that can really bring and time or era to life. Julia Leigh’s The Hunter, which I’ve just finished, is a perfect example of this. In terms of amount, I also generally end up with far more research than I end up using. But I often keep reading because sometimes the smallest detail or fact can change the direction of a story entirely.

On the question of when and how to research, Justine Larbalestier has this to say:

I used to do the research first and only when I felt like I knew enough did I start writing. But I never felt like I did. So—you guessed it—I didn’t start writing. The only reason I started my PhD thesis was because my scholarship was going to run out. But I learned my lesson: never put off the writing.

I write until I hit a point where I don’t know enough. If it’s a big thing—I’m writing a scene set in a buffet flat in Harlem but I’m not sure what one might have looked like—I’ll stop writing and go back to researching. But if it’s just a small thing I leave a note for myself [what kind of toothpaste? powder?] and continue writing.

Damon Young also has a great post on historian Keith Thomas’ methods over at his blog:

In the library, [Thomas] takes notes on important passages, references or facts, writing on loose sheets of paper. When he gets home, he cuts them up, and places each note in an envelope, along with clippings, and lists of relevant books – one envelope per theme. As “the envelopes run into thousands,” Thomas also keeps an index of the themes.

When it’s time to start writing, Thomas picks out an envelope and spreads it out on the table before him. Eventually the very process of shuffling notes leads to various patterns and connections forming. He outlines his process further in an article in the LRB:

… I add my new notes to the old ones and try to create some coherence out of these hundreds of pieces of paper. This involves dividing the topic into a great many subheadings, writing each subheading at the top of a page of A4, stapling the relevant slips onto the appropriate page, and arranging the sheets in a consecutive order. Only then do I start writing.

While somewhat analog, the depth of this process is fascinating. Spike has written before on the topic of originality that writing sometimes involves amassing a wealth of knowledge, and then promptly forgetting it all so that it seeps back as prose. Here I think lies the dangerous territory with research – trying to make sure that you have enough detail to make the story/place/time real enough so that the reader is encouraged to suspend their disbelief, yet also somehow trying to keep tabs of where you discovered what.

This post has gone on long enough, but I did want to mention in parting the effect that digital technology has had on research as well. Many writers are now using Twitter or blogs as a source by throwing out questions to readers. Again, it’s fascinating to think that a single comment/tweet can change the shape of a novel. I do think that we’re lucky to have so much information open for our persual, but as Alien Onion pointed out, this involves a certain amount of internet savvy: ‘Bad Googling leads you up the garden path and abandons you by the duck pond’.

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