A Few Last Words on Research

     I am the last person who should be writing the last post on research.  One, I am a former librarian. Once a librarian, always a librarian. Two, I write historical fiction which requires research. Lots of it.

     I read Sherman Alexie's blog post.  He has some valid points but the one about not doing a lot of research is not one of them. However, Sherman Alexie plays in a whole different league than I do.
He (mostly) writes adult fiction about his own culture. I write historical fiction for children. He is a big name A-list writer. I am not. Because he is a big name A-list writer he can flippantly say things like  (paraphrase here) that if you that you get details wrong, you can always change them in the paperback. If I get things wrong, there is no paperback, because reviewers have picked up on my gaffes and no one bought the book. I am not in a position to not get every detail correct, to the best of my ability.

     Since all of us TA's have agreed that research is important, I will throw out a few other thoughts to consider on the subject.

   1.  We are writing for children. While kids are growing more sophisticated all the time, they still are the most willing of humans to buy into "suspension of disbelief."  For instance, when I was teaching there was a popular Sprite commercial that feature a half lemon-half lime fruit that the advertisers called a "limon." I had teenagers who were convinced that the "limon" was an actual fruit just because it was on TV.  If you don't want to do research, don't write for kids.

   2.   More and more, children's literature, both contemporary and historical fiction, is being used to supplement teaching materials. Playing fast and loose with details often results in students thinking that for the most part, mankind has behaved and thought like contemporary Western society.  This is my special pet peeve.  I wrote my master's thesis on the overwhelming falseness in many award-winning books, used as classroom texts. (No names mentioned here; I have no desire to pick fights with authors who are better known than I.)  Suffice it to say, that while these books are popular and "good reads"they present a false picture of life in other times.

3.   Willing as children are to believe what they read, they can pick up on the places where the writer is just plain sloppy. I've read books where specific geographic places that are hundreds of miles apart, are
place within walking distance of each other. I've read "southern" dialect that bore no resemblance to anyone I know, and I've lived 90% of my life in the South (in different places.) Using dialect is a tricky
thing anyway, one that deserves it's own post.  I'll just say here, when in doubt, don't "dialect."

4.  If you ever find yourself thinking "Gee, I'm not sure about this or that. I'll just stick it in without looking it up.  The editor will never notice." Wrong.  The editor will always notice. That's their job.

5.   The best compliment you can get as a writer is when a reader says "I felt like I was so there.  I was in this complete little world that you wrote." The way you build that complete little world is research.

   Research does not mean you have to spend time and money visiting every location in your story. The best research story I have heard is concerning Laura Hillenbrand.  While she was writing the book Seabiscuit (which ultimately became the award winning Tobey Maguire movie), Hillenbrand suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome.  Sitting at her computer a few hours a day was all she could manage.  She arranged her research books in piles around her chair, and kept her phone at hand to interview those who had been part of Seabiscuit's story.  She never left her office.  When her books or the Internet didn't have her answer, she had various research librarians on speed dial.

    So what's your excuse for not doing your research homework?    The right answer?  There is no excuse for not doing your research.

    Don't forget to enter our current Guest Book Author Giveaway Eileen Meyer's Who's Faster? Animals on the Move.

    Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

The Art of Research Avoidance

Sherman Alexie's recent Writer's Digest blog entry has been getting a lot of love on facebook this week.  My personal favorite from his list is #5, but I am here to talk about item #4 -- that dreaded eight-letter word, research.

I teach college English composition, and many of my students are loath to use any resource besides google; to visit the library, to open a book, to take a note, to thoughtfully examine both sides of the issue, and certainly to develop more than the most cursory familiarity with a proposed topic before beginning to write about it.

We all live in an age where research has become exponentially easier than it has ever been.  When I began working as a writers' assistant at Days of Our Lives, our office was Internet-free.  If I needed information about crime, I called the Burbank PD; if I needed to know about brain surgery, I actually bothered a neurosurgeon at USC.  My bookshelf remains stocked with resources such as the writers' friendly guide to poisons and committing the perfect murder.  However, I have not used these in a very long time, as now the information is literally at my fingertips.

Nowadays it is so easy to take a shortcut -- to avoid talking to real-live person when it is truly necessary to talk to a real-live person.  Through the years, I have learned that research is not my forte or really my interest.   I have also gotten used to approaching it from a soap-writer angle -- yes, it is incredibly unlikely, but is there a one-in-a-billion chance that it could happen?  Great, we'll do it! 

I pretty much only write contemporary fiction (partly due to my incorporating-research aversion), but I haven't been able to avoid the exercise entirely.  Lately I've made use of the virtual Walters Art Gallery, codebreaking websites, and Google Maps. In the past, I've ridden roller coasters at Hershey Park and taken ice skating lessons to put myself in Nancy Drew's shoes.  My favorite type of research, though, comes from reading fiction (back to Alexie's item #4) and seeing how other writers have approached similar material or particular writing challenges.

From what I understand, it is fairly common for writers to get mired in the research phase of a story, to use the library or the Internet as an escape from the harder work of filling a blank page with words.  I am perhaps that unique soul who suffers from perhaps an oxymoronic-sounding problem: I can avoid with the best of them, yet I still seem never to do quite enough (or quite the right) research.

In short, I definitely think Alexie has a point.  And I am eager to see what the historical fiction, sci-fi, and non-fiction writers among us have to say on this subject as the week goes on.

Also... Don't forget to enter our Guest Teaching Author Book Giveaway to win an autographed copy of Who’s Faster? Animals on the Move by Eileen Meyer.

Have a great week, and happy writing! --Jeanne Marie