Research is something all writers have to do, but the genre in which they write certainly plays a role. I write epic fantasy. My late-teenaged self (the girl who wrote the first chapter of my novel) thought that meant I had very little research to do. I could just make it all up. Right?
WRONG.
As I began to write—seriously write—I realized how important it was to be authentic. So I Googled medieval farming techniques to help me set a scene that had very little to do with farming. I read Wikipedia articles on horse terminology before my protagonist mounted her first steed. I watched YouTube fencing tutorials before the first swordfight. I even trolled medical sites for herbal remedies as I made the decision not to simply imagine up an herb every time a character in the book got sick or hurt (spoiler alert: this happens a lot).
The Internet wasn’t my only source, either. I devoured and highlighted the crap out of the books by Frances and Joseph Gies, Life in a Medieval City and Life in a Medieval Castle. I also referenced Weapons & Fighting Techniques of the Medieval Warrior: 1000-1500 AD by Martin J. Dougherty.
But with research comes a perilous danger: the dreaded info-dump. Once I knew all about oxen, mouldboard plows, and planting seasons for every vegetable you could possibly dream up, I wrote a terrible chapter that included multiple pages of tedious description of how the villagers were spending their days in the fields. It was boring. It was unnecessary to the plot. It didn’t carry the story forward at all.
Of course, I axed almost everything, and ended up leaving in just enough to make the setting breathe and have color. I owe my writing group for helping me do that.
Do I regret learning so much if I could only use a tenth of my newfound knowledge in my novel? Not at all. The research I did helped me write a convincing, colorful couple of sentences that (hopefully) make the novel richer.
I suspect, like everything related to the writing process, research techniques vary by the author. I’m certainly not saying my method was the best or only way to go about it. But it worked for me. This time, anyway.
I loved doing research for my novel, which is based on Irish Mythology. It's hysterical that you had entire scenes of farmers in their fields- I find myself being sort of gung-ho about the way "Real" Irish faeries are and so I have to seriously hold myself back!
ReplyDeleteSounds like we have similar writing spirits. REAL Irish faeries are certainly different than those fake ones in pop culture. :)
ReplyDeleteI read everything I could find on faeries for my Elemental Enmity series. In the end, I came up with other explanation, but I wove myth into the story. I was very thankful for the research I did, but I had to nix a whole bunch of info dumping in the beginning. I hope I've learned the balance, but you never know until the first reader sees your manuscript. Thanks for sharing, Jessie! Sounds like a fun book :)
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