It’s fun to spin a yarn, isn’t it, making up stuff in our writing lairs?

But take it from me, it’s a lot more fun when you’ve done some not-so-fun work first:

Homework
Legwork
Spadework

I’m talking about research.

The Homework is deciding what you’re going to need to know.

The Legwork takes you where you need to go to get it.

And the Spadework digs for it.

You might say, “Huh-uh, no way. Leave the academic stuff to the non-fiction types. I got into fiction so I could just tell stories.”

Sorry, you don’t get off so easy.

Readers want their fiction plausible, and that means: believable. It has to make sense.

Doubt me? How often do you hear people criticize a novel by saying, “That would never happen!”

Why don’t they cut the novelist some slack? I mean, isn’t it supposed to be fictitious?

Yeah, but it has to ring true. Specificity, authenticity, and detail make it work, and those come only from rock-solid research.

If your research stinks, your story sinks.

Your plot may be fictitious, but your details had better be correct.

Your Credibility Is At Stake

What if you were reading an otherwise engrossing novel and came across this line: “When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas had been a state for only eighteen years.”

Excuse me? Everyone knows Kennedy was shot in November of 1963. So Texas joined the Union in 1945? That’s an egregious error.

It took me seconds to find the state’s website and learn that Texas was annexed to the United States as the twenty-eighth state in 1845, seceded and joined the Confederacy in 1861, and was readmitted to the Union in 1870.

Get those details right and they add flavor. Get them wrong and they inject a sour taste the reader wants to spit out. Make an obvious goof and you’ve ruined the reader’s crucial “willing suspension of disbelief” and probably stopped the reading forever.

Research is something you owe every reader who chooses to read your story.

Anachronisms—details out of place and time—jar readers, just like they do moviegoers.

In a movie set in the late 1930s, a housewife pulled a Tupperware container from the refrigerator. A quick check told me Tupperware made its debut in 1946.

5 Tips for Rock-Solid Research
Be discerning. On the Internet, uninformed authors, contributors, and bloggers can be sorely misinformed. Check your sources and learn which to trust before propagating bad information.
While many publishers have fact checkers, the buck may stop with you. Verify information via at least two sources and never settle for “close enough.”
Immerse yourself. Writing a police mystery or procedural? Do a ride-along or shadow a precinct house. Writing a medical thriller? Try to get into a hospital to learn the nuances of the culture. Set your novel in cities you know. Don’t rely on guidebooks.
Use social media. Learn about people, places, addictions, hobbies, or neuroses, by watching videos or listening to interviews on YouTube. You can also research via Twitter, Facebook, or various chat boards.
Know when to stop. You can kill your writing schedule by over-researching. Do enough to season and flavor your story and move it forward, but get back to the writing.

Caveat

Resist the urge to show off how much research you do.

I understand the temptation. You follow this advice and do all this work, and you’ll find it isn’t as bad as you fear. You’ll learn a lot of cool stuff.

But if you dump all of it into your story and make it the main course, it can overwhelm.

Better to let your research serve as seasoning, letting it enhance the story—which should always remain the star

What’s your favorite research technique?

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