Research

Research is a fascinating part of the writing process. Sometimes it's the driving force for a story. Sometimes it's the quickest killer of a difficult to research or poorly researched novel. And sometimes it's the best form of procrastination.

I believe that when an author is published and has strict deadlines to meet, they'll have to consider the amount of research required for the book before they decide to write it.

Research is a big part of the stage I'm in with my book. I've got a lot of the plot together, but there are little threads about the book location and emotional stuff about the career of my characters that I need to work out. So, since this topic is on my mind I've decided to procrastinate a bit on my writing today and develop a list of pros and cons for book research:

Pros
- Sometimes researching can give you book ideas or plot development ideas for your current story. It can be an additional source of inspiration. This can be particularly true in historicals because specific events that have happened can spark ideas for your book.

- It's fun. If I were writing a romantic suspense with a serial killer, I could justify spending hours and hours and hours rereading my collection of true crime books.

- It gives you a reason to investigate places you've always wanted to visit. I worked on a book last year that took place in Edinburgh, Scotland. I had a ball Googling all sorts of stuff about the town such as history, shopping, attractions, dialect, phrases, maps, etc.

- Two special words: tax deductions. As a writer pursuing publishing you can write off a good amount of stuff, including work related travel. Talk about a good excuse to make that trip to Europe, eh? I'm doing this very thing in December (hopefully) because I'm going to drag my first draft with me to Vegas and spend several days traveling the city to find cool locales for my scenes to take place.

- You may meet some great people. Take a few minutes to flip through the acknowledgements on some books, most authors recognize the people who helped them. If you're writing a contemporary about a cop, you may want a cop to read it for proper language use and believability. Talk to people who live in the town your book takes place, or people in the career you're writing about. You never know what could come out of it. Another book idea? A new friend? A job opportunity? Someone to visit on vacation?

Cons
- Distraction! Distraction! Distraction! I can't count how many times I've come across a little stupid thing like not having the technical term for something. Instead of leaving myself a note to fix it later in revisions, I HAVE to figure out what it is. I know many others are like this too. :-) Last night a dear friend wanted another word for "buttocks." I went on a Google quest and found some useful stuff on Wikipedia. We both had to know synonyms, instead of leaving a note to fix it later. On the bright side I have broadened my bum vocabulary and made up a few new phrases. Turd pinching cushions. No? Not sexy? Okay.

- If you're on a deadline, be it personal or publisher-given, research may hinder your progress. Let's say I have six months to write a book and two ideas. One takes place in the state I live in and am familiar with while the other takes place in Botswana. I may like the Botswana idea more, but it would take tons of time to verse myself enough with local culture and the town to make it believable that I may miss deadline. Or the quality of the book may suffer because I've taken up writing and revision time with research time.

- Burn-out could happen when writing a research-heavy book. You may have a wonderful idea for a regency, but by the time you're half way through you could be pulling out your hair trying to understand the culture back then. You could get so frustrated that you drop the project and may even stop writing for a while.

Don't let a lot of research discourage you. Really think about whether it's the best for you, your time and your career. This is your business and you need to make smart decisions. Right now I've got a killer idea for a series, or at least I think so. It's going to take oodles and oodles of research. But you know what? These could be the books that get me sold. So hell yeah the research would be worth it. There's also a very good chance that I feel overwhelmed and get burnt-out on it. Or I could end up taking a year to write the book when I want to have it done in six months.

Well, I'm off to Google maps of Las Vegas to try and figure out where in the hell people who live there would actually live and spend their free time.