Research

It's strange to me when I read or hear author interviews where authors confess that they did not do much research when they wrote their novel. For my novel Riff, I spent hours and hours and hours researching. It's not even a realistic fiction story. And honestly, it's fun to research some of these things.



Types of research

The Internet and Books

Most of my research was done on the internet. I like to use Wikipedia because it's a fast and clean way to research, but just make sure you follow their sources to make sure they're legit. There's nothing wrong with using Wikipedia as long as you can find where they got their information. It's a good tool to direct you to more official sources of information.

Pictures. I didn't know how to describe a fishing boat, so I googled fishing boat and found a good photo to use for a description in the book. It helps you visualize where the characters are when they're moving about on the boat if you have a picture, regardless if you give the reader every last detail (which I don't recommend anyway).

Books are good too. If you want craft books, there's a lot of good ones out there. There's also some good resource tools such as the Merrian-Webster Visual Dictionary. I spent half an hour on the internet trying to find out what that thing is called on airports that connect the terminal to the plane. What was I supposed to put in the search box? Accordion airport connecting thingy? This book has a diagram of an airport with labels of everything. This book has diagrams of everything. It's also available online.

Ask People

This one should have been more obvious than it was for me. One of my main characters goes to school at Peabody Institute, so a lot of the action takes place on campus. I spent a long time on that website collecting details, but school websites don't give you those subtle details that enrich your writing. So, I went onto facebook and found a student that attends Peabody (the Peabody website lists this year's RAs). I asked him some questions like what the dorm rooms look like, what buildings are called, etc. I got a lot of accurate information that I can put into the story without worrying that somebody from this school might read this book and call me out on all the things I made up.

My experience with research

You want to get your facts right. My story takes place in two real cities. I've been to London, so I used what I knew about it to write the story, but there were times I had to surf the internet to double check on something or learn something new. I've never been to Baltimore. I had to do a lot of research for that. I also researched Near Death Experiences to write the scene where the detective goes to Heaven. I read Dante's Inferno to model my Hell off his. And then there's all the little things. I have a scene where one characters digs up a grave. Are coffins really six feet under or is the hole six feet so that it's only three feet of dirt on top? What is the coffin placed in? I messed up some of the aspects of legal systems because I watch too much TV. I also did some research on British grammar and slang, but if you do this, make sure it sounds natural--don't put in slang for the sake of putting in slang. Watch some TV where people speak the dialect you're trying to write. That's the best way to get the language details down.