What research do books need?

My daughter writes in a world in which what a great many people think about actually becomes true... vampires exist because there are so many books tv shows about vampires. As a result one of her vampire characters' greatest fear is that he will start to sparkle. :)

Because of this setting she has to build timelines charting pop-culture trends. Probably not what people picture the average fantasy author to be researching.

Most of my research is a little less unexpected: I read a huge thick biography of Daniel Boone not too long ago, because after I finish the EFP epic, my husband has requested that I write 'that one set in Ohio'. A story set in a fantasy-alternate history setting featuring a young half-breed whittler-mage who has declared his own personal war on the whiskey trade.

Or when I whimsically decided to make outlines for some of the Asian drama inspired stories in my head the other day, I found myself doing google searches on modern economics, and organized crime.

What about the rest of you? What do you find yourself looking up, and where do you like to go to find it?

For the readers, what books have you read that you think did a good job of researching something?

Or what do you find yourself wishing more authors bothered to research?

having written mainly humorous fantasy so far, I feel that I am asking my readers to suspend belief through the very nature of the genre. If you're that worried about scientific accuracy you won't be reading my books in the first place. Having said that, writing about my characters travelling back to the Roman invasion of Britain, I did actually research the early days of the invasion to ensure some historical accuracy with regard to generals, battles and places.
Luckily, having studied history and the social sciences plus a bit of mathematics and science over many years to degree level as a hobby, I feel that I at least know when I should research something (then again, as the man said, 'we don't know what we don't know' or something similar).
I also tend to be uncritical of other writers over this matter unless they are claiming their 'beliefs' (religious or political) as truth, an approach I have even (or especially) found in academic writing.

As a reader I want authors to research all the details they specify: If you put your characters on a boat, then be precise, know what sort of boat it is and to invoke the correct and matching details. You don't need to be explicit, your characters might not know, and I don't want to read all the details you've researched, but you need to know so that any details you do add are correct. If they're crossing the lake they won't be on a three-masted basque, but there are specific designs that fit that purpose. Ditto bridles. Ditto areoplanes. Everything has gone through design evolution to achieve very specific aims, and it matters that it's correct. It matters most if it's something I know about of course, because then I recognise it's wrong, but you can assume with enough readership your readers know everything!

Some this may be interesting to place on author websites.

If your characters are time-travelling or set in known history this is vital.

For the things that are suspensions of disbelief you need to think about what real causes underly them and to understand those properly.

Yes it's a lot of work, that's the difference between ok, good and amazing.

Readers vary as to how much detail they enjoy. I like the advice that you need a few key details to prove you know something about it, but then leave it at that. I dont need to practice with a sword myself to write a sword fight, but itll help my story be more convincing if my characters use a rapier and a broadsword differently.

>2 Denscott:
Based on your plot synopsis I agree that scientific accuracy wouldn't be something that we are looking for. :)

But scientific accuracy isn't what my daughter is going for when she makes her pop-culture timelines, either. So you never know.

I do agree its the stuff that you don't know that you don't know that gets you. There's this one regency romance author who blithely assumes that whist is a game very similar to poker. Her assumptions about every other gambling game from the period are equally wrong. It's not like the regency period is so far back that the rules to these games have been forgotten: she could just look them up, but apparently it has never occurred to her to do so.

But I just finished fixing as bad a error in my own works, by not quite understanding how a spinning wheel actually worked (I've never used one) and so totally mucking up the bit where my weaver heroine and her companions were dealing with a broken spinning wheel. Luckily for me, one of my betareaders caught my mistake.

But maybe someone's casual comment about hunting or cows or who-knows-what-else will someday come back to haunt me. :(

When you needed to research the Roman invasion of Britain, how did you go about it?
(Me, I tend to check a big fat book out of the library, and read it, and then later look up any specific details I have forgotten online as I discover I need them.)

>3 reading_fox: "Some this may be interesting to place on author websites."
I agree. If you write stories that require a lot of information about sailing ships, or submarines or whatever it would be cool to see that information on your website.

I will confess that I don't plan to do this myself though. Most of my research tends to be a bit diffuse. I have reading lists of twenty or more non-fiction books that I've read per story written, usually, but only rarely more than two books on the same topic.

Oh, wait, actually that's not true. I have been keeping my notes on the wildlife of Ohio on my website, complete with a quiz program.

"If your characters are time-travelling or set in known history this is vital."
Am I allowed to admit that it is easier for me to forgive the occasional historic blunder, than it is for me to forgive blatantly non-historic viewpoints in supposedly historic characters?

Or how would you feel about a man going back in time to the medieval period, and taking on a whole houseful of maids, which he then treats in a civilized non-primitive fashion, by teaching them to read (I'm all for that) and other wise educates for most of their day, and also sees that they shower daily and also go out jogging because exercise is an important part of a healthy lifestyle?

>4 Cecrow: "I dont need to practice with a sword myself to write a sword fight

I had a writing mentor who used to go expound on the stupidity of people who insist that writers should experience everything for themselves. "If your character has killed someone, you shouldn't kill someone just so you know what its like, and if they fall off a building, you shouldn't throw yourself off a building either. You have an imagination, what do you think it's FOR?"
:)

The telling detail thingy is an interesting trick.
One of my constant struggles is that I hate things that are over-explained or over-described, and so I have a tendency to under-explain and under-describe. It would be cool if I could figure out a way to know when I should be explaining or describing other than having my betareaders complain about it.

Have you ever come up with a more specific guideline for that, or do you just go on instinct?

Having reflected further on this issue i have come to certain conclusions;

1) My general view coincides with that of Cecrow, if I'm reading an adventure story and someone gets into a fast car I don't need two pages explaining the type and workings of the engine, if that's included I'd probably just skim through it. If I wanted to know about the workings of car engines I'd read a manual.

2) In reply to reading_fox, when talking about suspending disbelief I have been slightly hypocritical. I must admit that with regard to your issue about the boat, I take a similar view about fiction involving UK law enforcement, having a long history in that field. I must admit that with probably 90% plus of UK police thrillers that I read or watch (when I do) I sit there thinking this is rubbish they would never do it like that. Usually the author seems to be writing from the general public's view of how these things might be done, rather than with any expert knowledge (laziness?). Again, as with any fiction there has to be some suspension of belief in order to enjoy what may well be a good story; pages describing procedure don't make for exciting fiction.

3) LShelby, I researched my information about the Roman invasion through the internet. Bear in mind that my book was written in a very light-hearted vein. Also, history of all periods tends to be my strongest interest since school days, were I writing something more serious (which I may do one day) I would certainly research and reference it properly. With regard to your points about over-explaining, I feel that I am aware of a tendency to over-explain myself and perhaps over-compensate the other way in my fiction to avoid this. These are definitely issues I shall consider more carefully in the future.

I began reading Victoria Holt books in high school. That's when my love for writing began to take root. I loved the books. They were always set in the 19th or 18th centuries. The only thing I hated about them was the amount of detail the author used to describe a scene or a room. Sometimes, the author wrote 2 or 3 pages to describe one room. I learned not to do that. In my first book, The Lebensborn Experiment, I limited my description. However, in book II, The Lebensborn Alliance, I wrote more description. It was important to me to let the reader get the sense of, for instance, how black people dress on Easter Sunday. So I described in some detail, what the main characters wore, and where they sat in the church in relation to each other.

That's the thing about writing historical novels. To give the reader a sense of the time period, you have to describe what people wore, and how they talk and behave. That, to me, is the essence of a historical novel--to show how people lived back when. Today, many people dress casually when they go to church. Women today even wear pants. That was unheard of in the 1950s. If I was writing a church scene in the present day, I probably wouldn't have described things so vividly.

So there needs to be a balance. And it depends on what kind of novel it is. Romance novels also tend to lend themselves to more description when it comes to certain scenes. For example, when the two main characters first meet, etc.

Research is, therefore, very important in historical novels. But in other books, as well. An author has to understand what they are writing about. I think you have to know the mechanics of a subject even when you don't write about it in detail. When you understand the height, breadth, and width of a subject, it enables the reader to find truth in what you're saying and believe in your story.

>6 Denscott: that's exactly what I mean. BUT just because it doesn't make the final manuscript doesn't mean you don't need to do the research. No-one needs to know the details of fast car engines. But doing the research means you then don't need to have the characters wrestling the wheel and fighting the gear changes, because in reality modern fast cars drive just like normal ones do and carry on doing so at much higher speeds. The Police Procedural is an interesting challenge because the style requires a lot more detail into the investigative workings to produce the drama, but as you say real police work isn't drama. I'm not sure how well a police procedural crime novel could be written whilst staying realistic. I always get aggrieved at the non-police 'hero' being given inside information as the investigation progresses.

>5 LShelby: I don't like time-travel stories much at all. "Or how would you feel about a man going back in time to the medieval period, and taking on a whole houseful of maids, which he then treats in a civilized non-primitive fashion, by teaching them to read (I'm all for that) and other wise educates for most of their day, and also sees that they shower daily and also go out jogging because exercise is an important part of a healthy lifestyle?" would only work by clear contrasts of the modern traveler's expectations vs the current correct living conditions of the period. The maids wouldn't accept his word for it though would do as they were told.

As purely a reader, I know when I find the balance between detail and research to be wrong. I'm just glad I don't have to tread that grey line myself. And of course all readers put the line in a different place.

>7 Joyce1915:
About your point two, the reality of point two always intimidates me. As a builder of entire worlds, I feel I need to know so much stuff already, researching any one specific field in such depth that I would not be continually jarring an insider is a daunting prospect, when would I ever find the time?

Fortunately, I mostly write about settings that none of my readers will be that familiar with. (But this doesn't prevent errors like the spinning wheel from occasionally creeping past me.) :(

>8 reading_fox:
See that business of spending paragraphs just explaining the layout of a room or whatever has always been something I didn't enjoy as a reader. The book I just handed over to my editor has one describy-layout bit in it, that I couldn't like, but never came up with a fix for. So I just left it untouched, but if I could come up with something better...

A piece of advice I received from a mentor was that if that much description is necessary, include the reasons its important along with the description. So, in the case of who is sitting next to who at church on Sunday, you take that opportunity to explain the inter-familial allegiances and rivalries that are behind those placements.

In my case I am describing a battlefield from above, while working within a viewpoint with no background whatsoever in military or tactics. Maybe I should just be discarding my desire to make things clear to the readers. Why do they need to understand when the viewpoint character doesn't?

>9 LShelby:
When I was confronted with the scenario that I described, I thought it was evidence of the writer who proposed it having no clue just how labor intensive housework is in a non-technologically advanced society, nor the mindset of the historical characters, but maybe I just think too much of my own grasp these topics, and his setup wasn't as implausible as it looked to me. ::rueful::

I'm not that into time travel stories much myself.

I remember reading one where the historical researcher was so delighted by discovering historical facts that wouldn't have been known without time travel, and I was thrown out of the story hard as my brain immediately wanted to know how the author had discovered these non-available to anyone but time traveler 'facts' in order to include them in the book.

>8 reading_fox: Your mentor was right about including why the description is necessary. That is exactly the approach I took in describing the church scene. Of course, you don't spell out to the reader the WHY. You let the reader discover the WHY for themselves by how you write the scene. All through that church scene, there were several different dialogs going on between the main characters that reveal the rivalries between them, and the extent of their jealousy. The reader is inside the character's heads as well as seeing the look on their faces. Where they sat was according to their hierarchy in the church, real or perceived. Out-dressing each other is also important in the black church. So describing what the main characters wore was essential. This is what makes a detailed description worth writing, and for the reader, worth reading.

>9 LShelby: I described a military scene in my first book. I had no knowledge of what that would entail, so I bought a book about WWII and saw how the author described the confrontations. It gave me a sense of battle formations and what military language to use. After reading about three, I was able to create my own. I kept the scene short, though. Since the focus of my book wasn't really about fighting the war, I didn't need to write pages and pages of battle scenes. I just needed to give the reader a taste of the war, not a complete saga which is a perfect example of balance.

>11 Joyce1915:
This makes sense, but the writers of those books were knowledgeable about battles. My first person viewpoint character is not. Therefore it would be highly unrealistic for her to be able to describe a battle in the way that an author of books about war would. As long as I am in her viewpoint, I can only describe what she would perceive and explain what she is capable of explaining.

My current attempt has a lot of layout, there are these people over here and those people over there. These are things that she would be able to see, but she doesn't understand much of what any of it means. If I describe it in enough detail, the reader might be able to figure it out for themselves, but is that really what I want to achieve? The urgency and the excitement of the moment might be getting drowned out in the particulars.

I'm thinking that I let the opportunity of such an excellent view of the action lure me away from what I should have been concentrating on, which is my protagonist's reaction. She isn't going to be mentally charting where everyone is. She is going to be looking for the one person she cares about. The focus of the description should be on that, and since the reader will also hopefully care about that person, they will share in her urgency and concern.

At least, that's my current theory. ::rueful::

>12 LShelby: That's a good theory. Write it the way you feel it should be, and don't second guess yourself, or you'll never complete your novel. You have to be confident in your own instincts. When I found that I had written a paragraph that I wasn't sure was quite right. I asked a friend who is also a writer to read it. I emailed the paragraph to her with several questions I wanted her to answer to see if what I had written had accomplished what I wanted to convey in the best way possible. You may want to do that. It really helped me.

As a writer: I have spent hours at a time researching things that I had absolutely no knowledge of (specifically recall searching, and then asking on Facebook, the effects of Ecstasy and what drug withdrawal would look like). (Also spent forever searching online for the perfect type of bus for a specific story.) Things I'm generally familiar with I don't do much research, but if I don't have first-hand experience I'll normally ask someone who does to look it over after it's written.

As a reader:
>3 reading_fox: As a reader I want authors to research all the details they specify: If you put your characters on a boat, then be precise, know what sort of boat it is and to invoke the correct and matching details.

Very much agree with this. There is, of course, such thing as too much research and too many details that aren't really important to the plot. But writing about something, anything, should require some basic knowledge and basic research by the author. At least enough so readers don't immediately recognize that the author has no clue what they are writing!

The 'wishing more authors would research' in the first post is what actually got me to respond here. My *biggest* book-related pet peeve is when authors try to write about a sensitive/controversial topic (usually to try to 'connect' with the readers or something) and it's blatantly obvious to anyone with experience of that topic that the author really didn't do much in-depth research at all. I have read plenty of YA novels about characters with different mental illnesses, for example, and sometimes it feels like the author is really just echoing stereotypes instead of what real people actually experience. (... Books where a depressed teen never smiles or has any kind of positive feelings, and when they eventually do it means they are cured/recovered/etc...)

>14 Heather19: "about characters with different mental illnesses"

So, um, to cast a dissenting vote...

If one has a character who must be handled with kid gloves or he commits suicide, then obviously he is mentally ill. But why do I have to do research? I already know how he responds to things. All that researching would accomplish is give me a label to hang on him.

>15 LShelby: True, I can see that. If you are simply writing a character who is 'fragile' or 'has some undefined illness', then you are probably right. What I mean is when the entire book is focused on a *specific* mental illness, including things like diagnosing/therapy/etc, but only actually shows the character in the focus of certain stereotypes without showing the details/processes of how this *specific* character thinks/feels/is affected by etc.

Specific example: Character is diagnosed with Depression. Character has no unique personality beyond sad/no energy/worthlessness feelings/thoughts. There is never shown any instances of Character enjoying anything, laughing or truly enjoying anything, *until* the breakthrough-moment where they do, and then everyone around is so relieved because Character is getting better!

That's just not how Depression is experienced by most people, and if there is nothing within the book to show that this Character is maybe experiencing it in a different way than usual, and it's framed as 'you have A illness, this is how A illness is, and once B happens the A illness will go away'... It's just frustrating sometimes. I've dealt with Depression (and then Bipolar-depression) for most of my life, been in groups and settings where I'm constantly around people actually diagnosed with it, and it's just not that black and white. Having a good day doesn't mean you are cured or better or the worst is behind you. Having Depression doesn't mean you can *never* have random 'feeling better' moments while still being truly Depressed.
... Okay, going to stop ranting now, sorry about that.

>16 Heather19:
Go ahead and rant. The nice thing about a text medium for online communication is that if we don't feel like reading a rant today, we can easily skip it and come back later.

Besides you have a very true, very applicable point, that stretches far beyond mental illnesses. :)

Your complaint actually reminds me strongly of another complaint that I heard from another author about a main character who was described as a vegetarian, but then later in the book sat down to and thoroughly enjoyed a steak dinner. So what do these rants have in common? In my not at all humble opinion, they are all both examples of an author not really getting in a character's head very well.

In one case it led to a stereotyped character, and in another case it led to a character who was inconsistent. But in each case the character probable wasn't all that 'real' to the author. A character needs to be more than the sum of their labels.

So thinking about it, I guess authors who build their characters from the outside in really probably should do a lot of character specific research. Read case studies. Meet people with that trait, watch how they behave. Listen to them talk. That sort of thing.

Writers who work from the inside out are probably more likely to benefit from trying to understand more generally what makes people tick? ...I know I like reading books on behavioral science.