Writing Blog Number 2

20240712 Contemporary Research For Writers

Contemporary Research For Writers

I have brought this up in passing before, but read an interesting discussion on it on Discord, which I had to throw my 2 cents’ worth into, and that inspired this blog post.

So, this will cover three things – why research, where to research and how to research.


Why Research?
In the old days, writers would make up all manner of things about other places because everything not European or North American was seen as exotic and strange and no-one went there. So you just make things up about “Deep Africa”, “the jungles of South America”, “the exotic East”, “Outback Australia”, whatever.
         Nowadays, people travel. People go everywhere. And if they don’t, the Internet is there. A story that has a contemporary edge, is set in our world in this day and age, needs to avoid the tropes and stereotypes of setting, of people, of culture, of anything else that was in a lot of fiction prior to the 1970s.
         Books are sold all over the world and people have travelled all over the world. If you make stuff up, a number of your audience is going to know. This is going to do 3 things:
                   1) make it look like you don’t care about accuracy;
                   2) make you appear like a lazy writer; &/or
                   3) make people not take what you write seriously.
None of these are good outcomes for you.
         Then there are assumptions created by pop culture or general “knowledge”. I’ve used this example before, but because Australia looks small on maps and is so far away and has a population of only 30 million, it must be small. Australia is as large as the contiguous 48 US states. An author I read had a horse ride from Melbourne to Adelaide take a night. By car, on sealed roads, it’s 450 miles (725 km), and takes 8 hours. Never assume. Research.
         Take your writing seriously.


Where To Research?
Okay, five years ago I would have said Google, Bing, those search engines. But in the past 18 months the AI component that has infiltrated all search engines, and the fact they are scraping Reddit predominantly for knowledge, means I would suggest do not trust them for accurate answers. Opinions are put forth as facts and get higher SEO status than reality. Having said that, Google Maps is a wonderful resource. You need to go to actual websites that you know and trust. Wikipedia is curated by “regular” people, and so the information there is also dodgy, but the footnotes could be a good place to start. Anyway, where do we go?
         Websites marked “.gov” or “.edu” are a good place to start. While there may be political agendas all over them, the information, by legislation in most countries (Australia and the UK I know for sure; I am guessing the USA as some places have had their “.edu” removed) has to be formally accurate. Great for historical information and current geography.
         If science, journals are important, but, well… it is way too long to include here. Fortunately, here is an explanation of deciding if science is real that I prepared earlier:

The Trouble With Science  (ASR) Essay about how to work out the reality of science.

But, tl;dr is – be skeptical.
         Media can be okay, but you need to find trustworthy. In Australia, if the media prints a falsehood, they can be fined. Broadcast media is a little looser, because of the fact some news comes from overseas. The government is currently looking at regulating information on social media as well, but I would not trust any socials as far as I could spit them. In the USA, there is no such regulation; media can print lies and it’s called “freedom.” Here’s a fun fact: In the USA The National Enquirer is considered a news magazine; in Australia it is classified a fictional publication. The UK has poor print media regulation, but stricter broadcast media. In media, I only trust the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as sources.
         So, where do I go to research? Get ready for this. Maybe you’ve heard of them: books! Okay, slightly simplistic. I look for books printed before 2010 when the Internet became a dominant research tool. Some, you need to be later, but for general research, older books work for me.
         Next, is people. I wrote a story set in the UK, so a series of emails went back and forth between me and a fellow writer I’d “met” online who lives in Leeds, and she was fantastic. I have helped people with facts about Australia (and was used by a publisher in the 2010s as a fact-checker on this large country).
         Finally, is going there yourself. Yes, this can be expensive, but if you are writing about your own area, don’t trust your memory, go for a visit. I spent two days staying at a small local town that a recent novel was set within to remind myself of where everything was.
         And always remember: opinions are not facts!
         So, choose your research facilities wisely.


How To Research?
This is covered in the previous section as well, but in addition, I will add one more thing:
         Take notes!
         Write it down; do not rely on memory. I am a pantser, and yet for my current WiP novel, I have three pages of hand-written notes about the Mediterranean and travel around it in the 1920s. Keep referring to the notes. Keep adding to them as you find/need more information. You never know what you are going to need.
         I would also suggest for some things that might be controversial, get two sources. Make sure they don’t do circular referencing – boy! has that become more common recently! – and just confirm things by one another. Conspiracy theorists tend to lie about certain aspects or to cherry-pick their information, and they have infiltrated mainstream media because the Internet is just the worst place ever. So, if researching something to find the truth of a claim, you will need to look further afield.


And that is my opinion about research in this day and age of too much misinformation. I fully expect people here to reject what I have written because it goes against current prevailing attitudes, but that is their right.

Good luck!