Yes That Really Happened - Tumblr Posts

Writing Tips Pt. 13 - Research

Do Research.

No, seriously. Make sure you do research for your story, whether it's original fiction or fanfiction. This doesn't have to be college-level research, with interviews and experiments and hours upon hours spent combing through the stacks at the library to find every last blessed detail about a thing. But a little Googling can be your friend in this regard.

Researching for original fiction? You might have a character with a medical background and need to know terms or procedures in a hospital setting, or what the difference between a stent and a catheter are. Or your character might be a bodybuilder and so you'll need a passing idea of workout regimens to get the right level of bulk, and what sort of food they eat. Or your character might be a serial killer, and you'll want to know basic anatomy and also what the consistency of blood is or what a burning body smells like. Or you might be writing a fantasy story with characters traveling across the kingdom by horse, and you need to make sure you don't overwork the horse and that you know the basics of camping without modern luxuries like flashlights and RVs and matches.

Many of these things aren't going to be something you just know off-hand (unless you're a major trivia buff, but even then...). A little research can help add that bit of verisimilitude for when someone who actually knows that information then reads your story. The last thing you need is a medical student dropping your book and screaming "a stent doesn't go there!"

And if you're writing fanfiction? It's important to know details about the world you're writing in and the characters you're using. Something as simple as reading the wiki entries for your fandom can help you make sure you don't write someone out of character or forget an important detail about the setting. I've seen stories forget what species a non-human character is, spell a character's name or other terms wrong repeatedly, get the wrong relationships between characters, or make a given special power capable of feats it can't manage normally.

Just as misinformation about real-world topics will bother readers who notice them, so will fandom misinformation bother the fans who spot the incorrect details. Just a little research can go a long way to avoiding this problem.