A few weeks ago I spent a long weekend in the mountains of Montana with some writer friends. There’s something about the isolation from everyday life and the uninterrupted concentration on our craft that always generates interesting conversation. This time the subject that came up was research. All of us write under the umbrella of Fantasy albeit in very different ways. My Gothic writing is technically Fantasy, but looks very different from my friend’s middle-grade and young-adult epic Fantasy, which in turn looks very different from our other friend’s very magical adult Fantasy.
One of the women asked, so how much do you research? And when do you research? It spawned an interesting conversation. Is there a right answer? I doubt it. It’s almost certainly highly subjective, like the craft of writing itself. But I’ll share what I’ve been learning about my own process.
For several years, a story has been growing in my mind. It’s an extensive (probably 12 books or so) Dark Fantasy series. I’ve worked on it off and on since before I left the corporate world. Within the next one to two years, I hope to begin writing it. In the meantime, I’ve been writing stand-alone Gothic novels and am planning a Gothic trilogy that I should be able to start writing in January of 2022. All that to say that my research process differs substantially when it comes to these different types of writing. However, I’ve identified some commonalities across all of them.
Before I honed my research process, it looked something like this: I would pull out all of the world-building books, templates and websites. Then I would spend hours laboring over every element of the society – the history and political structures, the economic system of trade and industry, the religious beliefs, the magic system, etc. I realized that I had a problem when, one afternoon, it dawned on me that I had spent at least an hour or two reading articles about castrating male chickens.
There are no chickens in any of my books.
This happens to me (and maybe to you?) because I love research. I love to read. It’s part and parcel of the writer mind. We love to know how things work, where things came from, and what they mean. We like to layer our own symbolism on top of the research and use it to inspire readers. That’s great. But, in my case, it has the tendency to lead me down rabbit holes that, despite how interesting the poultry industry might be, can be a huge waste of time.
Since that eye-opening incident, I’ve developed a different process. I’m sure it will shift and develop over time, but this is what currently works for me.
Up Front/ Before the 1st Draft
In order to write a first draft, I need to know enough about the world of my characters so that the plot I write is complete. When I’m writing something Gothic that takes place in a real-world historical period, I need to understand the state of the world at that point. What were the stresses for the people in my characters’ shoes? Was there a looming regional/global conflict? A change in the power structure? Financial uncertainty?
If I’m writing something more speculative like epic or dark Fantasy, I need to know the big things: the current politics, the history of the people, the development of the culture(s), the magic system. But I probably only need to know these at a fairly high level. What qualifies as “high level” is a particularly subjective thing, but the key I ask myself is: what do I absolutely have to know in order to write a solid first draft?
You can probably see that I’ve restricted myself to the global elements. The biggest things that determine how the people live and interact with one another and their different systems (magic, political, economic). Do I need to know exactly which types of carriages were used at that point in time? Do I need to know what a living room is called in Vienna in 1880? No, not yet. I wait on those things for two very important reasons that I’ll get to in a minute.
During the Re-Writing Period
After the first draft, I begin the re-writing process. This is my favorite part of writing. I love to re-write! To me it’s like working on the greatest jigsaw puzzle on the planet. All of the pieces are on the table, they just need to be re-worked, fashioned into something that awes the reader. I’m not talking about editing. I’m talking about re-structuring the novel where the bones are misaligned and layering in foreshadowing, several layers of symbolism, nuanced subtext and a compelling subplot or two (or more). This is where a good story idea becomes something truly compelling.
During this process, especially in the early part of the revisions, I might cut whole scenes and add in new ones. Or I might change the setting in a scene to make it more thematically relevant and to increase the tension. Despite the fact that I’m a planner, sometimes things don’t play out on the page the way that I envisioned while outlining. The last thing I want to have done is to have spent hours (or more) researching an element of the story that I decide to cut.
Or worse, to feel tempted to keep something in the book that really should be cut because of all of that time spent researching.
That’s why I wait to research the localized, smaller elements of the story until later. Instead, I leave a general comment or even a bracketed notation that reminds me to fill in the details later. That way, when I’ve decided to keep those parts of the book, I know I’m not spending endless hours researching something unnecessary. (Though, it pains me to use the words research and unnecessary in the same sentence.)
This process accomplishes one other crucial thing for me. It helps me to maintain momentum while I’m writing the first draft. If you’re an over-thinker, like I am, it can be hard to allow yourself to just write. To pour the story out and not worry about whether the subtext is perfect. To do that, I keep the research to the bare minimum until later. (I also set very do-able but aggressive daily word count goals. The kinds of goals that give me just enough room to create great scenes without any room for overthinking.)
As I said, this process will almost certainly change as I grow as a writer, but it’s the best method I’ve found to date. Could I spend hours/ days/ years building the most elaborate world system? Of course, but that’s the point. I don’t want to spend years doing so, even though it’s terribly enjoyable. I want to tell a great story, in a world that feels rich to the readers. And then move on to the next great story that’s dying to be told…in a world without emasculated chickens.
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