Research When Writing: How Much Is Required?

 I just finished reading an article from a published writer who says that he spends ten times as much time researching for a book he is writing as he does writing it. In his case, he confessed that it didn’t matter whether he was writing fiction or non-fiction.

In my own experience, I believe that the amount of research required depends on the topic you are writing on, your style of writing and the end result that you are looking for. I have written a book of poetry, for example, that didn’t take any research at all.

I simply wrote the poems, organized them, wrote a quick introduction and obligatory ‘Thank You’ page for being alive and well enough off to spend enough time to make my poems readable and hopefully understood. Of course, there were hours and hours of re-writes and revisions, but that the subject matter for another article.

I also wrote a fictional tale of dancing aliens for my soon-to-be eighteen-years-old daughter. That one probably could have benefited from additional research, but, because it was made for a pre-teen, at the time, and because the emphasis was on the experiences and not the mechanics of robotic alien life forms, I got away with it.

The same was not true, however, for my series of stories on the life-saving antics of the teen-age adorable potato bug named Rolando. I spent hours tops at the library and online reviewing where these little ‘rolly pollies’ lived, what they ate and how they interacted with each other. I also spent hours observing their behaviors ‘in the wild’ – or in this case, in my front yard by the sidewalk and by the front door steps under some watermelon-sized rocks.

Some of the most important research begins early on in the writing process. Once you decide on what you’re going to write about, and who your audience will be, the next critical step is to research your topic to make sure that what you want to do hasn’t been done before.

A good writer doesn’t take research for granted. All it takes is one miss-cue to become what readers classify as an unreliable author and put one’s writing career in serious jeopardy.