I will be the first to admit that I like research.I like reading up on all the little details. Whether it is finding out what people ate during the time frame I am setting my story in (or approximating as most historical things I do tend to be fantasy), what they wore, how they lived and what their buildings looked like both inside and out, I am there. I download blueprints of ancient castles. I lurk in library corners. Occasionally I even get sucked into articles (and movies) regarding real life art fraud and the historic availability of a specific paint color and the brush used to apply it.
The details fascinate me and details add to the story. This is even more true for characters. The more you know about them, the more you can create a fully realized person on the page. The more you can see them, the more you can understand how they think, the more real you can make them to your readers.
But it is also a trap.
The trap has two main pitfalls.
The first is that in developing your characters you may uncover more about them than the reader wants or needs to know. You may need to know about all the details of your character’s childhood in order to understand what they are thinking and how they are going to react to the situation you are putting them through, but not all of the details are needed for the actual page. It is very easy to bury people in minutia and lose the story.
Think of it like a work related cocktail party that you are sending your character to when introducing him to your readers. There he is, Bob, a new employee. He’s only worked at the company a week before the annual holiday party so he is still putting names to faces. Bob has taken his obligatory cup of punch (you can spike it or not a you see fit, it is your mental image) when Beth from accounting stops by.
“Hi Bob, having a good time?”
“I am, great party,” Bob replies.
“Thanks, we try to make an effort around the holidays, loosen up a bit , you know especially after all that end of year chaos.”
“It was rather crazy wasn’t it?”
“But at least it’s over for another year, right? So are you doing anything fun for the holidays?”
Okay, not the most scintillating of conversations I’ll grant you. But even though it is a party, it is a work party. Now, as the writer you may know that Bob had a pretty rough life before taking this position in a new town at a new job.
Bob lost his father to a rampaging wildebeest who escaped the zoo. Then his mother was abducted by aliens. The Aunts he lived with were slaughtered by an escaped mental patient. His high school was overrun by zombies and then just as he got his first job, slug monsters invaded his hometown. After defeating them Bob decided he needed a change, applied for a job far away, got it and moved hoping to live out the rest of his life in a nice and quiet way.
It is not easy being the character I use to throw ideas at. And trust me, any hopes of a quiet life will soon be dashed when he learns that the corporation he now works for is run by Demons who escaped and have no intention of leaving their earthly playground.
Poor Bob.
But that is his past and his future. And Beth from Accounting doesn’t need to know this, any of this, right now. In fact it would be really weird if he told her about this. He may think some of it. But chances are he is not going to be thinking about every debacle that has led him to this point in his life. so…
“…Bob are you doing anything for the holidays?” Beth asked.
Bob thought about the mostly healed left arm that still ached whenever rain was on the way and fought the urge to rub it with his good hand. “Just hoping for a few nice, quiet days to settle in and finish unpacking,” he said with what he hoped was a pleasant smile. ‘Please dear god just a few days of quiet,’ he silently begged as he took a sip of his overly sweet punch and listened to Beth’s upcoming invasion of in laws.
Now if Bob and Beth get to know each other better, maybe she will learn about some of his past trauma. Maybe she won’t. But the reader knows that Bob had something happen to him and that he wants a quiet life.
Congrats, we have successfully avoided the first pitfall of research; the data dump. As a warning though, this can happen not just with characters but with places and things. It can also happen with plot. I generally find flashbacks to be the place I tend to data dump. I’ll know something that I think is fantastic and worth every reader knowing, but can’t figure out how to work it into the plot, so I’ll use flashbacks. Ninety percent of the time, I end up cutting the flashbacks out of the final draft because I’ve used them as my data dump.
This leads us to the second pitfall of research. The delay. There have been many times, and many stories that I have begun researching and yet never written. They languish in the depths of my electronic storage, and in more notebooks than I can count. I will research and then get stuck because there is one point I can’t figure out, or one thing I can’t see. Sometimes my research means that my story is simply not going to work the way I have it in my head. And so I set it aside and move on to something else.
More often, I am just enjoying the research and just want to keep going with the research instead of switching to writing. Sometimes I think, this is my main character and I really need to figure out a few more things about him before I start writing.
At some point, even if you don’t know what brand of shoes he likes, what his favorite meal is or have no hint of what his long term goals are, you are just going to have to start writing.
That is simply that.
Now, some of those details you can’t see are not going to be important, but some of them are. It will depend on the story you are writing and how you write it. His favorite brand of shoes might just be a grounding detail that illustrates his personality or it could be a major point. It could also be completely irrelevant.
John was never seen without his hand stitched italian leather shoes, even on his days off.
Doug wore his blue converse high tops until the blue was more of a remembrance than a description and when his big toe wore a hole through the bottom he exchanged them for a fresh pair he had waiting in his closet.
Now in this case, the shoe detail tells you a little bit more about the two men. But maybe you aren’t certain what type of shoes John likes. Perhaps you want a specific brand. Maybe it is Ferragamos, maybe it isn’t. Maybe you need more time to figure that out. Maybe it really doesn’t matter. if you need to know (for whatever reason), that’s fine. Mark Italian leather shoes, highlight it, underline, it circle it, whatever you do, mark it as a place you want to go back to and add more details later.
Don’t stop writing just because at that moment you don’t know what those shoes are. Don’t delay leaving research land until you figure it out either or you will never get started. Mark it NMI (Need more information) and keep moving.
In addition to marking it down and moving, I have two tricks I like to use. The first is the five item list. For each of the characters I take a piece of paper and write down five things I have to keep in mind about that character as I start to write. Sometimes these are one word notes, other times sentences. Mostly they fall somewhere in between.
- family all dead – different traumas for each – mauling, aliens, psycho killer, slug monster
- wants new quiet life.
- injury left arm, healed but pains when rains
- brown hair and eyes with small scar above upper lip on left side.
- hates raisins
The list is clearly not a complete character sketch. And clearly I, as well as all of you at this point, know more about Bob then is on the page. But this is what I need to know at the moment. I do this for each of the characters as they are introduced. I generally start with a single page with each of these jotted down on the page. I then use a sticky tack to put them onto the wall where I can see them when I look up from the computer.
As the story continues and I add more things or think up more details I need to remember, I’ll add notes to the page. By the time I’m done, the typed bullet point list has been so scrawled over that it is practically unreadable. But I will know all of the important details about Bob and his merry band of demon fighting cohorts by the end of it as well. If there is something I need to know to proceed. I mark it down and then earmark an hour later to go and research that particular detail. I don’t just drop the story and bury myself back in research. Not if I actually want to finish writing anything.
This leads me to the second tool I use; the whiteboard. i keep a whiteboard within reach and when I need to take the time to look something up at a later point, to check dates or map references or word meanings, I mark it down on the whiteboard. Then just before I have my scheduled research time,I copy them down from the whiteboard, generally phrasing them as questions, erase the whiteboard and then spend my time researching and making notes in the notebook on each of the topics I had on the whiteboard. Having the list and the scheduled time lets me corrall my love of research and not get sucked into a loop.
Now on the board I may jot down something like…Henry the eighth – Charles the second – armor -clothes -hair?
While an excellent notation that takes only a few seconds of pausing while writing, if taken on a research hunt it could lead me to hours of researching body armor, clothing options and hair styles while I try to figure out which of the time periods for these two gents my fictional aristocrats need to be modeled after.
when I put it in my notebook I will write down: What does Sir Duncan wear into battle? what does he wear to court and what does his hair look like?
These more concrete sentences let me think of my character Sir Duncan (I figured Bob needed a break) and and I can quickly flip through pictures until I see something I want him to wear. It’s a bit like online shopping without the bill.
Once I see something for Sir Duncan at war I make notes, then look at the court clothing from that era as well as the hairstyles and a few notes. Was pomade used? Did everyone go for long hair and ringlets. Were there wigs or not? The benefit is that once I see Sir Duncan outfitted and coiffed, I generally know how everyone else looks. They will either be dressed like Sir Duncan or richer or poorer than Sir Duncan. i will also know the era I want so that if I have a butcher or a baker pop up unexpectedly in Chapter twenty six, I know what era to check out for their images.
Research is a necessary part of writing. It can be fun but it can also be a trap. Just remember, just as you go back and edit your story for punctuation and spelling, along with all of the other reasons for editing, you can also go back and add in those details. If you want your character to wear red shoes but you can’t quite see them mark it and go back. If it becomes a running theme then next time he wears them mark down SAME RED SHOES as your description and adjust all of the mention of the red shoes once you figure it out. You can easily research forever. But if you do, your story will never be written. And in the end actually telling the story is the point.
Ten til Midnight 