I had an interesting question at my recent talk: How do you know how much research to do when you’re putting your setting into place?
If you’ve been writing for a while (or if you’re just interested in learning), you know what a rabbit hole research can be! You start out trying to find what types of buildings are found on a certain street in the city you’re using for your story–and you find yourself, three hours later, reading about the mating habits of the common tern.
Knowing how much (or how little) research to do for a story is largely a matter of experience For a novice, research is a priority–you must know everything about your characters, your setting, & anything else that you have mentioned in passing during the tale. This can result in a huge “Bible” of information that will probably never see the light of day (if you’re writing your story correctly, that is), which is a waste of your time unless you are writing a series in which you may use more information in a later story.
The trick to research is to dribble in just enough information to set the scene properly, not dump the whole thing in at once. This means, of course, that most of your information will probably never be used in your stories–and that’s OK because you will know it, and that will make your storytelling richer and more in depth. So the answer to that lady’s question is: you do just enough research to get by without getting sucked into the never-ending rabbit hole that is Google (or whatever search engine you use).
