Craft Chat: Researching Your Fiction

I'm deep in the muck of a new manuscript. I KNOW my protagonist and, on my best days, really hear his voice in my head. The imaginary people and places splash onto the page sometimes faster than I can type. What gets me stuck? FACTS!

I discovered when I was writing THE SOUND OF LETTING GO that there was a LOT I didn't know about trumpets, Youth Orchestras, and especially autism. To write the best work of FICTION I could manage, I needed information to be sure my scenarios were plausible, my characterizations and descriptions authentic. What did I do?

• PRIMARY RESEARCH: Sought out and interviewed teen trumpet prodigies, psychiatrists and psychologists who treated people with autism in residential settings, parents and siblings of teens on the low-functioning end of the autism spectrum.
• READING: I read non-fiction books about autism, musical prodigies, family therapy strategies. I read fiction about and by folks on the autism spectrum.
• ONLINE EXPLORATION: I scoured the Autism Speaks and Autism Society websites, connected with some amazing people, including the director of the Sibling Support Project.
• VERIFICATION: I had my manuscript vetted by readers who worked in the autism field to make sure my finished product held up.

In the service of my new w-I-p, I am now interviewing police officers, and reading a lot about all kinds of things (secret for now). Although it takes time and effort, in the end, having a solid grasp of the facts frees me to write my very best fiction.

For a wonderful and poetic musing on this topic, check out Caroline Starr Rose's ODE TO A RESEARCH NOTEBOOK here!

Back to Business: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I recently came up against one of those books-in-the-pipeline deadlines that is sometimes overlooked: the ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Acknowledgements are kind of the midlist author's OSCAR speech: The sole public opportunity to thank those who have gotten you to this point (and don't you dare forget to mention your spouse). Thus, for those of us who watch the Oscars, Tony's, etc., and score acceptance speeches (okay, I'm weird), this opportunity comes with a special set of perilous questions.

• Do you thank your parents in every book?
• Your mother-in-law?
• What about the in-house folks who worked on your book whose names you've never been told?

In the case of THE SOUND OF LETTING GO, I did so much research for this book, including interviewing a lot of families with developmentally disabled members. But, because the story simmered a long time before becoming a novel, I did not always ask specific permission to name them in acknowledgements. As I began writing the manuscript in earnest, I heard relevant stories from teenagers at writing workshops about entirely different topics. I encountered people in the publishing industry who were excited because they were familiar with the family dynamic I was describing. Folks waiting for tables at restaurant bars. People who work for developmental disability organizations BECAUSE they have personally experienced such challenges. I even interviewed mental health workers who had been involved in controversial situations with respect to treatment of developmentally disabled young adults. I wanted to present the MOST FACTUALLY ACCURATE FICTION that I could.

So, do I double back and beg permissions? Haven't I asked enough of some people already? Do I want to mention those who shared information but whose positions do not entirely coincide with my own? Do I include a bibliography of all the books I read to research this novel?

Seriously, where do you draw the line?

Shopping? Hah!

Nope.  Writing.  And researching. 

I've got a couple layers of what I call texturing that I'd like to add to my new ms and I want to make sure they have the ring of authenticity.  So, after a couple of hours of writing, I hit the books.  Yeah, I know I write fiction but research is still critical to make sure the world I am writing about feels as real as it can be--that every reference, metaphor, allusion made by my characters is done in the vocabulary of their environment, informed by their interests.

In the last couple of years, I feel that my understanding of and process for revision has really evolved.  And research has been a part of this development.  The more I feel that I know what my characters know (not just about feelings or backstory, but about actual things--sports, hobbies, foods, television shows, whatever), the better I feel I can represent them on the page.

It's a time consuming step, but sometimes research can really shake a creative knot loose, too.

How do you fit research into your creative writing and/or revision process?