On Friday the Thirteenth and Doing Research

They say it’s a bad time to do anything today because it’s Friday the thirteenth.

On this very date in 1307, King Philip of France rounded up the Knight’s Templar in an attempt to steal their money and break up their power base by making them look like Satan worshiping sodomites.

Funny, this reminds me of my article from last week. Accuse people of bad things and the sting never quite goes away. Even after 700 years.

Curiously, one of the great mysteries of history is what happened to all the Templar money. King Philip never did get hold of very much and he died about a year later, apparently cursed by the Templar’s head honcho, Jacques de Molay, during his grizzly execution.

Enough general knowledge, this week I promised you (and myself) I would make this article about writing, so I won’t bore you with all the silly (Jason) stuff associated with this date. Instead, let’s talk about research, truth, and its relationship to fiction writing.

People often ask me how much research they should do for their stories.

My first reflex is usually to say: None.

The whole research thing is a trap for writers. When it appears necessary, it’s a delay tactic for people who think that with enough research the writing will get easier. This is never true. If anything, research makes things harder because you have to accommodate veracity when a hearty dose of fiction will usually do just as well.

I remember putting off a writing project for over five years because I was convinced I needed to do more research. More being the operative word because it was Thomas More I thought I needed to know more about! True, I did use some of the information I gleaned from reading his biographies but really not enough to justify five years of my time, endless trips to the library (to research the bubonic plague - this was before the internet) and asking relatives to buy me specific books about Tudor England for birthday and Christmas presents. Waste of time really.

Stephen King was congratulated by many inmates and wardens for his accurate portrayal of prison life in The Green Mile. How much research did he do? You guessed it. None.

The human mind has a way of imagining exactly what the reality must be.
I often look things up as I’m going along these days, just to confirm facts, geographical locations, plane times, that kind of thing. But it’s easy to get obsessed. Really, at the end of the day, how accurate does fiction have to be?

Some authors travel to the destinations in their books, just to get the feel of a place and to know that their descriptions are authentic. But as Hemingway used to say, the better you know a place, the less you need to describe it. Somehow the reader senses you know more but doesn’t expect you to write it all down.

Plus, too much truth and fiction starts to become unbelievable. It’s a strange phenomenon that permeates the literary genre. Truth will get in the way of a good story. Don’t get sucked in to the idea that because it really happened, that will make it believable. Often the opposite is true.  

These days I tend to do research after the first draft of a book, whether fiction or non fiction. When I have a compelling premise in my mind I find that research can ruin a good idea, or at least remove some of the impetus to continue.

Best to get all of your ideas, the flow and the right-brain artistic sweep of the premise down before you mess up your head with all that left-brain fact, filler, and logic.

As I say, research is a delay tactic. It’s dry and feels productive when it’s not. Basically it’s a waste of creative energy. And that’s a sin. Better to write well and make mistakes than to be factual and dull.

Also people ask me, how true does my fiction have to be?

Depends on the genre.

Thrillers tend to need more accurate portrayals of places, weapons, and technology because the readers of these books like it that way. Romances, mysteries, even horror, can gloss over the real world and, to a certain extent, glamorize things beyond recognition. Of course in fantasy, nothing needs to be real, except your belief in it.

Our memory is unreliable. I’ve gone back to places I’ve written about and, because I wasn’t in the same head-space, I see the location differently, and not in a good way.

I enjoy being in that weird fictional reality where everything is bright and significant because that’s the easiest place to write in. Sometimes reality is not very conducive to being artistic. I read this recently: Artists are meant to improve on reality to make our lives - and the lives of our readers - more bearable. Fun even.

Reality is dull, often unpleasant, and not very inspiring.

That’s why we feel sorry for people who don’t read. Because readers are privy to a whole set of worlds inside their heads that are special beyond words.  

Thanks for reading. Let’s hope this article is not cursed with paraskavedekatriaphobia. (That’s fear of Friday the thirteenth.)

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy