How to Do Research When Writing a Novel

Failure to research when writing a novel can be harmful to your story in some situations. If you write something that is inaccurate from a historical or technical standpoint, often there are going to be readers who pick up on your mistake.

This can result in either you looking sloppy as a writer or at worse could cause a reader to stop in the middle of the story.

In this article, I'll show you ways to do research for a novel that will help you long-term.

1) First of all, take the time to brainstorm areas of your story that may require or be enhanced with research.

Obviously there are going to be things you're already familiar with from experience, but research should be done in areas you're not sure about or have little experience. This will save you a lot of time and keep your focus where you need it.

2) Internet sources are not bad, but look at several and try to stick to authoritative sources.

If you're doing a story on space travel, surf around NASA's site to get ideas about little details that could help you. If it's a historical novel, visit several sites that are geared solely for that time period. I have nothing against Wikipedia or similar sites, but often they're more of a general source and may not have fine details. Part of creating a believable story are having those fine details.

3) Take a day and spend it at the library.

I like looking at books that don't even have an ISBN. The people who know most about historical periods are often the people that lived in them. If you can get access to those kinds of resources, those will help you as well.

4) Keep everything organized in a series of notebooks or folders (computer folders are nice, too--but have a physical back-up).

The ones I do are a combination of both visual and short notes that I think are useful. With characters, it's nice to have visuals of things like clothing, hairstyles, etc. Keep everything about a character in one place so you don't have to worry about him or her having green eyes in chapter 2 and blue eyes in chapter 17.

Additional Tips:

• I base my writing style on the idea that readers are going to be smart and are going to pay attention to detail. I don't go into so much detail that it drags the story down, but choosing the right words and details helps stories a lot.
• About the only warning I have is that the one time you ignore this step is the one time it will come back on you...it's one of the Murphy's laws of writing.

Resources:

• The Writer's Library
• Web Writer Central
• The Fictional Character Development Template

Author Link:

• Patricia Gilliam's Amazon.com Author Page
  

How to Prepare to Write a Short Story

In this article, I'll share a few foundational areas that will help you in creating a short story. Preparing well will not only make a better quality story, but it makes it easier to write as well.

1) Explore Your Characters:

If you think of your favorite stories, books, and movies, almost 99% are great because they were character-driven. With fictional characters, it's helpful to create a profile including background information, motivations, and physical descriptions for continuity. You can keep this in a file folder, notebook, or a database file on your computer for handy reference.

2) Research Your Setting:

This is going to vary based on the nature of the story. A historical short story for instance can benefit from little details from the time period the story is set. Due to the attention span of the average reader, you want to balance creating a detailed environment with keeping the reader's interest (not bogging them down with so many setting details that it hinders the actual story). There is a happy medium that creates a very rich story in a short amount of pages.

3) Create a Framework for Your Plot:

Even if you don't have all the details at first, creating a framework for your story generally makes things a lot easier. With novels you have more room to explore multiple sub-plots, but short stories are generally very focused. You're usually tracking with one character or a small set of characters through the entire piece, so you need to know the character's conflict, how that conflict builds, and its resolution.

4) Revise More Than Once:

Walk away from the story for a few days, then revisit it. You will find ways to improve it several times. Eventually you will reach a point that adding or changing would actually take away from it. That's when you're really done.

Additional Tips:

• Start your planning on paper, and over time it does gets easier to do it automatically. I still use notebooks a lot just so I'll have a reference for ideas I want to use later.
• Save all of your short stories and refer back to them. I was able to take a set of short stories and three years later adapt them into a novel.

Resources:

• The Writer's Library
• Web Writer Central

Author Link:

• Patricia Gilliam's Amazon.com Author Page
  

How to Create a Believable Fictional Character

In almost any fiction short story or novel, the realism of the characters plays a major role in suspending disbelief of the reader and driving the plot forward.

In this article, I'll show you ways of creating a believable fictional character.

1) The first step in creating a realistic fictional character is to get an overall feel as an author on what they're like--not just physical appearance but personality and background.

When you start brainstorming the traits of your character, you want to look more at how those traits impact your character than the really the traits themselves. Too many times I've seen writers give a detailed list of traits when they begin to describe a fictional character--this can make the character seem flat if you're not careful.

The advice of many writing books of "show, don't tell" is very important in characterization as well as plot. If your fictional character is intelligent, show them doing something intelligent. Don't just have the trait listed.

2) You need to have some background information on your fictional characters that is specifically for you as the writer.

It doesn't have to be something that the reader even knows directly. This can be information about the characters personality, general reactions when they have a certain emotion, etc. You can keep this stored in notebooks or even in a computer database if you're more technically oriented.

3) It's helpful sometimes to mentally put your fictional characters in situations that aren't related to your plot.

Playing with ideas may help you create a more solid character, even when the ideas themselves don't make it into your book or short story. The exercise in itself will get your brain working on making the character more realistic. (Note: Always save these unused scenes because they may be helpful to you later.)

4) Do your homework on specific details about your characters that you may not know off the top of your head.

If your main character is a pilot, you may possibly have readers who are pilots. If little details are off, your drama may suddenly become a comedy to them. You don't have to go overboard, but either do enough research or have a friend who's an authority review it for you.

5) Be observant of people in general.

This is especially helpful in studying mannerisms, such as people running their hands through their hair if they're frustrated or nervous. Sometimes this is also helpful for coming up with conflict ideas as well. Just don't creep people out by following them around with a notebook in public.

Additional Tips:

• Take the time to look through some books on psychology and personality-types. When you study real people, it makes creating fictional people a lot easier.
• There are also a lot of free online resources on personality-types as well.

Resources:

• Writer's Reference Directory
• Fictional Character Development Template
• Web Writer Central

Author Links:

• Patricia Gilliam's Amazon.com Author Page
  

How to Write Natural Dialogue

In creating fictional novels and short stories, it can sometimes be difficult to create natural and realistic dialogue. In this article, I'll show you ways you can solve this problem.

1) The first step in creating believable dialogue involves taking a look at your characters.

Keep in mind traits such as personality, where they are from, their ages, and their education. Dialogue is a tool that you can use to show these traits to your reader without directly telling them. Taking the time to do this will help you determine not only what a fictional character might say, but how he or she would say it.

2) Mentally picture your characters interacting as if they were on a TV show or a play.

Is there anything about what they're saying to each other that seems odd or out of place? Sometimes a sentence of dialogue may be correct from a grammar standpoint, but you may have to reword it because of how people speak in reality.

3) Read the dialogue out loud.

This will help your pacing. If you feel like you're out of breath after a string of dialogue, you may want to shorten your sentences. Likewise, if you feel like the dialogue is too short for the situation, you can smooth it out.

4) Last, do a check of your overall story.

Although you need some variety, using "said" instead of a replacement word is fine about 80% of the time. This is because readers tend to skip over the word, allowing them to read your dialogue at a faster pace. When you need emphasis, use a different word (shouted, screamed, whispered, etc.) Once you establish who's speaking, you can also leave out any extra wording and allow a string of dialogue to stand on its own.

Additional Tips:

• Try paying attention to the conversations of people. You'll begin to pick up on patterns such as rapid subject changes.
• Think of ways you can show your character's personality by how much they speak and how much they listen.
• On the other extreme, you don't necessarily want your dialogue to completely reflect how people talk--especially filler words such as "um."
• Avoid phonetically spelling out accents of characters if at all possible. This can annoy your readers after a certain point. Mention the accent, but make the words themselves easy to read.
• Also avoid modern slang if you intend for the story to be longer-lasting.

More Articles and Resources:

• Web Writer Central
• The Writer's Library
• Write a Novel in 2010 Group (Gather.com)
• Novel Writing Workshop Group (Gather.com)

Author Links:

• Patricia Gilliam's Amazon.com Author Page