How is your 'tude?

The role and timing of researching a novel.

Photo by Josh Rakower on Unsplash

I’ve been thinking a lot about research lately. No, not the scientific, looking for cures for cancer and bunions kind, the writerly kind. You know, important stuff. Chances are that no matter what kind of book you are writing, some research is going to be required.

Verisimilitude: fancy-ass word meaning the appearance of
being real or true.

Taking a close look at your writing, how is your ‘tude? (I just made that slang term up, so shut up. I like it.) Whether you’re writing historical fiction, literary, crime fiction, romance, or even fantasy and sci-fi, you simply need to know some stuff. And if you don’t know it, you better find out. One of the stupider, bad writing adages is “write what you know.” I rail against this, as I only know so much—and I don’t like the boundary that puts on me. Better, I like “write what you want to know.” I read that somewhere in a craft book, and it’s always stuck with me.

My new novel Samurai Bluegrass (out in 2023 from the fine folks at Literary Wanderlust) took a boatload of research. The main character of the novel believes himself to be a 12th C. samurai warrior… who is inconveniently in another person’s body in 1984 Toronto, Canada. I know, that old trope.

To shore up my knowledge to be able to write this novel, I needed to do a deep dive into some research, mostly Japanese history, and notably the history of the samurai. I’ve always been fascinated by this figure in history. But like many of us in the west, very little was ever taught in school about the history or culture of Japan. Rather, I learned about Canadian history… every year for the twelve years that I was in school. It was all railroads, and Hudson Bay mappers and trappers, the war of 1812, and drunkards who became the first prime minister (look it up.) If they would have offered a class in Japanese history, or really anything other than CanuckLore, I would have eaten it up.

Now, I’d read the odd article, and was a big fan of Japanese cinema, especially the films of Akira Kurosawa. But I needed a lot more. This was going to be Hemingway’s iceberg on steroids. If I was to have any real ‘tude (see above) in my work, and in my main character, I needed to bone up. Here, I refer to the “write what you want to know” bit—because I loved this research. I read a stack of books on Japanese history, the code of the bushido, and anything I could get my hand on that would immerse me in the history and culture of the samurai. Along the way I discovered a number of great podcasts, my favourite by far being the Samurai Archives History Podcast. I even contacted some of the hosts of the podcast to ask specific questions: in what era did they begin using the term “daiymo?” or when did the sword become the prime weapon of the samurai (early samurai were archers, and the dominance of the sword was much later.) The podcast put me into contact with a couple of scholars who were also hugely helpful. So much so, that this research changed the novel, as I discovered the difference between the myth, and the actual history of the samurai.

Besides boring my wife with all the information I had been learning, the knowledge was helping the work a great deal. But an important point and cautionary note:

Beware the Info Dump.

The info dump is when the writer who has just read a stack of books and a year’s worth of articles says dammit, I researched this stuff, I’m going to make sure I put it to use. I am sure we have all read these books, where suddenly the novel becomes this long essay on the inner workings of a whale and all the different ways their guts are used to make oils and perfumes. (Looking at you Hermie Melville.)
So yeah, don’t do that.

I have a scene in a 12th Century market where I wanted to describe what the characters see while walking through it. The descriptions are scant, but I wanted to give the reader just enough so they could feel the place, and yes, so that it felt real to them.

I left my spot under the beech tree and followed my father out of the estate, onto the road leading to a village where there was a market.

Arriving at the market, smells arose from cooking pots of food mixed with sweat from the merchants and their animals, the clang of blades being sharpened, fabrics hit with sticks, the buzz of flies, the briny scent of fish—I delighted in it all.

My father spoke with a merchant about a basket of fruit.

“The freshest pomegranates you will find anywhere,” the merchant said.

To produce these few sentences, I can’t even recall how much reading I did. I guess enough so that I could begin to see the market myself. My point being that if you want it to ring true in the reader, then you need to do the work.

A few of the many, many, books I read in researching my new novel.

But Craig, you say, I’m not writing weird-ass historical fantasy fiction… why do I need to know anything?
Because, dear writer, stuff will come up… it always does. There was a scene in my crime novel, Manistique, where two characters go fishing. One of them is quite experienced, and really knows how to cast and cut bait, etc. Now, I’ve fished a few times, but I’m not anywhere near what you’d call, experienced. So yep, deep dive into a whole whack of fishing articles. The resulting scene only used a few lines, but writing them it felt good. I seemed to know what I was talking about. I’m sure we’ve all had that experience of reading a book where you give up on it because you just don’t believe any of it. And that goes for all the genres.

Lately the big question for me is not how to research, but when? I recently read about a writer who only starts their research after the first draft has been written. This idea won’t work for books that need a certain amount of historical ‘tude to begin with. But I think it has its merits. Nothing kills the flow of writing for me like needing to stop and go research something. I think I’ll just pop over to research a web page or flip through a book, and suddenly I’m deep into something that is not writing. It’s learning, and it is needed… but 1. Did I need to know this much? And more importantly 2. Do I need to know it right now?

I sort of think this was Jonathan Franzen who wrote about research after the initial draft.

In my new WIP (Luke 3: Three Minute Hero), I have started to simply write “look this up”, or “research later”, and keep going. And it’s been working. The flow continues, and when I go back in revision mode (which I am now in), I find that I only need to look up a few things. There are lots of caveats here, around history and say how combustible engines work (I have no idea)—but give it a try. You can always learn stuff later.
And that’s been a bit of a game changer.

I’ll leave it there for now—but do leave a comment, or shoot me a note on the twitter-box (yeah, yeah, I’m there until that sucker burns to the ground.)
How do you research? When do you research? Do you ever just, gulp, make shit up?

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