Several years ago I took notes while attending a wonderful SF/F symposium called Life The Universe and Everything. The panels are very educational. Here are some of my notes. The panelists were: Elana Johnson, Rebecca Shelly Emily Sorensen.

– Research can add plausibility and credibility of making your book realistic to the reader.
– Educated readers can smell bull crap in fiction. Trust your raidor.
– Research is a great source of ideas.
– People who read a lot they can sense when information provided by an author does not feel authentic.
– Sometimes bad information in a book can be caught by the knowledge of your alpha and beta readers. You may not know something is wrong until one of your readers tell you. An example is that snake egg shells are soft and don’t crack in two like a chicken egg.
– Research can provide the answer that you seek on a topic but also in asking the question you can gain additional knowledge that was unexpected and that can help embellish your book with interest tidbits that add more realism to the book. That new information can also make corrections to perceptions in area you did not anticipate that will require you to do a rewrite but the book with be more accurate. These additional tidbits can also inspire new ideas.
– If you note an area of your story that needs quick research you might do a quick jump to the web to find that info or mark the text to be researched later.
– When calling an exert the conversation can provide more information than you originally thought. One point of information can stimulate you to ask additional questions. People love talking about things they know. Some facts learned for one story can inspire the creation of new stories. Things you didn’t know that you were unfamiliar with can be learned by talking to an expert.
– Doing research can be a crutch to delaying your writing. If you’re researching instead of writing than stop researching.
– You can’t create a perfect manuscript in spite of all the research you do. Acknowledge that you will make mistakes. Authors will acknowledge names of people who helps provide info and than state that the mistakes in the book are the authors.
– Do enough research to put the story together and continue to write the story with more research along the way.
– When doing research remember the initial objective in the story that prompted the research so that you don’t lose focus on the story.
– How can research be used to help in fantasy or magic. Use the logic in other areas of knowledge to help you ask the right deductive questions that will add realism to your world. (Cause and effect, Logic Q&A such as is the magic expendable, what are its laws or restrictions; why or why not, who does it affect etc..). If your book touches upon the four elements than learn information about those four elements. Also read similar books to yours to see how other authors have handled something. And to help not to walk down the same path as previous writers.
– Accessing books by Amazon’s take a peek feature can give you important knowledge without having to buy the book.
– When reading non fiction books about a subject you are learning about look at the references that book used and go to those same references to expand you own knowledge.
– How to find an obscure fact? Talk to humans in that field. Ask one likely person if they know that obscure fact. They may not know but they know someone who might. Go to that second person and they will know someone etc.
– Web sites dedicated to certain topics will have their sources, biographies where they gain their knowledge. Go to those sources. Or they will have contact info on that web site and you can send them a polite query. If they don’t respond move on but if they do than you can ask them a question.
– Sources of information: National archives web site. Google scholar. Sometimes this site may ask you to pay a fee to read an article. Librarians are happy to help you find information or access relevant sites for information on the web. Or Take a peek in relevant books in Amazon.com.
– Books.google.com = features every book published since 1920.
– Gutenberg project also has a collection of books to access.
– CIA world fact book = tells things about national things such as imports and exports and such.
– Talking to humans is the quickest way to get to the relevant point of your question and often helps you discover as a writer what the intent of how that fact might be used in the story or to help the author define what the relevant question is they are asking.
– The congress quarterly or CQ researcher: complies information for congress to access if they need it and it can be available to the public.
– There are web sites that show videos on how things work.
– U-tube has a lot of information on topic that would be useful.
– When is the time to stop researching – Are you writing? If not, you’re not than stop researching and write.

Do you have some advice to share on this topic? Please feel free to share it in the comment section of this blog