Research in Creative Writing, Or, Making Dreams Come Alive

Feb 21, 2024

I have to admit, today’s post was motivated by one of my sweet, talented undergraduate students in creative writing sighing heavily over an assignment and saying, “But research is so boring!”

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

What is research in creative writing? Does it apply to any creative genre (literary nonfiction, fiction, poetry)? Why bother doing research, and why would it matter, anyway? It sounds like a lot of work!

Research in creative writing is different from other types of research, academic or otherwise. And yes, it’s a lot of work, but joyful and illuminating (most of the time). It changes the story, the characters, and the structure of the story, and it changes the way you, as a writer, think about the world.

I’m a research geek, and today I’m going to tell you why.

Boxes of research for my current writing project.

My first big research project, years ago, was a deep dive into Colorado history, into the story of the Leadville woman Elizabeth McCourt Tabor (known to history as “Baby Doe”). What I learned about Elizabeth and her two daughters, Lily and Silver Dollar, led to my PhD dissertation, a 500-page, footnoted piece of historical fiction that exhausted my professors and exasperated a couple of New York literary agents. Can you do too much research? Nope. At least I don’t think so. But one of the things I’ll talk about as we go along is how to take your research, pare it down, and weave it into the story so that it doesn’t exhaust or bore your reader but rather creates a vivid and living dream.

You could say I’ve learned that the hard way.

I strive to write a story that is immersive, alive on the page, a thrilling reading experience for the reader. I love it when someone says, “I loved this book because I felt like I was really there!” or “I really understood the life and experience of that character.” I want to give the reader a reason to keep reading the next sentence, the next paragraph, the next page, and keep wondering why and what next?

And when the story is real, based on research or lived experience, it’s even more exciting. OMG. This really happened.

But how does a writer create a vivid and living dream, especially when it’s based on fact? Or the story takes place in the historical past, which seems very far away? (I’m currently working on a story that takes place in 1906, by the way. It feels very real.)

The answer? Details, details, details. As a writer, I want to provide enough context – personal, physical, sensory, cultural, historical – so that this story, this particular character in this particular setting, comes to life on the page. I want to understand what it means for this character, this person, to travel through the world at this moment in time.

Every life, regardless of when that life was lived, connects to the world and reflects the experiences of each of us, in surprising and illuminating ways.

But where and how do you find that research? How do you know what’s good or relevant? How do you organize it? How do you weave it into the story? That’s in my next post!

Thanks for reading. If you’d like to learn specific strategies, techniques, or exercises on research in creative writing, or even send me a question or two, please consider upgrading to a premium subscription.

Research in Creative Writing, Or, Making Dreams Come Alive

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