Lecture 23: Approaches to Researching Fiction

Approaches to Researching Fiction................................................

Lecture 23

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sort of story you’re telling. If your story is about a police detective

who falls in love, then you might be able to get away with parroting

a bit of cop slang to establish your character’s identity. But if your story is

about the detective investigating a murder, then you need to learn enough

about police work to make the character seem realistic. To put it simply, the

more research matters to your narrative, the more research you have to do.

As we’ll see in this lecture, it’s also important to strike a balance between

factual accuracy and the exercise of your imagination.

Varying Approaches to Research

z One pitfall of writing a story that requires research is that the research

sometimes overwhelms the story; in those cases, writers lean too hard on

the research and not enough on their imaginations. In fact, the necessity

of being completely faithful to the facts is not universally accepted

among all writers. Two contemporary writers who personify differing

opinions on this issue are Hilary Mantel and Jim Crace.

z Mantel is best known for her historical novels about Thomas Cromwell,

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books, :ROI+DOO and %ULQJXSWKH%RGLHV, each won the Man Booker

Prize, and Mantel has often talked about how much research went into

them. In more than one interview, she has stated that historical novelists

have a moral responsibility to get their facts straight.

z Jim Crace is another celebrated British author whose novels are often

set in the distant past, yet Crace declines to call such books as 7KH*LIW

RI6WRQHV (set in prehistoric Britain) and 4XDUDQWLQH (about Christ’s 40

days in the wilderness) historical novels. He prefers to think of each of

them as being set in a sort of alternative, imaginative world.

o Crace does some research for his books, but he makes up many

of the details. In part, this is because he’s not interested in the