To Research Or To Write?

Life seems to be full of perplexing experiences at the moment. I'm not sure I like 'perplexing'. I had twelve whole child free days to write a fortnight ago. I didn't enjoy them. I wrote, or rather I planned. This was a film project I've been trying to get 'good enough' to submit for development money for some time. My experience writing a novel has made me much more of perfectionist. I find it hard to slam a synopsis together, submit and say 'let's see'. So, I picked away at my story, stuck post-it notes - with fluorescent coloured name tags attached to them for the sake of beautification – all over the bedroom wall, ate too many crisps and drank too much wine. Plus ça change…

An interesting thing happened though, on the day before my daughter returned. Whilst planning my screenplay, in the evenings, I'd been researching an idea for a new novel, which involved reading about the eighteenth century German military. In German. A painstaking task for someone who's lived in Germany for a year and relies almost entirely on good Dutch to communicate in German. But something, an idea, a feeling, had been developing as I forced myself through between two and six pages of reading per day. With a few hours of freedom left, I sat down and wrote. Within a couple of sentences, I was excited, because I knew I had a voice for my central character. I've just read through what I wrote. It's less than a thousand words, but I was right, it's a voice.

I'm not sure what to do next. I'd thought that I would research for months. But now I have a voice, and I sort of know where I want the story to go, I'm tempted to write first and research later to fill in the gaps. Part of me, though, knows that I'm not the world's strongest researcher in the first place. Hey, if were interested in facts, I'd write non-fiction, wouldn't I? While writing my first novel, also set in the past, I did have 'film director moments' where I stared blankly round the room wondering where my art director was. As I didn't have one, I decided to ignore the areas of architecture, furniture and clothing. Except when I needed one or other of them to have a psychological impact on one of my characters. If I leap in now with my new novel, it'll be same again. Possibly even more so.

There's also the risk that I want to throw myself in at the deep end straight away just for the buzz of writing a first draft. I could seriously do with an adrenaline rush at the moment. During my twelve days alone I really missed what a commissioning editor I once met referred to as 'doing the vomit'. Writing feels so much better than planning. So I am aware of my own desperate need for the pleasure of getting words down on paper.

But, the screenplays I've written that I've actually ended up directing, have been written like this. There's been a strong urge. Screenplays are shorter, though. I can complete a feature script first draft in a fortnight. For a novel I need far more staying power, and life will get in the way. Will I be able to keep up the momentum?  

Well, I'll have to see. My daughter has just come to sit beside me and is singing 'Everybody, everybody wants to be a cat.' The school holidays are nearly over… but not quite.

Comments

[Marcus_speh]

thanks for sharing this, partly because - without the film experiences to compare with - i'm probably at a similar place. i've also had these "i think i found a voice" moments and they're just brilliant. and while i don't abhor research, it happens, when it happens, in a different part of my brain & i'm not sure that part's doing any of the writing. no, i'm sure it is not doing the writing. i should say that i'm also engaged with a historical sujet (see excerpts here)...hampered, too, by a language (and culture) gap (though of a different nature). i don't envy you and yet i do, because you also sit on top of your material—the stones of sansoucci will speak to you. many the oaks along the havel have seen military parades 200 years ago. ... about that momentum: i've found that there's a point of no return & i've reached it but i've sat on my material (researching it very half-heartedly) for over a year until the character wanted to get out. character incarceration is a terrible thing...good luck to you!

[katebrown]

Thanks for this response, Marcus, it's really interesting. I'm actually planning on traversing more than one country and tongue, so my research may end up being in French, Dutch and German - but that's okay. I've always wanted to write a picaresque novel, but I'm trying to keep to places I know well. Berlin (and Potsdam) may end up being the one I know least well, but I live here, so I can go out and look at it all. I think you're absolutely right that the kind of trees growing in a place, the kind of soil, these things are there to be found now and help you create a place that breathes. Another thing you said that I think is interesting is about character incarceration. Good to let them out, but temporarily keeping them pent up is no bad thing. It's sometimes very good to hold back until you really think you'll go pop. But that's quite different to over researching. Anyway, if you want to swap more detailed notes, you know where I am. Can always mull over a coffee.

[Susan Lanigan]

I am having a similar issue working on a novel that is set during a historical period. I started out in draft 1 working on a very rough outline from preliminary research. It was more like the North Star than a compass. When I got to a scene that required deeper digging, I would start reading up in the small library I have accumulated, pulled my sources together and inferred the rest using author's licence. I have no way yet of knowing if this works as this is my first real novel and I am just completing my plotting for draft 2.

My hunch is that if a character grabs you that powerfully, you follow him. If you have a broad outline of events, you can do the research as and when you get to the scene.

HTH

[katebrown]

Thanks, Susan. I hope the North Star keeps guiding you. It's a lovely image, even if you'd prefer a compass at times. I think that, for me at least, so much of writing is about gut instinct, that following the urge is the only way. Sometimes I worry a little, though, that I'll discover halfway that I've made such a serious error in relation to some aspect or other of research, that I'll have to start all over again. But for now I shall just cross my fingers...

[Belledamesansmerci.wordpress.com]

Great thought-provoking question, Kate. When I go outside my comfort zone, I try to write all the parts that I can with big markers on where I have to do research. If it is such a big piece that I can't go one, I just go to the next scene.

I love research, so I have to be very careful that I don't disappear into it for hours!

It sounds like it works for you, so I wouldn't worry!
Nancy

[Jeremy Head]

'Doing the vomit' Love it!
Does writing *always* feel better than planning? I'm not sure.
For me it only feels better than planning when actually there's a bit of a plan inside my head anyway... I've just not put it on paper. Writing only feels good when you instintively know it's going somewhere and you have that idea of where already...
So... maybe you should just write for a bit at least?

[katebrown]

'The vomit' is great isn't it? Nice to have that one up there with poetic notions such as 'the flow'. Still, that flowing feeling is when the writing process feels special, you're right. I love those moments too, when planning, or researching, when I get an idea, something that seems to have sidled up beside me, nudged me to say 'I'm here'. It mostly happens when walking round the park after a day's work.