Where Research Ends and Writing Begins

Gigi Pandian (Guest Blogger)

Like many other writers, I often find myself in danger of becoming stuck in the “research phase” of writing a book. Making sure a book is authentic and believable is a worthy goal, but not if the writer isn’t able to extract herself from gathering facts for long enough to write the book!

I write mysteries about a historian who solves present-day crimes linked to historical treasures, so I legitimately have to do a fair amount of research. However, when I first started writing a book, I took things too far. I got too caught up in the details. I wanted to write an adventure that combined British and Indian history in an unexpected way, but it would have taken years to reach the same expertise on the British East India Company as my protagonist, get a full understanding of Mughal art and jewelry, read all the legends in Scottish folklore…

My research epiphany came when I interviewed a historian. She commented that I was getting too bogged down in the details. When she reads fiction, she said, she doesn’t want to read the same footnoted details that exist in academic papers—she wants to get caught up in the story.

I’ve learned that I need to do enough research to have a solid conceptual understanding of a subject, plus some intriguing gems to sprinkle throughout the book, but I don’t need to have the same expertise as my characters. Doing too much research can actually backfire—easily leading to “info dumps” with too much scholarly information jammed into the pages without furthering the plot or adding depth to the story.

I like my balanced approach much better. It allows me to have fun with research, doing a combination of online, book, and in-person research—and it also lets me get to “the end.”

My first novel, Artifact, takes historian Jaya Jones from San Francisco to the British Library in London to an archaeological dig in the Highlands of Scotland. When I visited London, I made the effort to get a researcher pass and to spend a day in the British Library reading room with the India Office Records. That gave me an understanding of the library’s research materials and let me experience what it was like to do research there, as the characters in Artifact do. But I didn’t spend my whole trip there—though I admit it was tempting! When I got home, I consulted my sketches and got writing.

I knew I wanted to set my second novel in India. I already had an idea for the starting point of the story, but I didn’t yet know where it was going. As usual, I started reading fascinating history books. I spent a lot of time at the San Francisco Library reading about India and San Francisco at the turn of the previous century and about pirates (yes, the book is called Pirate Vishnu, coming from Henery Press in February 2014). In spite of my best intentions, it was only with great effort that I was able to pull myself away from those history books and start writing my own story.

On a trip to visit family in India during the time I was writing the book, I planned a couple of excursions that I thought would help me with book research. A funny thing happened to my grand research plans on that trip: I came up with a plot twist that became integral to the book, but it wasn’t because of one of the special research side-trips I’d planned. It was only because I was allowing my mind to wander, rather than being focused on research, that I was able to come up with the idea. The mind is a funny thing. I’m going to try my best to remember that as I begin researching my next novel…

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Gigi Pandian is the child of cultural anthropologists from New Mexico and the southern tip of India. After being dragged around the world during her childhood, she left a PhD program in favor of art school and now writes adventurous academic characters in the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt mystery series. Find Gigi online at www.gigipandian.com (or Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest).