How Much Research Is Too Much?
by Ellen Buikema
This is a tough question to answer as it depends upon the project. Knowing when to stop is a helpful skill to develop.
Consider the following:
- Have you already found useful information from a variety of sources?
- If you added a new angle now, would it further the plot?
- Are you collecting information that’s not really on your topic?
- Given a deadline by your editor or publisher, do you have enough time to write your story?
- Do you have sufficient research to cover the main points of your Work in Progress?
If you answer “yes” to most of the above it’s likely time to move on—even though it’s tempting and perhaps addicting—to continue looking for information and falling down rabbit holes. Otherwise, you may end up with a big pile of resources and not enough time to do anything with them. Who needs the added stress?
When starting a new writing project, it’s common to think thoughts, like:
- “To write about this, I must read everything about this topic.”
- “Just one more book to read. Then I’ll have my break through.”
- “As soon as I know everything about the topic, my confidence level will soar.”
There is some truth to these thoughts. It helps to read about the topic you’re writing. However, expertise is not necessary and attempting this for every writing project is going to cause an extreme amount of stress, delivering a whopping dose of anxiety.
Why do we become obsessed with research?
Research can be addicting. When learning something new, your brain experiences a boost of dopamine, one of the neurotransmitters affecting the pleasure center in the brain. When your brain discovers new information, the dopamine boost tells your brain, “Give me more. Keep searching for information!” This may end up feeling like an endless research loop.
How do you get out of the research loop?
- Take notes. Major points, not extensive outlines.
- Write on how you feel about the book or article you’re researching. Compare it to other information you’ve read. Document these thoughts as if they are part of a journal or diary.
- Composing a research diary helps you start the writing process early in the research phase. This may help avoid writer’s block, which can happen when you have too much information to process.
Benefits of a Research Diary
- Taking notes of what you read will improve memories of that information because you’re creating associative pathways in your brain.
- You’ll know early in the process how to craft the new story or article. When you start in earnest, your writing will flow faster.
Experiment with this. Try writing a research diary of what you’ve discovered via researching today. This won’t take much of your time and can be a confidence booster.
Research is part of the writing process for all genres. Research is necessary to make your writing accurate. It can be time-consuming, but it shouldn’t take over your life. Eventually, you’ll need to set aside research materials and get down to the business of writing.
Make a Goal
Begin by setting aside 30 minutes a day to get yourself in writing mode habit. If possible, try to write at or near the same time of day. That way writing becomes part of the daily pattern. Get over to the table and write. I do the same thing for music practice and have found that I rarely miss guitar time.
Consider a specific goal. Say you’ve joined a writing critique group and want to present one chapter per week. A two-thousand-word chapter is doable for this goal. If you write four-hundred words per day over five days, there’s your word count with plenty of time for editing before bringing the new chapter to critique.
Limit Research Time
If you find yourself using too much time researching and not enough writing, try the following method author Diana Clark uses.
“A rough guide I use in fiction writing is that my research time shouldn’t exceed my writing time. If I expect to produce a first draft in ten weeks, then, I will spend ten weeks or less researching my book and establishing a timeline and character chart. That block of time doesn’t include the simple fact-checking I will do later as part of the review process.”
If You Hit a Wall, Do Something Else
You’re on a roll. The muse is with you and the writing has never come easier. Then full-stop. You need more information. This is when I either go into research mode or step away from the laptop and regroup by doing something completely different:
- Have a snack
- Play with the pup (Our black lab, Bailey, used to hang out with me on the floor while I pondered my writing. Always helpful and a very good boy.)
- Read
- Listen to music
- Watch travel videos
- Ponder the state of the world
There are writers who can put a pin in it and keep writing. That doesn’t work well for me. I think too much. I must stop writing, do the research, or physically move away from the writing area and do something else. Otherwise, I feel twitchy. Do what works best for you. There is no one right way.
Set Aside Time for What You Love
Find balance in all things.
Sometimes we research too much because we love learning new things. There is nothing wrong with that. Trouble comes loping in when we tumble down the rabbit holes, one interesting topic leading to another.
Don’t put too much of your research into your story.
My editor told me that it’s a bad idea to show your research. It’s cool to learn extra tidbits found while researching, but if the information isn’t driving the story forward, it’s merely an interesting tangent. As I recall, she referred to it as “Showing off.”
Save the research you don’t need in a Work-In-Progress and file it away to use it in another story. That way your time and hard work won’t be wasted.
While researching for this piece on too much research I came across a very funny article. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do. 36 Warning Signs That You Are Spending Too Much Time Researching (and Not Enough Time Writing) | Rie Sheridan Rose
Do you find yourself entangled in a maze of thoughts, examining situations from all angles? What do you do to climb out of rabbit holes? How much research do you think is enough?
* * * * * *
About Ellen
Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works in Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and The Crystal Key, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi, a glaze of time travel.
Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.
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27 comments on “How Much Research Is Too Much?”
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Being a champion of the lazy, I only look stuff up when I need it for the story, and then only the high points. The hardest part is knowing what you don't know.
Ha! Me too, Terry.
You bring up a good point. Not knowing what you don't know. Communicating with people who are more familiar with a particular subject helps.
A project I'm working on revolves around trains. I chatted with several people who are in a miniature train club. Wow! That was a real education. They also connected me with a gentleman who used to work at train yards in the Chicago area. He seemed to know everything about historical train routes, making the outline of my story change.
This is one task where AI bots have proved beneficial. We still need to go to the linked source and verify the information, but search summaries have reduced research time from weeks to days or even hours. For a historical fiction writer, this is pure gold.
I'm glad that you mentioned AI bots and how they can be helpful, but need to be verified. I've read about legal briefs put together via AI bots that weren't verified and ended up with an embarrassing mess. Yikes!
Using them carefully can be a boon.
I research as I go. That way I know exactly what level of detail something needs. There is a difference between what a tenth grader would be studying in science in a California high school in October and what would someone given a specific poison be like when dying. For the first, a high school curriculum guide is probably good enough to give me believability. For the second, I'd want more than one source and maybe even an expert's take on what I write. But that would depend also on the level of detail the scene needs.
In non-fiction, I research the broad scope up front and then look up specifics as I need them. So I research before starting each chapter so I can write that chapter.
And for both, some always happens during revision when I realize I can improve the work with a well-placed detail to clarify a point or avoid confusion or increase tension.
You have a wonderful process, Debbie. Such focus!
Personally, I have to be careful of the rabbit holes.
The expert information on poison's affect on the body reminded me of an excellent book, The Grim Reader by Miffie Seideman, who is a pharmacist.
I'm totally jealous that you have such fine-tuned control over your process. Brava, Debbie!
Great reminders, Ellen. A tip I got years ago said to first look for a nonfiction children's book on the subject. If one is available, read it to get a general overview of the topic. Then, if you need to know more, look at the resource list in the back as your starting place for more information. It's a tip that has saved me many hours of research.
Thank you for sharing, Lynette! That is fantastic advice!
I've never heard that tip, Lynette. That's amazeballs!
I research as I go, and because of my genre, my history is going to get me on the FBI watch list. But I do find that putting a place mark in when I am just writing, and coming back and researching during the editing process is very helpful.
Ah, I wish I could do that--using a bookmark and then doing the research afterward.
I applaud you. When I don't know something I'm compelled to look it up, otherwise I can't go forward.
Always a difficult balance. SOme very good tips though. Thank you!
Thank you, Carol! I'm glad there's information here that you can use.
This was tough for me as I was writing a biography for “The Problem With Denny”. I was not alive during the time period the book took place. I had interviewed my father, obtained my grandfather’s FBI file and had to meticulously verify the facts I thought I knew. I made folders for each chapter with newspaper articles, obituaries and files from I obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
When I had all the information, I had to dig in and actually read the research for relevance and possible inclusion and make a timeline.
The whole time I had to remind myself to write through it.
For the second book in the series, I was alive most of it, so I definitely have a point of reference. The process has been a lot faster thanks to figuring out my organization structure for the prior book.
I am a research geek, but I am always mindful that I need to write.
Good luck, everyone, on reining it in. 🙂
That article is hilarious. I especially felt, "You have gathered enough information to create an e-book when researching a blog post." Hmmm. I feel seen. Most of my writing is SF/F because I know that once I start down that dark path... there's no returning!
Great post, Ellen!
Lisa, you found the humor in my post! Huzzah, I feel seen too.
I'm pleased that you enjoyed the article.
Nice, informative article. I’ve “gone down the rabbit hole” more than once researching my first two novels. Both are SciFi, and what has amazed me is that far future technologies are easier to research for stories than near future tech advances. When delving into currently developing technology, there’s the risk it could actually overtake your timeline. A speculative part of your story tech might become real or might be proved inaccurate before publication.
In my case, I’d made major plot revisions (rewrites) when over halfway through my writing—a change of both villain and threat—making the detection of deep fakes a key element to resolution of the plot. It was a bit of a trap. On the one hand I had to establish why my story's deep fakes could not be disproven. But then, of course, I had show a credible solution how to disprove them. It took some time to wrap my mind about the real problems and a creative solution, consulting with the FBI and businesses specializing in detection software.
The most frustrating part though was my writing about it. I felt obligated to convincingly show readers just how difficult this has (really) become. Then I had to provide an equally interesting and real prospect for debunking them. This meant introducing more technical details to readers than I felt compatible with the story's otherwise fast pacing.
So, research is a two-edged sword. It can become an impediment in more ways than one.
I fixed you up, Jerold!
Yikes! Lots of complications in your writing journey for this project.
To keep the story moving forward at a good clip while including more technical details is quite a juggle. Wow!
Thanks, Ellen, for this post about research. I've been posting about this recently, too. I write novels, so people ask, "why do you do research for fiction? Don't you just make it up?" (I have to laugh at this.) One of my favorite book awards was earned in the category of "Faction" - fiction based on fact. That's what I write. I enjoy bringing fictional characters (and readers) into authentic situations with rich and authentic information. Can I get caught down a research rabbit hole? Absolutely! Not everything I learn needs to go into the novel. Thanks for your valuable perspective!
Hi Mara. I am also a big fan of using facts in fiction. For me, it doesn't matter if it's historical fiction or not.
Congratulations on your Faction award! That's awesome.
I have to disagree with some of these points. I used to hear the advice, "Don't research more than you need to" from writers and writing groups. Even at the time, I suspected that was wrong.
This is why it's wrong: you have no idea how much you don't know about any given subject. Worse, some of what you think you know (based on novels, movies, or TV series) is incorrect.
Granted, I'm already quite familiar with my chosen period (mid-1700s) after writing twelve novels set between 1739 and 1745. The chief advantage of my experience lies in not having to research the entire period. Now I usually only have to look up very narrow questions, like what kind of lantern was in use, or what kind of French army musket might have been imported by the Jacobites, or how a marriage could be annulled.
I love historical fiction and agree that one aften doesn't know what they need to know.
Those little details, like types of lanterns and muskets enhance the story.
I research to the point of completion: something did or did not exist.
And for writing, I use one level past what the story and the reader need - so there are no embarrassing gotchas out there that I would have found if I'd gone far enough.
The idea for my kind of realistic fiction is to make the reader feel that if they'd followed that detour, there would have been more in that direction, but we're not going to do that right now. Maybe later...
It's all an illusion - and all dangerous - and once or twice I've had to tell myself that 1) most people don't remember something in that much detail and aren't going to look it up, and 2) for a persistent researcher reader I will just claim 'artistic license' if something works, but isn't QUITE literally on the right timeline. Or, in some cases, 3) the CHARACTER got it wrong - they're not infallible!
Fiction, Alicia, fiction.
If it bolsters a major plot point, I'll go an extra layer to be sure.
For example, in most states, things like marriages are in the public record under legal names. But in California, there's a 'secret marriage' used by people like movie stars to preserve their public image?
I have notes. When I get to that place, I'll see what some of the details were (the story is set in 2005/2006), and why I planned to use that there. And then use it to keep someone from finding out someone else IS already married.
I'm an extreme plotter with an execrable rough draft that was written precisely for that purpose: make sure anything in the plot that is important had the facts of the time right.
And most of the time, things like the illegal poppy harvest in northern India were researched until I could safely write what I did.
All great tips. In grad school, my professor said something similar: when you start seeing the same info/are not seeing any new info, you can safely wrap up your research and move on to the writing portion of our show.