“How could you write about anything without wondering if it was true? I mean, you’d be describing a bird in a garden and suddenly there would be that awful question in your mind, did they have birds in the fourth century?” (Christopher Isherwood to Gore Vidal, Harpers, 1965)
One of the things my mother never understood about my career (or that she claimed not to understand; I wouldn’t put it past her to have been yanking my chain) was why I, a writer of fantasy, bothered to do research. “It’s fantasy; why don’t you just make it up?” she always asked.
The answer is complex, and unfortunately not amenable to being turned into a snappy comeback. Real-life details serve many purposes. They help create an illusion of reality; they provide a “bridge” between known reality and the imaginary world of fantasy (thus making the fantasy world more believable); they are, once known, relatively easy to keep consistent; they are often less subject to argument than other aspects of a story. Getting the details wrong, especially in certain areas, is a quick way to get many readers to fling a book against a wall (clothes, horses, and guns are the top three candidates in my experience – there are a lot of readers out there who know a great deal about each of these topics, and who will get exceedingly annoyed if it appears that the author hasn’t at least tried to get things right).
Research can also be a good way of nudging the imagination, or of continuing to work on a project in useful ways even if one is stuck on the current chapter. One needs to do a certain amount of research in order to determine which details one can (or must) change believably, and which things will break the reader’s suspension of disbelief into a zillion pieces if they get tweaked. And research is also a way of soothing the writer’s insecurities, as exemplified by my opening quotation.
But I think one of the most overlooked reasons for doing research has to do with why many of us became writers in the first place: Writers are intellectual pack-rats. We tend to read voraciously and omnivorously, and we store away all sorts of peculiar tidbits in hopes that they will turn out to be useful in some future, as-yet-unimagined book or story.
Occasionally this causes trouble, when some reader or critic wants to know where a particular fact came from — writers are not academics, and few of us store our interesting factoids in memory complete with a citation of author, source, and publication date. The closest I can come is usually, “Well, it’s in a green book about halfway down the page on the left side…” And I’m nearly always wrong about the color of the cover, at that.
I have to laugh. Avoiding research is the reason I *chose* the fantasy genre. “I hate research!” I used to declare, loudly and firmly. Of course, I was around 10 or 11 at that point. Now being older and wiser, I not only enjoy it, but as you say, it often leads to *other* ideas, and interesting tidbits one can use in stories. Personally, I now love to research. . .on small things. Historical events I still dislike, but that IS something I had right about writing fantasy. You might need historical detail, but you don’t need to worry about getting the historical events straight or correct. They will be as you say they are, so long as they are presented with sufficiently real details. 🙂
I am also delighted to hear about your ‘hoarding’ of facts and tidbits but not remembering where they came from. I honestly thought that was just me. If I find something I like I tend to roll it around in my head until it sticks. But if you ask me a few months down the road where I came up with that bit. . .I’d have no idea. Too much water has passed under the bridge and the ‘irrelevant’ info of ‘where’ was long ago swept away in exchange for more interesting thoughts. lol “I read it somewhere at some point.” is about as close as I can usually get. Hooray for selective memories. I think. 😀
Unlike Ellen, I’m still someone who hates research. When I did papers in University, I’d do just enough research to give me an idea of what to write about then I’d write the paper and go back and do more research to back up my opinions.
I find I do the same with my writing. For example, the novel that’s cooling its heels after the first draft has a lot of boats in it, so I know I’ll have to do research, but I’ll wait until I’ve finished the second draft then go back and make sure I have all my boating references correct.