No matter what you are writing, be it a blog, a short story or a novel, research is the key factor in ensuring that your audience is kept captivated. Research is what provides authenticity to a story, it's what makes your readers want to keep reading and it wouldn’t be out of the way to suggest that you do a day’s research just to write a couple of sentences. Obviously, you don’t want to do this with every sentence but some parts of your book will require in-depth research, just to make sure you get it right.

How Much Research Should You Do?

Much will depend on your subject; every detail is important but how far do you need to go? How much information is enough? When you do your research, consider the following:

Who – You must understand the depth of your characters, what their strengths are and their weaknesses, what triggers them. What are their favorite sports, music, and colors? What do they like to eat? When you do your outlines, you must consider this for every major character and, as you write your story, you must take the ‘who’ into consideration for every scene.

What – This is your story’s framework, the entire theme of it but there are lots of little “whats” that make up this framework. So, ask yourself, what role does each of your characters play? What moves the story forward in each scene? What is the next twist? What hook is there at the end of each chapter? What pushes your protagonist and antagonist onwards? By doing your research you can understand real situations that can help you to answer these questions in your book.

Where – You need to come up with a setting and build it in such a way that your readers can use their senses to experience it, to find themselves transported there. What smells are there? What sounds? What reactions do we get from your characters? When they touch something, how does it feel to them? Some writers will visit places that they use as their settings or vice versa. Others use the internet to research their settings, or they use other people’s experiences.

When – What time of year is your story set in? Is it winter? Summer? What time of day is each scene set in? What timeline is your story running to and how does each scene fit into that? Research is essential for this, especially if your story is set in historic times. Plus, when it is winter in one part of the world, it is summer in another. Some flowers open in the daytime, some at night. Research and your readers can’t call you out on any mistakes.

Why – Why is each character in your story? Why are they doing what they are doing? Acting how they are? Research provides the reasons behind your characters, places, and objects in the story.

How – How do the characters and the scenes move your story forward? How do your characters achieve their reason for being their what? How do the moods of your characters show up physically? Mentally? Research will tell you the why of everything.

Use the internet, read books, watch TV, YouTube and so on to learn all of these things so that when you write your story, it is real and it is based on truth.