Book research is like make up

Research is like good make-up. It should make you look better, without drawing attention to itself.

As a writer, you have to do far more research than you’ll every use in your book. But once you’ve done it, you’re tempted to show it off. Resist the temptation.

There’s nothing quite as off-putting as having your characters indulge in a long conversation about the history of Rome, just because you looked it up and you’re damned if you’ll lose it.

In contrast, visiting a place once is not enough to set a story in it. You have to know it intimately. You must have pounded its streets, you must know it’s history and customs, you must have sat with locals and listened to their anecdotes.

If you don’t know which way your characters must walk, and whether they must take a bus, train or taxi, to get where they want to go, you’re not ready to use it as a setting. You’ll be so busy avoiding what you don’t know, that your writing will be stilted.

Not only that, but a novel is far more than the bare bones of plot. The magic of a story is in the way it can transport you to another time and place. And to do that, the texture of that time and place must be enough.

The devil is in the detail, and their must be enough specific details to give your readers the sense of a place – not just the way it looks, but the way it smells and sounds and the way the sun falls at a particular time of day.

For more about writing and research, see our online writing courses.

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador. Order it from Kalahari.net

Her first novel, The Innocence of Roast Chicken, was published by Headline in London, shortlisted for the M-Net Book Prize and nominated for the Impac International Dublin Award. The book was chosen as a Dillon’s Debut in the UK, to be showcased as “an outstanding first novel”. She has published short stories in five collections.

She lectures in journalism and writing skills at Wits University, besides running workshops in literary skills, narrative journalism and Romance writing. She supervises Masters students in the Creative Writing Masters programme at Wits.

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net, a website dedicated to good reading and writing. The site publishes novels and short stories, and runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing. It includes a basic lesbian romance writing course – thought to be unique.