RESEARCH

_____As a writer, you want readers to suspend their disbelief, feel like your story is real-at least while they are reading it. If the events in your story do not resemble reality, readers can pick up on it and your story ceases to feel "true." Suppose you are reading a love story and one of the characters is pregnant. When she is rushed to the hospital for the delivery, the baby comes out of her armpit instead of her stomach. Ridiculous, right? You would stop thinking about the story and start wondering how stupid the author is. Nothing else about the story would seem authentic to you. _____If you are writing about a situation or character that is out of your range of experience, you may have to do a little research to give your character/story some authenticity. For example, if one of your characters has an ulcer and you do not have first hand experience with the disease, do a little research. Find out the symptons and treatments. If you don't, you may have your character do something that a person with an ulcer should not do like take aspirin for a headache. _____Thanks to the internet, research does not have to be a chore. Take the last paragraph as an example. I've never had an ulcer, so I had to find something a person with an ulcer should not do. I just went to webmd.com and looked up ulcer. In less than 2 minutes I found out that aspirin is a no-no for someone with a peptic ulcer. I could have looked it up in a medical dictionary or I could have called my ulcer-ridden uncle. _____You don't have to do so much research that you become an expert yourself. Do enough so that the character or situation you are writing about seems realistic. Writing a mystery story where someone is the victim of arsenic poisoning? Find out how much arsenic it would take to kill someone, if arsenic is easy to obtain, and what signs would point to that poison being used? Have a character going to Finland in July? Find out what the weather is really like at that time of year so that you know what she should be wearing.

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