Quick Tips to Master Research Without Procrastination

How do you research your novel? How do you avoid procrastinating via research?

In this week's Quick Tips we're tackling the pre-planning journey of research.

Tip 1: Set limits, create deadlines, and use timers.

Tip 2: Understand the type of research you need. Is it traditional, freeform, or experiential? Each type has its benefits and drawbacks, so know what you're doing before you fall down that rabbit hole.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Author Wheel podcast.
I'm Megan Haskell,award-winning fantasy author of
the Signari Chronicles and theRise of Lilith series.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
And I'm Greta Boris, usa Today bestselling author of
the Mortician Murders and thesoon-to-be-released Almost True
Crime series.
Together we are the AuthorWheel.
Our goal is to help youovercome your writing roadblocks
so you can keep your storiesrolling.
Today we're gonna tackle asubject most writers have strong
opinions about research.

(00:28):
In my experience, people eitherlove it or hate it.
Hopefully today's tips willturn the haters around and give
the lovers more to love.
Aw yeah, tip number one is toput limits on your research time
, because you know, it's just aseasy to go down the research

(00:50):
rabbit hole as it is to avoidresearch altogether, especially
if we're feeling a littleintimidated by the blank page.
Research can actually become aprocrastination tool rather than
a helpful tool.
We subscribe to what we callthe Goldilocks principle not too
much, not too little, but justright.

(01:12):
But how?
How do you know what's justright?
And how do you stick to that?
Well, this is back to our firsttip putting limits on your
research time.
We suggest you use timers andor create deadlines.
So decide in advance how muchtime you are willing to spend on

(01:33):
a topic and how much time youthink it's going to take, and
also decide when you're going totackle it.
And if it is a thing whereyou're going to go, start
Googling and you know how thatcan go.
One link leads to another,leads to another.
Put a timer on, give yourselfwhatever you think is feasible
or reasonable, and I'm going totell you, because we do love to

(01:56):
tell stories on ourselves.
I once wasted an entire writingday trying to find out what the
color of the tables were in thevisiting area of Santa Ana Main
Jail.
Like how incredibly stupid isthat?

Speaker 1 (02:11):
And yet we've all done something similar at some
point.
It just it happens.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
I do think that it was the procrastination thing
was going on.
I wasn't sure what was going tohappen next, and so he sat down
at the blank table and for somereason I felt like I had to
fill in that color instead ofjust saying he sat down at the
table, which could have easilybeen done, anyway, spent a whole
day.
Obviously that was notsomething I could find the

(02:38):
answer to.
Could not find the answer, butthe irony of it was much later I
bumped into a friend who's inlaw enforcement, who was in and
out of Santa Ana main jail allthe time, you know, and so I
said by the way, what is thecolor of those tables?
And he thought about it.
He thought about it and he goes.
Well, I don't know.
I've been in that room ahundred times.

(02:59):
I can't remember Well, soseriously, if somebody who's
been in that room 100 timescan't remember, it is not going
to add any real factual.
Boy, this book sure seemsrealistic to my story, right, it
was just a waste of time.
Yeah, so that is my story.
What is your tip?

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Well, so my tip is what kind of research do you
need to do?
Because if you had gone tovisit the Santa Ana main jail,
which would be a form ofresearch which would also have
wasted way too much time, sodon't do that.
But if you had, you would know.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
I would have Right.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
You are correct.
But so really you do need tokind of figure out what kind of
research you need to do, becausethose different styles will
take different amounts of time.
So tip number two is to plan itout.
In our course Layering yourStory World how to Make Fiction
Feel Real, we actually outlinethree different types of

(03:59):
research, and each has its prosand cons and different
expectations for what you'regoing to get out of it.
So first off, there'straditional research, and this
is really great when you knowexactly what you need to learn
and can go online or to thelibrary to look it up.
So facts are key.
On this.
It's like like I had to look upyou know what was the time

(04:20):
period at the height of theAztec empire, how long ago was
that?
When you know what was the year, I didn't know that, I just
looked it up online.
I also have looked up you knowstreet names and Laguna Beach or
other relatively easy factualquestions that you should be
able to find on the internet oragain at the library.
Most of this kind of researchreally doesn't, or shouldn't,

(04:44):
take too much time.
Setting a short timer 15minutes, 30 minutes, maybe an
hour is perfect for thetraditional research that you
can just answer a question, butsometimes we don't know exactly
what we need to know, we justneed to be inspired and so in
that case, free form immersionis a better form of research and

(05:08):
arguably, maybe this isn'treally research so much as idea
generation or inspiration, brainfuel as we've called it in
other sections of our course andother podcasts and stuff, but
it's when you don't have aspecific question but you just
generally need to explore aconcept.

(05:31):
For example, I have spent hoursand hours and hours watching
YouTube videos on myths of theancient world.
I enjoy it, it's fun for me,it's part of just my personal
interests and hobbies, but itdefinitely influences my stories
.
And if I do have, then aspecific god or legend or myth,

(05:54):
I can spend more time focusingon that to pull out the elements
that I want to use in my books.
But the trick here is to makesure you set boundaries around
how much time you're willing togive up to do your research.
This is where timers, again,really can come into play.
You don't want to spend anentire day trying to figure out
the color of the tables in theSanta Ana main jail, you don't?

(06:16):
No, no, that's really notbeneficial.
But not to say I haven't donesomething similar myself, but I
have.
But so for me, what I?
I tend to do this kind ofresearch at lunch.
I put on a YouTube video as I'meating and kind of just let
absorb the information as it ispresented rather than
specifically taking notes oranswering questions.

(06:38):
And then the third and finalkind of research is experiential
, and that's when you take aclass or you do an activity to
learn what it feels like.
This is when you want thesensory detail of the situation,
you experience it.
So for my very first still andalways unpublished novel, I

(07:01):
decided that the pack ofwerewolves that I was writing
about were going to be coloradominers, and why I decided that I
now probably really couldn'tsay, but it seemed to make sense
at the time, and so they.
They had immigrated from theold country and they lived in
the mountains with their.
Their strength and survivalabilities had let them amass a

(07:24):
huge fortune in gold and silverback in the heyday of the
Colorado frontier.
It's kind of a cool concept,actually.
Kind of is actually no, but thestory was not well written, so
whatever, anyway, not going tobe published, maybe someday I'll
go back to it I digress.

(08:01):
So the cool thing was, though.
So I was able to feel the coldand the damp and experience the
dark and see those old toolsthat they would have used.
So it was a really coolexperience that lent itself well
to the story that I was writing.
But obviously I had to take atrip to Colorado, where I don't

(08:23):
live, and the tour itself was,you know, a few hours long.
We had to drive out there.
All this, all of that stuff.
It was actually part of thetrain in the mountains there.
So so it did take more time,more money, more effort, but I
thought it was worth it becauseit was, it gave me all that
sensory detail and that timelimit was already built in

(08:45):
because it was, you know, justthat one trip and just the one
day that we did the mind tour.
So those are really the kind ofthe three main ways of doing
research and you know you got tofigure out what's going to be
best for your story that you'rewriting now, yes, that's a very
good trip.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Your story that you're writing now, yes, that's
a very good trip.
And you know, sometimes, justas a little adjunct to what you
just said, when you doexperiential type research, you
know, maybe that didn't show upin that book, but I bet you've
used caves or that kind offeeling of the dark, cold
underworld thing in some of yourother books, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
For some reason I can't figure out why caves show
up.
A lot of my books have caves inthem.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
They're just creepy.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
I know I have them too.
They're fun.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah they're good.
Anyway, if you guys are enjoyingthis podcast, please consider
supporting the show.
At the bottom of each episode'sshow notes is a link where you
can throw us a couple of bucks.
Your support will really,really help us cover the ongoing
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(09:56):
those things.
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Another way to support the showis to leave a five-star review
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(10:18):
consider doing that as well.
Until next time, keep yourstories rolling.