Think before you write

Research is important no matter what field you are in. A teacher, doctor, plumber, mechanist, any profession really must make sure they do research before they do any task. Without research things could go terribly wrong, sometimes life threatening wrong and sometimes just an inconvenience. But either way it leads to an incompetency of one’s job and when you are not capable of doing your job, people aren't going to hire you or want you to do that job.

Writing is the same way. Whether it is fiction or non-fiction, research must be done to complete the book or novel to its best, and so that people will trust what you are saying. If you are writing a book about frogs then you wouldn't start writing without knowing everything there is to know about frogs, how they eat, when they sleep, how they mate, what their habitat is like.

Even in creative work, research must be done; sometime you've done research and not even realized it. In creative non-fiction you have your experiences which are your research, why you are writing the things you are. In fiction you wouldn't write about something you didn't know about, and if you did you would research it first.

Jodi Picoult is a perfect example of a writer who does research before she writes a novel. All of her novels have forms of research in them, many involve the law and she has done much research as to what goes on in courtrooms and how the justice system work. For her novel The Tenth Circle did spent months researching the topics before she even began writing.

Check out Jodi Picoults site and other novels here : http://www.jodipicoult.com/

The book is about a 14-year old girl who is raped by her ex-boyfriend and the struggles that come afterwards with the town and the girl’s family. The book constantly relates to the circles of Hell, which Picoult researched in depth so her novel fitted into them well. She also talked to a group of teenagers to see what kind of games they played at parties, and how teenagers acted in school. If she hadn’t done that research, the scenes at school would not have been believable and thus she would have lost the readers trust and interest.

Watch the trailer for the made for TV movie of The Tenth Circle 

It is impossible to have a successful novel or any piece of writing if you don’t have the trust of the reader. If the reader does not trust the writer, then they will lose interest and feel betrayed by the novel. It is hard to stay engaged in a piece of writing that you do not believe. Even In fantasy novels, the writer has done much research to assure there are no loopholes or places where the made up world does not make sense.

J.K Rowling spent around 6 years researching and creating the wizarding world before the first Harry Potter novel was published in 1997.