So I talked earlier in the year about a way of faking it ‘till you’ve made it regarding research with people you’ve already know, and we touched on researching regarding worldbuilding, too. But I’ve found that there is just about literally no such thing as “too much research” when writing about topics you’re not The Expert on.
That said, there are two reasons why you should learn when and where to cut off your researching of subjects.
First, researching VERY quickly leads to procrastinating. Hey, you’re still researching! You can’t write that chapter just yet, or draw that knee joint, or animate those feathers. You need to know all about it so you can learn all there is to know!
This one’s a tricky one to solve, because only you really know your research vs procrastination line, and even then, it takes a long time to figure out where exactly that line lay. (And even then x2, it can lay in different places for different projects, topics, or periods during your life.) Just be conscious of the fact that you DON’T need to know EVERYTHING in order to work on something!
Which leads me into point number two: you’re going to get it wrong. There is no way you can get something that you have to research 100% right.
Maybe you have to fudge something intentionally to fit your story, or maybe the angle you’re drawing from means you have to twist a bit more so the thing is visible. Even if you spend nine and a half hours researching it and you know everything possible about This Thing and you’re now The Expert… you can’t put it into your work. You can’t put something whole into your work. It has to be yours.
If you were looking up bird of prey sizes, diets, and speeds, it’s going to jar the reader if you suddenly talk about the exact length of its talons and pinions. It’s simply not relevant, and if it is, too much technical jargon will ruin your story. You have to make it fit your style. You have to sift through the information, take only what you need, and squish it a little so it’s in a way that doesn’t disrupt your project.
Does that make it feel like you research a bunch of superfluous stuff? Absolutely. But at least YOU know enough to know what to fudge, or squish, or mess with. That’s the important thing, and that’s the point to reach when researching.
Everything else is procrastination.
