Various industry leaders have weighed in on the subject, and here is a small collection of advice that represents the essence of what the writing community is generally in agreement on:
"If you love research, then you are probably doing too much of it, and you really need to get out of the library and start writing your novel... If you hate research, then you are probably not doing enough of it and your fiction writing is going to suffer in various ways. If you have done so little research that you have to depend on stuff 'everybody knows,' then do some more work, [but beware of putting everything you know in the book.] Your rule of thumb is to put in only about 1% of what you know. Save the other 99% of what you know for your next 99 books." ~ Randy Ingermanson
Lisa Gardner, author of The Killing Hour, agrees that although it's fun to know the exact ins and outs of your character's career or every detail of the setting, the danger is in going home and regurgitating all of them in your novel "when really thrillers are all about entertaining." Keep that story moving forward.
"At the end of the day, you're an author. There are people who have spent lifetimes studying [the topics you are researching.] No amount of research is going to let you get all the details right. If you try, you'll drive yourself crazy, or never start writing in the first place. What I recommend is the Average Reader Rule. If your research is sufficient to convince the average reader, that's enough; it doesn't have to convince the expert. You can definitely shoot for higher than that -- there's a wide gray area in between -- but that's the bar." ~ Ari Marmell, author of fantasy novels and roleplaying games.
On the subject of how much research to do upfront, Marmell believes that "it's very unlikely you can do all the research in advance. You'll absolutely come across questions you didn't think to ask. Don't be afraid to stop and look something up -- if it's important, and if it's something you can look up relatively quickly. If one or the other of those is not the case, you might be better served putting it aside and making a note to come back to it. [...] If you're interrupting your writing every few minutes, or if you're taking hours-long breaks, you're probably better off either holding off until rewrites, or else devoting another day or two to research alone."While we agree with all these pieces of advice, Ari Marmell's Average Reader Rule made us wonder how average should this hypothetical reader be. Take for example the representation of the immigrant experience in such rom-coms as The Proposal and Green Card. For a truly average moviegoer these films would work just fine. After all, majority of people have never had any experience with the process or know anyone who's gone through it. And they don't question it either. After all, this is entertainment, not a documentary, and it's all about the love story anyway.
But what if you're the average immigrant? Any average immigrant knows that you can't just barge into an immigration office and demand an interview about your case, that the process takes months (if not years), and that in this day and age the INS doesn't routinely make house calls. So for these average moviegoers both films ask for a bit too much in the suspension of disbelief department. As a result, as much as they adore Sandra Bullock or Gerard Depardieu, they aren't going to enjoy these movies as the next person. We don't really want to lose readers because we didn't dig deep enough to make sure our stories ring true, do we?
There you have it, folks. Research is necessary, it can give your book the kind of richness of detail that makes the story come alive and helps the readers suspend their disbelief. But proceed with caution. After all, we're here to write.
