As I’ve talked about here and here and here, I write longish outlines for my novels. As I’ve been working my way through the outline for The Black Flame (the second volume in my YA series about a teenage girl involved with witches, demons, and immortal beings from the Garden of Eden), I realized another benefit of writing in such detail — it allows me to get the bulk of my research out of the way before I start writing.
There’s nothing that kills forward momentum in a writing project more absolutely than reaching a point where you say to yourself, “Well, hell, I need to go research the Black Plague/nuclear weaponry/wormholes/World War II submarines/state parks in Minnesota/how dirigibles work/whatever.” Everything grinds to a halt while you scamper off to do your research, and gaining that momentum back can sometimes be difficult, especially if it gets interrupted again by the need for more research into something else you didn’t realize you didn’t know when you started writing.
Some writers just put in placeholders that read along the lines of [research whatever/add shit here], and that’s fine, unless there are later plot points or character developments that hinge on what you need to research now. If that’s the case, you’ll end up with an increasingly note-riddled story with big chunks of potentially very important information missing. This can get really ugly, and makes the second drafts more work than they otherwise should be (or that I would like them to be).
I do my research during the outline phase. By writing the outline in such detail, I realize that, “Oh, yeah, I’d better get some info on djinns and machine pistols.” There’s no real momentum in an outline, so there’s nothing to break or interrupt. I expect the outline to be rather slow and tedious. I don’t mind stopping to go look stuff up. It means when I sit down to write the first draft that I can motor through it pretty quickly because all of the hard decisions and research have already been done. It also means that my first drafts are pretty clean, and don’t change a lot from first to final. (Note: there are always changes, whether brought about by me, suggestions from my agent, or my editor, but they usually aren’t of the “this whole section doesn’t work get rid of it” or “all of this needs to be rearranged” variety.)
I realize that there are writers who research big chunks of stuff before they ever start writing. Kat Richardson and Cherie Priest just embarked on a really interesting road trip that will help both of them with research on future projects. And that’s great, and definitely helps, and works for other writers. If you know your book is going to involve a character who’s a funeral director, go out and research the hell out of that business before you even get started. You’ll probably end up with more information than you’ll use, but that’s okay, and a perfectly valid way to operate.
There will still probably be stuff that crops up later that I didn’t expect, but the number of those pesky little incidents are definitely lessened compared to what would happen if I wrote shorter outlines or didn’t outline at all.
