Anne Fotheringham

Years ago, research for our writing involved prolonged trips to the library, flicking through the card index and hunting books down in the stacks. Today it is simpler – we have the Internet.

Thank goodness. We can now do research from home as we write, moving from our work in progress to websites to check out what information we need. In MS Word, you can right click on a term and select “look up.” It will give you resources to try in your quest for knowledge that range from dictionaries to speciality websites.

I do have to admit though that I loved spending time in the stacks at the university library. I would go looking for one book with specific information in it and find all sorts of other books that interested me, opening my mind to other avenues of study. I still visit my local library to mingle with the shelves of books and choose ones that intrigue me to take home and read.

Today, there are also specific resources online for researching the genre you are working in and its audience. Try typing mystery genre or thriller genre into your search engine and a world of information is available on the genre itself and what books are the most popular.

There’s also a lot of information online from how to charge a car’s battery to how to kill someone. Really. I am not kidding.

Recently I was working on the first draft of the fourth book in my Lamb’s Bay Mysteries. One character is supposed to be found dead in the locked steam room at a spa. The door to the room has been jammed shut and the heat turned up to maximum.

I needed research. How did she die? Was she injured and locked in there and the steam did her in? Is that possible? What does excessive steam do to a body? Or was she dead when she was shut in the steam room. Would the steam mess up the determination of time of death?

I won’t tell you the answers to those questions. You can either research them yourselves or wait to read my book. But seriously, it took a good bit of research to complete this particular book.

Another fact I had to research was what kind of plants will grow over a grave? I won’t tell you more – it would be a spoiler alert.

But as a writer, when you find yourself late one night researching blunt force trauma or how to cut someone’s throat, well it makes you wonder what really goes on in the depths of your mind. So far the police have not contacted me to determine whether I am a crazy writer or a serious killer. And don’t laugh. I know of a writer who was incorporating some information on weaponry in his manuscript, did some online research and found himself contacted by the government. Apparently they are watching us you know.

Another caveat I would pass along is don’t discuss your research in a public place. I was once having coffee with a writing friend and we were working on an idea for a play. It involved the spirit of a woman who had committed suicide. We got so carried away discussing what poison would be best for her to use that it came as a surprise when people around us started getting up and moving away. My friend yelled after them, “It’s okay, we’re just writers.”

As for my latest book, well a lot of the early brainstorming occurred during visits to the spa with another close friend. However, we learned very fast not to discuss the demise of my victim when we were in the steam room. We thought we were alone, but it was hard to determine that due to the clouds of steam. It turned out someone was there – which frankly spooked us – and they got up and left. Since then we have been more careful about discussing my murder-related writing and her fictional world of werewolves in public places. But we still love going to spas.

So let your imagination take your fiction writing wherever it wants to go. The research you need is at hand. And if you are writing non-fiction, you can find what you need online and even conduct interviews with experts via Skype or Zoom or Face Time. Or use email, Messenger, Facebook and a host of other electronic ways of getting the information you need to complete a writing project.

Now excuse me, I have to research if a person can drown in a chocolate fountain after being knocked out. Oops spoiler alert for Book 5.