I’m at the stage with my current project when research is required. I don’t like research, and don’t normally do much of it—just a little fact-gathering here and there. In this case, I do need some extry knowledge. Interviewers have asked me before about what kind of psychological research I do to get into the heads of my characters. The answer is: none. Which makes me sound lazy! But when I heard Andre Dubus III speak recently, he answered a question about research in a way that made total sense to me:
A woman in the audience asked him what research he did for The Garden of Last Days to understand how a stripper thinks, how a terrorist thinks. He said he did go to strip clubs (tough gig!) and ask a lot of questions, but they weren’t questions like, How does it feel? What goes through your head? They were questions like, Where do you put your tips during your shift? What do you wear backstage? How much money is a good night and how much is a bad? Etc.
When it comes to the psychological parts, he said he mostly imagines. Then pointed out there’s a difference between imagining something and making it up. I don’t remember the words he used to describe the difference, because I immediately knew what he meant and went off into my own little head space about that. It’s something to do with approaching from the inside out vs. the outside in, and putting yourself as a feeling human in the center of things and going from there. Empathy and compassion, also involved. Knowing as many little facts and concrete details as you can helps you get there, to the place where you can imagine a whole, authentic human rather than slapping researched feelings onto a made up one.
Speaking of facts and details, Stuart O’Nan makes great use of them in Last Night at the Lobster. I seriously felt like I could run a Red Lobster after I read that. Yet, the details do not overwhelm, and the novel is full of authentically imagined humans.
5 comments for this post
GREAT post. O’Nan is one of my favorite authors and LNatL is great. Completely agree with you about his use of detail, etc.
Sara Reply:
July 7th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
@scott neumyer, What’s your fave O’Nan? I have Songs for the Missing and The Good Wife out from the library but haven’t started either yet.
The insight about imagining makes sense especially in light of a story i read yesterday by a student of mine who wrote as a married adult. The character had been imagined, not made up.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this since I read your post yesterday. I think that empathy and compassion and knowing a place where you can imagine a “whole authentic person” are absolutely important and necessary. I also think it’s very possible to imagine yourself, as the writer, inhabiting a world, both physical and emotional, that’s different from who you are. But as a writer of middle grade novels, with plots that center around the psychological landscapes of 12-year-olds, I feel an enormous sense of responsibility. So, when I approach a topic about which I don’t have personal experience (alcoholism, dead moms) I tend to do some research. Talk to therapist-friends who work with people on these topics, read a lot. Or some times I just talk to people who have gone through whatever it is that I’m working on. I love imagining and putting myself into my main character but I feel very, very responsible. I want to get it right.
Great point, Karen. Yes, for example when it came to writing about Cameron in Sweethearts (and for that matter, Jenna), I double-checked all my instincts against research to make sure I wasn’t missing something glaring, or adding something that didn’t belong.