When you’re writing crime novels and thrillers, having a vivid imagination, a way with words and a compelling story to tell isn’t always enough. Sometimes you’ve got to do research, too.
I know there are some authors who just sit down in front of a blank screen and write…and if they reach a point where they don’t know something, they just make-up the answer. It’s a novel, they’ll tell you, not a text book. And if it’s wrong, so what? It’s called fiction for a reason.
I’m not one of those guys.
But I’m also not someone who spends months doing research and then shares every detail of what he’s learned in his book so it reads more like a technical manual, travel guide or a doctoral thesis. There’s nothing entertaining or thrilling about reading a gunfight, car chase, or crime scene investigation that has footnotes.
That said, I do a lot of research and think it’s a crucial to telling stories or, more accurately, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, as my friend Lawrence Block described what we do so beautifully in the title of his book on writing. And every good liar, con man, or author knows the best lies have an element of truth to them. That’s how you get someone to believe you… or, in story-telling parlance, to suspend their disbelief.
I believe it takes research to find that truth.
There are two stages of research for me. The first one comes right after I get the idea for my book and begin asking myself the key questions:
What is my story (an adventure? A mystery? A thriller? A western? A psycho-sexual-time-traveling-tone poem etc. )?
Who it is about (An advertising executive? A surgeon? An auto mechanic? An archeologist? A reanimated corpse who becomes a PI? etc)?
What is the “arena” (Law enforcement? International espionage? Professional sports? Dog breeding etc)?
Where is it happening (Cleveland? Paris? Hobart? The planet Zebulon-12 etc.)?
At that point, I start reading books, articles and blogs on the places, professions, objects, industries, science or history involved in what I have in mind…and watching TV shows, documentaries, or videos about them. I do it to learn more, to stoke my imagination, and to convince myself that there’s a story there I want to tell. And if I succeed with that, then I sit down and do a broad outline.
That’s when the real research begins…finding the important details that will give my story the illusion of reality… so I can make up everything else and you’ll find it believable… or at least believable within the fictional world that I create. If it’s a story about thieves pulling off an elaborate diamond heist in Antwerp, I’ll read about similar thefts, learn about diamonds, talk to detectives who’ve investigated similar heists, and fly to Belgium to see the city, and the diamond district, for myself. That’s what I did for The Pursuit, a book I co-authored with Janet Evanovich.
As part of my research over the years, I’ve reached out to experts of all kinds, including FBI profilers, jewelers, sommeliers, paper currency collectors, forensic anthropologists, sanitation workers, NTBS investigators, dentists, skydivers, Navy S.E.A.Ls, shoe-makers, karate instructors, auto mechanics, coroners, chefs, airplane pilots, bankers, insurance salesman, morticians, and sexual surrogates, to name a few. I even asked an orthopedic surgeon, who’d allowed me remain conscious in the operating room while he removed titanium implants from my numbed arm, questions while he worked about a surgically-related murder I was plotting for one of my Diagnosis Murder novels.
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I didn’t have to break any bones to research my new novel Bone Canyon, about the investigation of scorched human bones uncovered after a wildfire roars through the Santa Monica mountains. I read articles about similar cases, books & papers on forensic anthropology, and talked to coroners, homicide detectives, and forensic anthropologists. A missing rape kit plays a key role in a subplot, so I visited the manufacturer of the kits, got my hands on one, talked to sex crimes detectives, and to the medical personnel who collect the evidence from victims. And it’s set in Calabasas, which is where I live.
That’s a shame, because travel is my favorite part of research. To write my books, I’ve traveled to France, China, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, and all over the United States, among other places.
Sure, you can use guidebooks, or watch episodes of Anthony Bourdain or Rick Steves, or do a deep dive into Google Earth to fake it, and I’ve certainly done that a few times out of necessity (and expense), but I truly believe that nothing beats “boots on the ground” to get that tiny detail, smell, taste or sound that will bring a place, a moment, or a character to life. I believe that it’s important to truly experience the place you are writing about. That means not just hitting the tourist spots, but the places where the “locals” live and work. It also means being gregarious and talking to those people—so you can create realistic characters who truly reflect the places you’ve been. I usually already have my story in mind before I travel for research… but inevitably, my story changes dramatically after what I learn from actually experiencing a place I only imagined as I was plotting. But travel research can mean just stepping outside your door and seeing your own city in a new way.
I’ve lived in Los Angeles for forty years. In my novel The Walk a guy is stuck in downtown in LA when a devastating earthquake hits and afterwards he has to walk across a landscape of destruction back to his gated community in the San Fernando Valley. I know L.A. well, but I still read a bunch of books and articles on the city, the architecture, and the neighborhoods that make up story (and tell my lies). Being born and raised in California, I’d experienced earthquakes but I still had to study up on them…and learn what experts expect the damage from The Big One is likely to be. I had the story plotted out but then decided, if I was going to do this right, I really needed to take the walk myself. And when I did (though not all at once, over two days, like my protagonist), I saw things that made me rethink my plot … and I picked up the crucial details of place and character that made the book come alive. When it was over, I had a better understanding, and a new affection, for the city I live in and thought I already knew.
I can talk to dozens of experts, and read three or four books and countless articles, for what might end up being only a few lines of dialogue or description in the book (or, OTOH, what ends up being the core of the story). But that’s always better than writing pages of exposition, description, or dialogue to show off how much research you’ve done. I’m a big believer that one sentence offering a telling detail is far better than a paragraph of description. That said, having the “extra” knowledge on a particular topic in the back of your mind as you write ends up deepening the story and the characters in subtle ways… and often, at least for me, research inspires new characters or plot twists that I never would have come up with otherwise.
For example, two years ago, I attended a professional homicide investigators conference in Wisconsin as research for a book I was thinking about writing (and had already loosely plotted). While I was there, however, I learned about a case that I couldn’t get out of my head. I was smart enough to throw out my story and to focus instead on using this real case as the inspiration for my novel. I introduced myself to all of the detectives, forensic specialists, etc. who were there to present the case, told them I intended to write about it, and asked if they would let me talk with them in more depth in the weeks following the conference. They all agreed. The novel that came out of that wonderful research experience was Lost Hills, the first book in the Eve Ronin series. That book, and now the sequel Bone Canyon, would never have happened if I hadn’t done the research my story…and been open to the inspiration that can come when you begin exploring the “reality” that is the foundation for our fiction.
The danger is that the more I learn about a topic, the more I want to learn…and it’s easy for me to end up spending far more time than is necessary on the research. It’s also a great form of procrastination.. you can fool yourself into thinking you’re working instead of actually avoiding work. God knows, I certainly have. I may be doing it right now.
The most important thing to remember about using your research in your writing is that less is more. Resist the urge to show off all of the reading, interviewing, and traveling you’ve done. Instead, let that experience and knowledge subtly inform your writing, let it come through in your sharp dialogue, well-rounded characters, vivid sense-of-place, and thrilling action sequences. Concentrate more on telling an entertaining, but convincing lie and less on telling the boring, but factual, truth. That is, after all, our job.
