Non-AI Research for Writers
While I was a researcher for the University of Brighton on a few projects following my MA in Creative Writing, I learned a lot and so I thought I’d share a few non-AI tips with you to help with your own research as a writer.
Here are some different types of research you might do as a writer:
Finding out actual facts for your book. For example, if your character has a job you are not familiar with, you might find out some of the technicalities in this job or if you set your book in a different time to now, you’ll need to find out what was going on in the world at that time and smaller, important things such as what people were wearing.
Researching other books that have been written in the genre you are writing in. This will give you an idea of the landscape you are working in and will be really helpful when you come to pitch your book or story to agents and publishers.
Researching general ideas to back up any bigger themes for your book. For instance, if your book is about climate change or mental health to name a couple of very broad topics, you’ll want a good grasp on what’s being said in these fields right now and to keep up to date.
You might also want to pick an author or two to study in detail to read as a writer and find out how they tackle certain writing techniques. For example, how they structure their story or layout dialogue or approach point of view.
I also call some types of generative writing research. For example, if I’m writing a story loosely about my grandparents. I will want to write down everything I can remember about them. I might not use all of this in a story but I am mining my own memory for details and feelings I can use later.
So here are some ideas you may find helpful:
your local library. Always my first port of call. If I am researching a topic, genre or particular type of book, I will order a pile of books (I am allowed to order six at a time) and this will give me an idea of where to start. This is all free. Also brilliant for local research. They will have connections with local archives.
your local museum. Our small town museum has 25,000 items that are in storage and not on display. They are really happy for requests to look at these objects and holding an object in your hands can make such a difference to your writing and spark many different ideas. This can be useful even if you are researching a time you can remember to jog other memories as well.
talking to people. This is so helpful if you are researching a particular profession or time of life. People are generally really happy to help with specific questions and can be an invaluable source of information. If I’m writing non-fiction and using what someone said as a source (for example, in an interview), I will always show them what I’ve written to check I’ve got it right and to get their permission for me to use it.
your local bookshop. Really helpful if you want to see what type of books are being published and sold in your field or genre. Which is useful if you are looking for comps for your book.
Conscious Style Guide. This website is an amazing resource of information if you are writing about so many issues. It is a repository of articles about race, gender, appearance, climate etc and how to use considered language.
Google Scholar. Brilliant place to start for academic research about a topic. If you look at the small blue text under each entry, you’ll see a ‘Cited by..’ link. Click on this and you’ll see a whole load of related entries. Not all of the articles will be accessible for free unless you are part of a university institution however.
For free articles, I go to DOAJ - The Directory of Open Access Journals. Also, you can read ten a month for free on JStor.
One time, I wanted to research how people sounded (the voice and language) of Swansea people in the 60s, so I looked at old films on YouTube. I have since found this BBC archive website: BBC Rewind, which looks brilliant. I wrote a poem by writing down vernacular phrases the people used in some archive footage of cockle gatherers.
I am no longer affiliated with a university, and I was missing having access to the books. I could have joined the university library as alumni and go there to research but it is a long way for me and so I subscribe to Perlego - not free but has a comprehensive selection of non-fiction books for £12.99 a month. I read a lot of books about writing and editing on here.
your own journals. You can keep records and explorations of all sorts of things that could be useful in future writing projects - the weather, notes on news articles, words for the sea, colours, clothes, dialect, feelings and body language.
And to keep track of all of that research, at the minimum, I have a document running alongside a working draft of my project, that I call ‘Freewriting and Dump Doc’. I paste everything in here - notes, thoughts, research, outtakes from the draft, freewriting around the story. When it gets unwieldy and for research not connected with a particular project, I use Notion. I use the free version and I emailed them to ask them to switch off AI, which they did. But I have just regained access to Scrivener. I haven’t used it for a few years because I wanted something I can use online as well, but I am now thinking of going back to it as an AI-free zone.