How to have a fruitful research trip

Your characters are acquiring quirks and foibles. You’ve got an arc, however wobbly, from beginning to end. A couple of twists are lurking in your sleeves and you’ve got a sentence, or maybe more, that sings. But your setting’s an empty stage, or weighed down with enough clutter to break the boards. Perhaps it’s time for a real-world site inspection visit to check out what your novel does and doesn’t need. Read on for my reflections on how best to go about it, stemming from my (not-so-)recent trip to Cumbria to soak up the atmosphere and check a few facts for my hopefully third novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home.

When to visit. There are two versions of when to consider: the stage of your novel’s evolution and the time in the calendar year. You don’t need me to tell you that it’s better to go in summer if your action takes place in a heatwave, or in winter if you want to feature an out-of-season holiday resort. But tailoring your visit to fit the evolution of the actual writing is more complex, affected by your prior familiarity with the setting and personal preferences regarding how to knock a novel into shape.

A general orientation to the area early in the writing process with a second fact-checking mission towards the end seems ideal, but we’re not always gifted ideal conditions. We’ll be constrained by finance, and the rhythms of the rest of our lives. I was on my fifth draft of Matilda Windsor when I decided to relocate my characters to Cumbria, where I grew up. But it was another eight months before I drove north and across the Pennines to the shores of the Solway, even though it’s only 200 miles from where I live now.

Alone or in company? If, like many writers, you’re an introvert, you might find it easier to soak up atmosphere and information without having to keep another person in mind. Besides, no-one knows your story as well as you do, and someone else’s interests might prove a distraction. On the other hand, there might be someone with expert knowledge willing to show you things you wouldn’t find alone.
 
Or it could be that it’s impractical or less pleasant for you to stay away from home without your significant other(s). With friends and family in the area, I doubted I’d be lonely when I booked a little cottage all to myself. Although not actually planned that way, and I had offers of other options, I relished walking around one small town on my own and another with my sister.
 
How long do you need? How long have you got? It’s easy to estimate how long you can afford (psychologically as well as financially) to stay away and to list the places you need to go and the people you need to meet. But it’s also worth scheduling time for reflection and processing so you’re not overwhelmed, and for any other tasks you need to keep on top of while you’re away. (And, incidentally, are you better off with an internet connection that will help you stay in touch or without to reduce distractions?)

I booked five nights away, with two evenings and an extended afternoon set aside for friends and family, but could have used a little more. Alongside my research, I managed to continue reading and reviewing, although at a slower rate than at home, composed and posted a 99-word story and responded to comments on my own blog (which isn’t too arduous) and dozens more on my guest post on branding hosted by Charli Mills. I also assured myself of time for contemplation with daily walks of at least an hour through fields, streets, hill and beach with varying associations to my novel.

Prioritise your time. With a galaxy of facts, description, pictures and videos streamed to our computers, it’s questionable whether a research visit is necessary at all. But if you’re going, it makes sense to prioritise the things you can’t get so easily from the internet: sounds and smells; poking into obscure corners no-one else would be interested in; that enigmatic thing called atmosphere; the unexpected and unanticipated you can’t find through a search engine if you don’t know what to tell it to look for.

I composed a list of my impressions as I went along, from topographical features to the coconut scent of gorse bushes along the coast to how the softness of the water made me wish I’d used less shampoo; things my social-worker character Janice might have noticed when she moved to the area. But despite my story’s setting in a longstay psychiatric hospital in the late 1980s, I decided against driving up to Carlisle to see the site of the former county asylum as Google maps made clear it’s now a housing estate.

Separate your personal interests from what the story needs. Having done all this fascinating research, generating real or virtual files stuffed with facts and photos, don’t assume you need to find a place for it all in your novel. Most of what you’ve collected won’t be needed, and that’s okay. Enjoy the process but don’t dump it all on the reader.

Looking around Workington, Allonby and Maryport for examples of the style of house where Matty would have lived in the 1920s and 1930s (from one room in a slum with an outside toilet and no running water to a three-storey gentleman’s dwelling with a daily woman to cook and clean), I became fascinated with small-town architecture in a way I’d never been before. But although I found several near-misses, and so many photos the locals must have thought I was scouting for some house-renovation TV show, I never found a house that exactly fits my story. No matter, it’s fiction, I can make it up.

In fact, very little of what I observed on that visit is likely to make it into the novel, even if I need to do another draft. But I believe it was worth checking. Similarly, although Janice’s visit to the Pencil Museum in Keswick consumes only a few words in the manuscript, I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent there – and got a blog post out of it.

Despite the effort I put into this trip, I’m generally a lazy researcher, preferring to write from within. But, when Charli called for 99-word stories about comets, I was grateful for the World Wide Web. As a stand-alone, the word brought me no inspiration, until I recalled the comet I’d seen from a campsite not far from where Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home is set.

Perhaps I could steal Charli’s idea and incorporate a genuine comet into my WIP? Unfortunately, although both occurred in the 1990s, the dates didn’t quite coincide. But my researches reminded me that some took Hale-Bopp's wonder a little further than I did. Sadly, this was my kind of story.

Heaven’s Gate Away Team

I stared and stared, praying for God to reward me. To grant me a glimpse of that celestial spaceship carried in the comet’s tail. But Marshall’s vision was sharper than mine. And his faith.

When the time came, we swallowed the elixir, pocketed the interplanetary toll. We lay on our bunks, veiled in purple cloths. We waited.

The pain was my soul struggling to escape the bonds of my body. The moans were angels serenading us to the sky. Paralysis signalled I was becoming transhuman. And yet.

What if Hale-Bopp were simply a comet? What if Marshall were wrong?