My Search History While Writing Fantasy Would Get Me Arrested
Hello, dear readers,
Anyone who has ever written fantasy probably knows exactly what I'm talking about. I'm still waiting for a SWAT team to break down my door in the middle of the night demanding an explanation, while I'm standing there in my Hello Kitty pajamas, holding a cup of coffee and wondering how to make these fictional people listen to me. And if I'm being completely truthful, I'd probably end up questioning the SWAT team about their tactics while they're there, because you never know when that information might be useful for a future book.
That being said, if anyone ever looked through my computer, they'd find everything from medieval torture devices and historical execution methods to burner phones, blood loss, poisonous plants, political coups, obscure medieval laws, and questions about whether a human body's worth of blood could fill half a bathtub. (Don't ask. :D)
At some point, I'm no longer an author writing a fantasy novel. I'm simply a deeply suspicious person researching deeply suspicious things.
Nobody warns you how ridiculously easy it is to fall down a research rabbit hole, either. One moment I'm looking at ceremonial robes for a royal wedding, and somehow twenty minutes later I'm reading about poisonous flowers and historical assassination methods. Then I discover something so interesting that I can practically throw my outline away because the research has given me a better idea.
Inspiration has always come from strange places for me. One idea spills into another, which leads to another, and I think that's part of the beauty of creating stories. Sometimes you genuinely don't know where they'll take you, what you'll discover along the way, or what tiny piece of information will suddenly change an entire scene.
It becomes even more interesting when I'm writing from the perspective of someone who is nothing like me. If I accidentally bump into someone on the subway, I'll probably apologize. One of my characters might insult them and somehow make the entire situation their problem instead. Suddenly, I have to get inside that person's head and understand why that reaction feels completely reasonable to them.
That's one of my favorite things about writing. It doesn't only allow me to explore fictional worlds; it lets me temporarily explore what it might feel like to be someone else. Someone who doesn't care about rules. Someone painfully kind. Someone reckless. Someone tyrannical. Someone capable of making decisions I would never make myself.
And then there's the frankly ridiculous amount of research compared with what actually makes it onto the page. I can spend an hour trying to understand one tiny historical or medical detail only to use that knowledge for two sentences. The reader will never know how much research went into them.
But that's exactly the point. Research isn't there so I can proudly announce, "Look how much I know!" It's there so nothing pulls the reader out of the world. Sometimes knowing far more than I actually write allows me to choose the two details that make a scene believable without burying the reader beneath an encyclopedia.
The funniest part is that most of my questionable research eventually becomes something completely innocent on the page. I can spend an hour reading about blood loss only to write three sentences. I can research medieval torture methods just to realize that the scene works better without showing the torture at all. I can disappear into a rabbit hole about poisonous plants and eventually use none of it because apparently my characters had other plans.
Maybe that's why research has become one of my favorite parts of writing. For a few hours, I get to borrow somebody else's brain. I get to ask questions I would never need to ask in my real life and consider decisions I would never personally make. I get to understand why someone cruel believes they're justified, why someone reckless doesn't stop to consider the consequences, or why someone kind continues choosing kindness when the world gives them every reason not to.
Writing gives me an excuse to be curious about absolutely everything, including things that would look horrifying without context. So yes, my search history is questionable. Very questionable.
But until somebody knocks on my door demanding an explanation, I'm going to keep researching medieval weapons, suspicious amounts of blood, poisonous flowers, criminal behavior, political coups, and whatever else my characters apparently decide I need to know.
And if the SWAT team does eventually arrive?
I have questions.
I might as well get some research done while they're here.
If you’d like to follow the journey of the book I am writing and see how it’s coming together, you can find more here:
But if you want to, you can see more about my work as a ghostwriter here:
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