Research in Creative Nonfiction
Your strongest tools as a writer of creative nonfiction are your eyes, your ears, your other senses, and your ability to think critically about what you have observed. Another essential tool, however, is the willingness to do research, to find out what you didn’t know and share what you find with an interested reader.
Research may involve going to the library, finding facts on-line, or conducting an interview. Beginning writers often balk at the idea, thinking “This is just more work,” but experienced writers know that careful research makes writing easier, stronger, and more interesting for both reader and writer.
The Interview as Research
An interview with a knowledgeable person – an expert, an eyewitness, or someone with a personal connection to your subject – can be useful in many ways. The actual interview may end up part of your essay, or it may serve merely as background, but either way the detail and depth of your writing will be enhanced. Important steps to remember when conducting an interview include:
– Don’t just show up; make an appointment. This not only serves as good etiquette, but it insures that the subject of your interview has set aside a block of free time, during which you will have his or her complete attention. In many cases, it might also mean that your interview subject has thought about matters before you arrive, increasing the richness of your conversation,
– Come with questions ahead of time,
– But be open to surprises. If you listen during the interview,
keeping an open mind, some aspect of the story you hadn’t expected
might come into the conversation, and that aspect may end up being the
focus and discovery of what you write.
Observation as Research
And don’t forget to use your own eyes and ears. If you are writing about a landfill issue, take an hour and drive to the outskirts of town, and observe (even with your nose) what you find. If you are writing about a child in need of special education classes, goes to the school and watch the kids, with no agenda but to see what is there to be seen. If you are writing about your childhood walk through your childhood home and see what has changed, and what remains the same. What is already in your head may be valuable, but never stop there.
Using the Library
If you are unfamiliar with using alibrary, or find the system intimidating, you should begin by checking out these links:
INTERNET PUBLIC LIBRARY: Using the Card Catalog
INTERNET PUBLIC LIBRARY: Finding Journals and Magazines
Of course, every library is arranged differently, and many libraries now use on-line cataloging with variations in software and search terms. The best advice is to remember that your college reference librarian is on staff in order to be of assistance. Don’t be too shy to ask. The reference librarian can often save you valuable time and point you to helpful resources you might not have otherwise found.
The Art of Google
Search engines – such as Google – are really just very clever machines that sort through the millions upon millions of bits of data to be found on the internet. Most search engines index all the text found on a Web page, except for words like ‘and,’ ‘to’, and ‘the.’ When a user submits a query, the search engine finds all the pages that contain the word or words indicated.
Always remember the importance of narrowing your search. On Google, for instance, type in the word “Mississippi.” Notice that you get more than 450 million hits! Narrowing your search to “Mississippi River” (using the quotation marks, which instruct Google to look for the complete phrase), brings that total down to around 25,000 pages, which is still way to many to sort through, but notice how even the first page is more focused.
Try the phrase “Mississippi River Watershed.”
Now type in this string (exactly as it appears below):
"mississippi river watershed" +Louisiana +Katrina
See how well that narrows it down to just the sites you may want to view (if that were your topic)?
It serves you well to learn the ins and outs
of the particular search engine you use, and to take some time up front
considering what terms will narrow down your search to specific and useful
resources, rather than trying to stumble through 450 million pages which
may or may not be on topic.