Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [48]
Over the years I did do considerable reading in English and Irish history, for recreational purposes rather than research, and I don’t doubt that it enriched my writing in various subtle ways. But I never did write that Irish novel and I doubt I ever shall. I didn’t really want to write it in the first place and used research as a way out.
George Washington Hill, the legendary tobacco company president, used to say that half the money he spent on advertising was a flat-out waste. “The trouble is,” he added, “there’s no way of telling which half it is.”
Research is a lot like that. For the mythical book we’ve been discussing, you would want to browse extensively in books on antique furniture, nibbling here and there, trying to get a sense of the antique business while deciding what type of furniture to deal with in the novel and picking up here and there some specific facts and labels and bits of jargon to give your writing the flavor of authenticity.
Some general reading along these lines, perhaps coupled with a few visits to antique shops and auction galleries, ought to precede the full-scale plotting of your novel, whether such plotting will involve a formal written outline or not. In this way the perspective of your research will very likely enrich the actual plot of the book. Then, having plotted the book in detail, you can return for the pinpoint research, picking up the specific fact that you now know to be necessary for the book.
This is what I did with The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling. In the original proposal for the book, I supplied a vague outline, explaining that Bernie Rhodenbarr, now operating a bookstore as a cover occupation, is engaged to steal an unidentified whatsit from one collector for another. During the idea’s gestation period, I decided to make the stolen item a book of some sort, figuring this would go nicely with Bernie’s cover as bookstore proprietor.
Because I envisioned the man who hired him as a pukka sahib type, the thought came to me of making the elusive volume one of Rudyard Kipling’s. I accordingly availed myself of an armload of rare book catalogues to find out where Kipling stood in the antiquarian book market. I also got hold of a biography of the author and read it.
My research and my vaunted writer’s imagination worked hand in hand. I figured out that the particular book in question would be the sole surviving copy of a privately printed edition which Kipling saw fit to destroy; my copy would be one he’d already presented to his great good friend, writer H. Rider Haggard. I plotted the book accordingly, then went back to the research desk to learn more about Kipling now that I knew what I was looking for. I read a collection of his poems. I sifted some anecdotal material.
Then I started writing the book. And, intermittently, I stopped for some specific spot-research when points came up during the writing that required it.
I could have done more research. I could have read everything Rudyard Kipling wrote instead of limiting myself to the poetry collection and the Just So Stories. I can’t see that it would have hurt the book had I known more, because there’s always the possibility I would have stumbled on something that would have enriched my novel.
By the same token, I could have managed to write this book with considerably less research than I did. I could have invented an item of rare Kiplingana without taking pains to root it in the facts of his life. It would have been good enough with less research, I suspect, but it would not have been as good a book as it is now (whatever its overall merits may be).
How much or how little research any area demands is very definitely a subjective judgment. If the Kipling book played a less central role in the mystery, I’d have been wasting time to delve into the subject so deeply. If it played a greater role—if, say, the whole puzzle hinged on various events in the great man’s