Usually you have to pay to access these, but chances are, your local, state or national library will have already paid for a subscription to the sources you need. You might find what you need in an old story in National Geographic or the latest medical journal. If you need to know about a particular person, for example, they might be listed in a specific reference text – Grove Encyclopaedia of Music, say, or a dictionary of biography from Ireland. Sign up for free, and you can scout across enormous databases of publications, scholarly journals, encyclopaedias on any topic – all from your desk at home. Major reference libraries and public libraries provide access to a huge range of trusted resources you may not find through a commercial search engine. Alternative search toolsīut you don’t have to start with Google. This is handy even if you aren’t looking for a photo – the image is just a neat way to get you to a blog or article you might not have found in a general web search. Why? Apart from the obvious, it’s a big help if you’re looking for an old photo – just choose Black and white and hey presto, all the movie stills and clip art will vanish. One great tool is in Google image search, where you can limit your results by colour. What happens if you change the country domain – are you searching for US or Canadian or Australian or UK sources, for example? The information you find can be different, depending on the country in which it’s hosted – very useful for getting two sides of an international debate, or hiding stuff you don’t want to see. The big search engines give us great tools for refining our queries by time or date, or by country, or even by reading age (perfect if you’re writing for kids). You can also limit your search to a specific site of general web domain – just type your keywords then site: and the domain, eg site:gov – or file type, eg type:pdf. Inverted commas make it much easier to find titles of books or specific concepts. You only want results with both words, and in that order. For example, if you want to look up a quote or a line from a poem, try putting quote marks around it, like this: “Feed your talent” – if you just type feed your talent, you’ll get results with the word feed or the word talent. If you’re having trouble, you can limit your search query by using inverted commas. If you want to read informed medical advice, search using terms a doctor or medico might use. If you want to see results from a whole lot of health forums on which people discuss their symptoms, use common words. Who would write that? Try to imagine the words they would use to describe it. Think about what material you want to find. You can add extra words to it if they are useful refinements, but don’t just keep adding terms. Some tips on searching well: first, start with a broad query then refine it. But is it what you really want, and is it any good? It seems so easy to look stuff up, doesn’t it? A quick Google search, and there’s a world of information at your fingertips. So here are a few things I’ve learned that can help you, no matter what form your writing takes. I write historical fiction, which involves more research than some other forms – luckily, I love the process of imagining, seeking, finding, interrogating and then integrating (or not) material that helps me populate an imagined past and draw its people. Whether you’re writing a memoir based largely on your own life, a story set in a neighbourhood you know well, a fantasy in a created universe, or a feature article, research can add depth, verisimilitude, and those telling details that further plot or character. Research not only wins the war on cliché, it’s the key to victory over fear and its cousin, depression.’ – Robert McKee, StoryĪll writers need research. In this guest post historical fiction author Kelly Gardiner shares some of the wonderful free resources that writers can use to make the most out of their research time.
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