Don’t Show Your Work

Research. Some writers love research, and dive into it with relish, excited to learn everything they can about whatever subject they’re digging into. Some hate research and its superficial similarity to schoolwork, finding it more fun to just make stuff up. And many of us writers fall somewhere in the middle, moving up and down on the spectrum depending on our goals for the day and our level of hungover-ness.

And that’s fine. Like everything else in writing, there’s a spectrum. Sometimes research is the key ingredient to verisimilitude, sometimes you can get by on a fine mist of bullshit. Sometimes you start a book thinking you can get by without research and then have to shift gears halfway through when your bullshit fails you, and sometimes your research into a subject actually kills your interest in writing about it.

The only reliable way to screw up research is to show your work.

S-M-R-T

Research can be hard work, and invariably your research will lead you to knowing way more about a subject than your story probably requires. But that’s how it goes: You’re writing a story with a character who is a beekeeper, and you realize you need at least a passing familiarity with beekeeping to pass the smell test. So you start reading, and three weeks later you emerge visibly thinned and malnourished but just bursting with beekeeping knowledge.

After your stay in the hospital, you come out better able to write that story. But suddenly the three or four passing details that give your beekeeping character a sense of realism seems kind of a waste. You are, after all, now an expert. You worked hard for this knowledge. You want to get it all in there.

Or, perhaps, you really are an expert, and you’re writing a novel based on your own personal and professional experience. The research isn’t really necessary, then, of course — but you still might be tempted to make an effort to pack in all of your expertise.

Please don’t.

Verisimilitude is a delicate thing, and it’s very easy to drown it in detail. When you experience the urge to gin up endless lecturing exposition and whole scenes dedicated to demonstrating how much your characters (and thus, you) know about a subject, take a step back. Your readers will know when they’re being lectured, and they will keep receipts. If you force them to read fifteen pages about beekeeping trivia and none of it pays off in any way in the story, they will not forget. They will not forgive.

The question you should always ask is simple: Does my reader need to know this, or am I just showing off? There are plenty of reasons information is necessary for your reader, and you as author get to decide what is and what isn’t. But for the love of god, ask yourself this question before you have your POV character lecture me on Bitcoin for 4 pages for no reason other than to impress me with your vast knowledge of cryptocurrency.

Of course, in real life none of this applies. I am a popular dinner guest, for example, because of my exhaustive knowledge of Weird Songs Jeff Put on a Mixtape in 1990.