How do you use the Internet to research your work?
I've spent the last month carefully sifting through Wikipedia entries by date--if you type in any month, day, or year in history, that magnificent research engine will give you a timeline of the news and events.
I can't tell you how invaluable that process is for reconstructing a certain time period for my novel. Wikipedia gives me research leads so I can track down the news stories, fashions, and popular culture artifacts from the time period I'm trying to reproduce.
Today, BookNinja (who is on fire today, three super-useful posts in a row) pointed out a Guardian blogger and novelist who noticed that this hyperlinked history lesson could be hurting his writing style. Do you agree with Ben Myers?
"The days of laborious research to produce credible fiction are disappearing. More and more, writers simpley click a link, skim-read an article, and extract the (questionable) facts. Clearly there is an argument then that far from keeping us informed and up to date, the internet and sites such as Wikipedia are in fact making writers lazy, unconvincing and inaccurate. I hope I'm not one of them."
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I tend to avoid Wikipedia like the plague. Some people think its silly but there is so much information out there that is not open sourced and edited with an agenda, that I prefer to find what I consider more legitimate sources. Although my research is not to build a novel, I imagine my process would be the same: enter a search term and dig around until I find something written by a source I think I can trust. When I was writing journal articles for the CSULB Health Center, I was told to never use a .com as a source, so my training really has been to search for the most authoritative source possible; Wikipedia is not that for me.
Posted by: Kimberlee Morrison | June 29, 2007 1:37 PM | Permalink to Comment