Craft of Writing: Research and Rewrite.

 Dear Reader,

Sometimes what we are working on requires us to do some digging to get facts straight about details we are incorporating into our stories. Research is not a dirty word. It can, however, lead to the proliferation of the dreaded plot bunny population. (I keep a notebook to write down ideas that pop up as I am doing research on things. It sort of works to control the plot bunny population that I'm dealing with at any given moment.) There's a special set of skills that you need to do good research.

Yes, being a Google-Fu master helps, but the ability to critically analyze the information you find is extremely important. It is the difference between using the word lacerations to describe a person's face covered in tears or to describe a person's face covered in wounds. The foundational ability of critical analysis is the ability to ask questions about what you are looking at.

Equally important is the ability to organize the information you have available. This makes the difference between my sentence using 'lacerations' and the rest of this piece. That sentence was deliberately muddled as a quick brain teaser. If you are good at drawing out the information and good at organizing it in the process of questioning what you have before you, you probably caught just how bad that sentence was fairly quickly. (I apologize, it wasn't a very nice thing to spring on you. Don't worry, there won't be a pop quiz later.)

This brings me to the next word that isn't a dirty word for us writers: rewrite. Revising your work on the basis of new information is pretty big in academia. It's probably the cornerstone of the scientific method. Rewriting a scene or a whole book because you have new information is a lot of work. It is, however, almost always worth doing. Rewriting gives you the opportunity to use those critical thinking skills that you applied in the research process on your own creation. This allows you to find the weak spots (like that sentence two paragraphs upstream) and correct them. It also allows you to develop greater depth to your work by incorporating new information and details.

Rewriting a piece after doing research is like applying a new coat of paint to your house. Sure, it is a ton of work. At the same time, even if the color isn't different, the house will look fresher for that new paint. Honestly, we all want to have the best house we can manage. The extra effort is worth it in the end because it helps hone your skills and makes the next project better than the previous one.