It can be a lot of fun to do book research. Hunting down forgotten facts of by-gone times, or little known truths of today's technology.
It's easy to get carried away.
Carried away so far, in fact, that before you know it you've got reams of information and book research that (no matter how hard you try) you're never going to be able to use in your book.
Add this to the frustration of having used all that time for researching your book. Time that would have been better spent writing your book.
The result is a lot of research for your book and research time with absolutely no real value. You may have enjoyed yourself hunting through the stacks at the local resource library, but look upon this simply as a hobby. It will make no useful contribution to researching your book.
Contrary to what you might think, a great book isn't created by taking 20 pounds of book researchon and distilling it into a four ounce tour de force. (Those who use kilograms can make their own conversions.) And you don't have to be an expert in any area to make your book sound and read like the definitive piece.
To put this into perspective, you don't have to be an expert on Bernini art research to create a book like Dan Brown's Angels and Demons.
In fact, if you want to write your book in the shortest possible amount of time, you should decide that factual research will be the very last thing you do for your book. And you must commit yourself to doing the absolute minimum amount of research your book possible to accomplish your work.
How do you do that?
No problem at all.
Here's the magic sentence that will ensure that you do the absolute minimum amount of research necessary for your book:
Write your book first, and then research it!
Sounds rediculous, doesn't it. It isn't!
Write your story, write your book, and each time you reach a place where you have to know something that only research can give you, place an asterisk and write the single question you need to answer for that spot in your story.
Now, when your book is finished, go back to those asterisks and write down all the questions you need to answer for your book.
Notice that you're answering only the questions you need to answer for your book. You're not going to spend a single extra moment looking for information you don't need. And you're not going to spend a single extra moment researching something you only 'think' you'll need for your book.
Even if your book is a lengthy thriller, if your questions are properly organized and you're disciplined, your research should take, at most, only a day at most. Remember, you're out to answer only the questions you've written down. Everything else is unnecessary.
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