How Research Can Add Life to Your Story

This is going to be a shorter post, but I wanted to share something that I learned while writing Dream Sparks that really contributed to helping the story come to life. When I first started creating the world that Dream Sparks takes place in I was still in college, and was doing it for fun. I had more experience in writing academic papers than I did in writing stories. I have learned so much throughout the process of writing Dream Sparks! Writing fiction is different than writing academic papers, not only in that the writing style used is different but also in that researching things for the story feels like a different process.

When I would do research for an academic paper, I had a set topic and would look up articles and studies related to that. When I did research for Dream Sparks it was more varied, and often times it would focus on personal accounts/experiences of the things I wanted to learn about. For example, I spent time researching what it’s like to live in a rainforest, as there is a planet in Dream Sparks with that climate. I have never been to a rainforest myself, and learned so much about them! I’ve found that if you add little details from the real world to your fiction novels it really helps bring them to life!

I’ve seen that a lot of my research now comes from questions that my story brings about. When Franca gets injured in the story I do medical research so that I can answer my questions of how long the injury should last, and what impact it has on her life while she has it. Franca travels a lot in space, which has caused me to ask questions relating to ships. How is temperature regulated on a space ship? What happens when a ship runs out of fuel? How thick is the metal of a ship, and how well would that protect against enemy ships firing at it? These are just a few things that I spent time learning about. I’ve had a lot of fun with this, and know that I will continue to have questions as I keep on writing!

I’ve researched the International Space Station more than I ever did before writing this novel! I listened to a lot of interviews from astronauts, and some of what I learned made it into my story. I can’t really remember which interview I heard this from, but I remember an astronaut talking about being outside of his space ship for the first time. He mentioned how he had held onto the outer railings too hard, causing his hands to hurt . That really stood out to me, and in Dream Sparks Franca does something similar when she is on the outside of a ship. I’ve always felt like that little detail not only added something realistic to the story, but also added some emotion to that particular scene of the novel.

Now that I’m working on the next novel in The Vision of Light Series I’m looking forward to seeing where my research takes me!