: Re: Incorporating research and background: How much is too much? The amount of research I'm doing for my novel is staggering. To the point where my spouse says I need to write a companion book

@Kristi637

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I think you're conceptualizing this wrongly. The research doesn't end up in your work, it informs your work.

The amount of research you do ends up affecting the fabric of your book, how real it feels, how multilayered the world is, how unexpected the details, and connections. But NO piece of research should ever be included in your book just because you know it. Your research is there so you have something to draw on whenever you need it. To put it another way, you aren't doing research to put it in your book, you're doing it to pull your book out of it.

As far as how much research you need, it needs to be enough that your world feels compelling and real, but not so much that it's stopping you from writing. If it isn't interfering with your writing, no amount of research is "too much." If it inspires you to write richly detailed prose, that's all to the good. But if you're shoehorning it into the book, not because it belongs, but just to show off your knowledge, then it's "too much." And if you're spending all your time researching, and you never actually write the book, that's "too much" too.

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