: Re: How deeply should I study the background of a community before writing about it? By "background", I mean the dialects, habits and culture of the community. Also, I wonder if it is even possible

@Megan928

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Two suggestions:

Explain something in detail

on Writing Excuses, they recommended that in this situation you take one thing and explain the heck out of it, then take another and don't explain it at all.

For cultures, you can put in one or two things from your study of the culture, and really go into detail to the point where it looks like you know what you're taking about. Then you won't have to go into as much detail for other aspects, but you'll still (hopefully) have a very authentic feel. The result is that it looks like you could have described everything in more detail, but, like any good fiction author, you're focusing on the action/characters/story.

For example:
In a fight scene set in ancient Japan, study up on some etiquette and weapons, describe those in detail ("Yojimbo drew his sword and dropped into a fighting stance, waiting mutely for his opponent to acknowledge the challenge by doing the same" and "the sword was his grandfather's katana, forged from fine steel folded a hundred times for tensile strength"), and then leave out explanations for the other details.

(Note: I haven't actually studied ancient Japanese etiquette and weapons for these examples, but hopefully I've illustrated the point).

Expert alpha reader

It's pretty important (if a significant portion of your audience knows as much or more about the subject than you do) to have an alpha reader who is an expert in the subject matter proof-read it when it's "done" and correct any glaring problems.

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