Writing Research Tips: Go Beyond Wikipedia!

Hey friends! I actually enjoy doing research for my stories, but I’m fully aware that for some folks it feels like an arch-nemesis. Luckily Wikipedia and Google tell you everything you need to know, right? Well, not exactly. 

Let’s get right into it: Wikpedia is a great resource, but things are often simplified. While it’s tough if not impossible to get actual lies on there, nothing is immune to editorial bias. You’ll usually see a warning banner at the top or bottom of the page if the article has insufficient or unclear evidence supporting the information it’s giving you. My best advice is to heed those banners, and to use Wikipedia only as a jumping-off point for your research journey. It is very good for lists of items, places, species, and people, all of which you can then get more information on from other sources. 

So what are those other sources? Well, let’s start off with Youtube. No, I’m not joking. 

The best and biggest resource for learning most things on Youtube is, without a doubt, Crash Course. It’s a Youtube channel full of free high school and early-college-level lectures on pretty much any branch of academic learning imaginable, run by brothers John and Hank Green with help from plenty of other amazing people. They’ve been making this stuff since 2011 and they’re still adding new material. 

NASA, The Smithsonian, the British Museum, and most other large museums have their own channels too, and so do a lot of zoos and aquariums if you’re looking for firsthand animal information. If you want information on fighting with old-fashioned weapons, plenty of hobbyist HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) fighters have channels too. I’d recommend staying away from Shadiversity’s channel though. Far away. Some of his content is interesting, but he’s also a pretty nasty bigot and more of an armchair critic of historical fighting than an actual practitioner. 

Okay, my next favorite resource is the library. Nothing is cooler than a library card. I know my nerd is showing here, but that’s the point. Nerds are pretty darn good at research. A lot of libraries, at least here in the PNW, even have extra sections of oversized reference books that aren’t available to check out but can be read at the physical library for as long as you please.

Information found in library books is more likely to be out of date since they have a much higher proportion of used or older titles, but you can also find weird little anecdotes and pieces of trivia in those books that might not have made it online. Those can be pretty inspiring. Often when I have time I’ll pack my backpack with snacks, a bottled juice and my laptop and spend half a day at the library, just taking notes and doing a deep dive. 

If you’re looking for ownvoices advice on writing people from marginalized groups you aren’t part of (POC, LGBTQIA, Neurodivergent, Disabled, etc) then I actually highly recommend Tumblr. Many writers from those communities are on there and post lists of tips, tricks, and things to avoid at all costs. 

And finally, Google Scholar. It’s a form of Google Search that will narrow down your results to just scholarly articles and research papers matching whatever keywords you typed in. These papers tend to be hyper-specific to one niche field or even just one study, and can be a bit dense with technical jargon, but if you can slog through all the data you’ll almost always find something worth your time. Plus, you can check the citations at the bottom for other papers covering the same or similar topics! 

Alright, that’s about it on writing resources for today. See you next time!