8  Researching

When writing, whether it be fiction or nonfiction, there will need to be some research to help build and flesh out the narrative.

We may be very experienced with much of what we write about, but when there are gaps in our knowledge, we have to do some research to plug them. Whatever our knowledge level, in gaining more, with the internet, we will mostly come across a plethora of information, but with so many opinions and supposed facts, we will have to evaluate what the value of each piece of information is to our endeavour.

Sometimes, what can appear authoritative may not be so reliable. Historical accounts may be heavily biased, sometimes because the rigour with which events are recorded may be lacking, or the writers were wanting to present themselves or their actions favourably to their intended readers. For these, the most authoritative material might well be historians who have extensively researched the politics, archaeology and circumstances of the time, and have thoroughly documented their findings. Other so-called historians may have cherry-picked information to support their own biases about the events.

Supportive statistics need to be vetted for their relevance and methodology used, to make sure no inadvertent biases influenced the results or their compilation. There have been many recent discoveries of some researchers who have fabricated their results over many years, such is the pressure for academics to publish significant papers in order to retain their professorships. We must also be vigilant about not letting our own biases blind us to what we may have made invalid deductions or conclusions about.

However, when speculating about topics that may not have a means of physical proving any narrative we expound about them, we may have to resort to what others in the field may have written that may support our view. We will have to be very careful about how much we rely upon their opinions, as the nature of such topics may have lead many to make inconsistent claims or narratives as a result of their own speculations and beliefs. We also have to accept that no one has to believe anything we write, and that the best we can do is to make sure we explain as best we can from our own understanding.

Sometimes we might develop a narrative for which we do not have any proof, other than a thread of reasoning. That does not mean that we cannot write about it, but we might have to be on the lookout for supportive evidence or reasoning that we may come across in our reading or viewing travels, and add it to our related sites links for those articles. Other times, what others present may prompt us to thinking about those in different ways, or an extended narrative, that they may not have thought about, and thus we have an opportunity to further ours and others understanding.

Regardless of the topic, we have to be rigorous in our own reasoning so that our narratives are consistent and make sense, lest we just add to the huge pile of misinformation that fills our social media feeds. If we are ready to be open to having our conclusions challenged, we will be better able to adapt to new lines of thought about the topic, and thus hopefully add to the pool of useful dialog that humanity can draw upon to have a better understanding of our world and our part in it.