Research Something Foreign to You

I’ve spoken before about the value of local color in writing. As readers, we crave what John Updike called “news from another world”. We love seeing the richness and detail of a world of experience that is different from our own. There is something inherently satisfying in learning about the details of a different life, and that’s why writers should take pains to learn about these details as well.

Readers get a lot of pleasure out of the details of other cultures, and it’s something you can easily acquire in your reading if you take the time to do a little research. If you want to write about a different country or culture, start by giving yourself a firm foundation in that world. Read up on the politics and religion, but more than that, learn about the little details that make up daily life — the typical diet, the local superstitions, the small beliefs about good and bad luck, the afterlife, rituals of marriage and death, games played by children. It’s these little things that make up the “local color” we’re so fond of reading about. So make sure you have them at your fingertips! Rather than making sweeping generalizations about the feelings or personality of an entire culture, give us a portrait of one family and how they might go about their lives.

Research can often be a writer’s best friend. Not only does it give us facts, it also can get us interested in something we may never have heard of before, and that may get us writing new stories. If you learn unexpected details about an event in history, for example, you may feel inspired to write about it from this newly informed perspective. So this week, if you’re feeling stumped, try heading to your library and checking out a book about a different culture’s practices and superstitions. You may be surprised at all that you get out of it.