A common piece of advice given to aspiring authors is “write what you know.” Essentially, this proverb is meant to guide new writers to draw from their own experiences as they craft their stories. This is sound advice and, where possible, I tried to follow it when writing both “A Test of Honor” and “The People’s Champion.” I have never fought someone in mortal hand-to-hand combat but I have slept in forests with nothing overhead but clouds and stars. I have never gone to war in the first place, much less returned from war to find my family murdered and my land stolen, but I have experienced the personal sting of petty theft and betrayal. The limited pain I have experienced in my comparatively comfortable life does not come close to what I have put my characters through but it gives me a starting point. Add to my own experiences the words and emotions of others who have suffered far worse, and I can get enough of an idea to craft a story.
For the writer of speculative fiction, perhaps a better piece of advice is to start by writing what you know and then research what you don’t. Whether you’re crafting a ten-novel epic series about space elves fighting solar werewolves or a single novella following a morose immortal in their dreary journey through history, there are some areas where research really won’t help. For those times, you engage in that sacred craft of world-building. While world-building is generally only discussed in regards to science fiction and fantasy, it is actually practiced in every genre, especially literary fiction. Whether an author is spending time describing every brush stroke that adorns a family vase or giving the family in question a cat or a dog, all of these decisions construct the world in which their characters will live. The only difference between the world-building in literary and genre fiction is whether that setting closely resembles our own world or follows a different set of rules- rules which the author uses to tell the story.
Describing what the castle looks like is fine, but it should have a point. How does it make your character feel? More importantly, how do you want the reader to feel about the castle?
Research might begin with curiosity but should ultimately become a focused discipline. While writing the Aidan’s War Trilogy, I learned more about Medieval Europe than I thought possible. I filled my head with economics, superstitions, civil government, papal authority, legal structures, cultural exchange, and the concepts that under-girded them all as well as how they changed and evolved over time. The research itself is terribly fascinating to someone already interested in Medieval History but most fiction readers will not have the requisite curiosity to justify spending three chapters mulling over the fickle supply-and-demand of the shellfish trade.
The aim of such research should not be to show off what you learned but to show how the subjects you studied affect your characters. What does it mean for the peasant farmer that his own bumper crop of lettuce is being undercut by cheap lettuce being produced by agrarian wizards? In a story like that, the reader does not need to understand the strengths and weaknesses every variety of lettuce, nor should they be subjected to the history of lettuce as a staple of whatever people the farmer belongs to. Every time you want to weave something you learned via research into your story, its existence must be justified as necessary to telling your story. If you can’t make the case to yourself, you have little hope that the reader will forgive your foray onto an indulgent rabbit trail.