By Megan Reillyhttp://members.dencity.com/eponine
So, Why Research?
It's not necessary to do research to write a story. Often, living your everyday life will give you all the information you need for your story: how your characters will feel and react, what the world is like and how it works. The commonly given advice is, "Write what you know."
Research comes in when you want to write what you don't know. Maybe you can guess how someone would react, or how something would feel, but you've never experienced it yourself and you aren't sure. Or you need a certain fact or detail to make everything fall into place. That's where research comes in.
Research can be fun, or it can be hell. Some of it depends on what sort of person you are, how much curiosity you have, and what sort of skills you have. Research skills can be learned, but only if you want to learn them. Whether you like to do research will likely determine the sorts of stories you write.
When Should I Do My Research?
Ideally, do it before you start writing. This is mostly so you won't have to go back and redo everything you got wrong. If you find out you were completely off base, you might stop writing the story rather than have to go back and do over.
Also do research if you get stuck. If you don't know what happens next, finding out more can open up the realm of possibility. Ideas will present themselves to you–maybe the very idea you needed to continue on your path.
Don't do too much research. If you read more than you need to know before you start writing, you'll be so sick of hearing about it you won't want to write. It's also easier to sit and surf the net or read a book than it is to write–so don't fall into the timewasting trap. (Which is my favorite thing to do, which is why I know all the good places to look for information.)
Where Should I Start?
In the olden days, about five years ago, you'd have to truck on down to the local library and find yourself at the mercy of the librarian's choices in books. But now there's the internet. You can find almost anything on the internet quickly if you know where to look. (I always claim I can find out anything in 5 minutes or less. Most of the time I'm right. Enough about me.)
X-Files resources
If you're writing about the X-Files and don't have every detail committed to memory, you need to bookmark Deep Background. This is a comprehensive guide to everything about the show. It also has a lot of other information about things like locations (where the heck is Quontochontaug, anyway?) and law enforcement. Questions it didn't even occur to you to ask are here. Trust me.
Very general resources
The Writers Guild of America has a ton of research links, broken down into categories. It's like an entire reference library of links at your fingertips. They also have stuff for you if you want to branch into screenwriting, such as a list of agents and script registration.
Search engines. Everybody has their favorite, and I'm not going to argue with you. I'll just tell you my favorites are Metacrawler because you can search for a string of words as a phrase without knowing Boolean commands, which really cuts down on the junky returns, and Google because they seem to have more sites indexed than anyone. Google also caches pages, which means if they've indexed a page and you can't connect to it or it's disappeared, you can still grab the info from it.
Specific resources
MABTNG's Forensics page used to be here:
http://www.oocities.org/Area51/Rampart/1035/ and moved to the I in the FBI, but I'm having some trouble finding the I in the FBI site at the moment...Meantime, try "Ask Dr. Scully".
The Encyclopedia Mythica can also be useful.You can draw inspiration for plots from ancient stories (excellent for thinking up demons and weird things). A mythological reference can also be just the perfect touch for a character name or a story title.
The Alternative Russian Language Dictionary contains all sorts of bad language Krycek might use.
Let's say you want to hurt Mulder. Hurt him bad. Try HealthAnswers.com. WebMD is good, too. And if you want to make him really crazy, try Dr. Grohol's Psych Central.
WorstCaseScenarios.com, the site for the book of the same name, won't tell you how to jump off a moving train (or will it?) but it will tell you how to do all kinds of other action-oriented things.
If you're writing a post-colonization fic and are wondering how the whole surviving thing goes, try the Nuclear War Survival Skills site which has an entire book about surviving in less than optimal conditions.Officer.com has a ton of information about law enforcement. Interesting stuff.
Story ideas
If you go to Yahoo! and click on "News", on the left hand side there's a selection for "Oddly Enough" which is a collection of strange (true) news stories from around the world.
The Adopt a Plot Bunny Site has a ton of story ideas and challenges for the taking. (Not all of them are G-rated, so be warned.)
Happy hunting!
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