by A.P. Thayer
I type “native trees in lake tahoe” into my browser search bar before hitting enter. The key catches and the squeal of plastic rubbing on plastic sets my teeth rattling. The keyboard is only a few months old, but it’s already showing signs of wear. Disappointing for something that had been so well reviewed and was so expensive.
Not as disappointing as the search results, though.
I mouse over the search bar and add “-ai” at the end of my inquiry, turning off Google’s AI-generated responses.
Much better.
The U.S. Forest Service is the third result. Clicking the link opens a PDF published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in a new tab, and I begin reading about sugar pines, incense cedars, and Pacific madrones. I open a new tab and type “white fir” into an image search. It’s immediately obvious white firs are not the trees that impressed me, so when I spent a week in Lake Tahoe. I try again. Maybe “ponderosa pine”?
Images of tall, coniferous trees with narrow crowns flood my monitor. Yes, that’s what I have been looking for. I tab over to Wikipedia to find out how big they grow and whether the trunks can be wide enough for someone, or something, to hide behind.
They are.
Hell yes.
I’ve been working on this new WIP, work in progress, for a few months now, and I’m a little in the weeds about the setting. That’s what has me poking around the internet instead of drafting new words or editing old ones. It feels like a sticking point, and maybe it’s also partially procrastination, but as they say, “progress is progress.”
Part of the problem is that the mental depiction I have of the setting is hazy. There’s a lakeshore with a glassy surface and a fetid smell of rotting vegetation. An old reservoir. A rocky beach. Above, towering pines blot out the sky and shadows beneath their canopies. Is that a pale hand with too-long fingers wrapping around a nearby trunk? Is there a face staring out from behind that tree?
Oh yeah, it’s all coming together.
It’s moments like these that remind me of the importance of research.
There’s the obvious this-is-making-my-story-more-authentic reason for researching that is satisfying for a neurodivergent mind. This authenticity is also a balm to my anxiety and does a better-than-middling job of allaying my fears of “what if someone reads my story and is taken out by an inaccuracy?” I’ll add that to the list of things to work on in therapy. But, there’s a less talked-about reason why research is so good. Research is what turns an idea into a story.
One of the most popular questions writers get asked is, “Where do you get your story ideas?” If you’re a writer, I feel confident you’ve been asked this question before. I’ve heard this question in podcasts, author interviews, social settings, family gatherings, conferences... you name it. I don’t take issue with the question, nor am I so burned out from answering it that I turn into more of a curmudgeon than usual, but I don’t think I’m the only writer who gets a little chuckle whenever we hear the question asked. Because I think we know ideas are only a small step on the writing journey.
Non-creatives have a fundamental misunderstanding about the creative process. There is an insidious and prolific belief that an idea is the story. “I’m an idea man,” they say, just before pitching a middling idea, asking you to write it, and vowing the two of you can split the profits easily. It’s this kind of thinking that is at the core of a lot of the AI trouble we’re seeing lately, where tech-bros think they can input the perfect sentence—an idea—and the software will spit out a marketable product. Writers know, however, that the story is in the execution, not the idea. The story is the work, and that means taking time to research.
This is what’s on my mind as I work on this horror WIP. I’m on the second draft, and originally set it in Big Bear Lake, California. It’s a horror story about a cult, and I wanted to hit notes of folklore and family trauma. As I worked on the second draft, I unfortunately concluded that the setting was wrong. I spent hours on Google Maps following dirt roads around Big Bear Lake, and it simply was not right. The forest is too sparse; the trees are not tall enough; the small town I invented is too close to civilization.
I could have made up the details and simply forced it to work. I was inventing the town anyway. Would anyone besides me care? Would anyone even notice? Rhetorical questions, of course.
I drag the map up to the area west of Lake Tahoe. I spent a week there recently for a writer’s retreat and loved the mountain forests. Back to Google Maps we go. The forest is thicker. The trees are taller. There are dozens of small lakes—manmade reservoirs—dotting the map. A smattering of solitary roads meander up the western mountain faces from the Eldorado National Forest, leading to small logging towns. I get that familiar tingling in my fingers when a story starts taking on a life of its own. I’ve found my setting.
That’s the hidden benefit to research. This exploration helped me solve a problem, but it also breathed life into the story I didn’t know I needed. There’s a gothic element to what I’m trying to write that I hadn’t consciously even realized was there. I had been struggling with what exactly the story was, not just where it was, and having difficulty separating it from previous stories I’ve written. By spending this time in research mode, I gave my brain time to percolate and refine the idea into a story.
A certain overly famous writer is known for saying—and I’m paraphrasing here—that if you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write. I balk at prescriptive advice like this, especially from someone with a questionable history and who speaks from a place of privilege, but I do find myself agreeing with the general spirit of this take, because reading is research, too.
A quick exchange on ChatGPT will probably give you the right answers for what kind of trees are native to the Lake Tahoe area, but it isn’t going to replace the five days I spent up in the mountains where I was looking out the window at these iconic looking trees, adding to the overall vibe that was blossoming in my mind, and it’s not going to replace clicking down a winding road on Google Maps, a road you’re shocked there’s even pictures of as you imagine your main character in his old Bronco, speeding around tight corners, tires squealing, as he flees hometown horrors.
So, yes, research is great for authenticity in storytelling, but let us not forget how powerful and wondrous and necessary it is to develop an idea. Feed your creative brain with time and information, and see how powerful your writing can become.