Background Research Quotes

History is basically really looking back and finding out what happened to an individual, a community, a family, a group in a certain event. And so that's why I go, "Wow. That's what acting really is. You find out the background, you get the joy of creating a fictional history of a fictional character and you get to tell a story." So I felt that acting is making history come alive and it became my mode of trying to figure out what this craft of acting is really all about.

I use a professional researcher in New York who does all the legwork, all that stuff which would take me days and weeks of calling, waiting for people to call back.

I certainly try to avoid getting bogged down in forensics. There is certainly a whole lot of other writers who know a lot more than me about it. I know enough about it to do a little bit of background on laboratory techniques and stuff. But it kind of bores me.

Writing an encyclopedia is hard. To do anywhere near a decent job, you have to know a great deal of information about an incredibly wide variety of subjects. Writing so much text is difficult, but doing all the background research seems impossible.

Every policy is shaped by two forces: background analysis and foreground politics. The political forces are loud, self-serving and, in the case of energy policy, well known.

One of the things I enjoy most about writing historical romance is researching inspiring backgrounds and settings.

In real life I do a lot of reconnaissance and then kind of choose the guy I'm going to go after. Not like stalking, but I just want a little background info. That might be why I haven't had many bad dates.

When I want to choose to work with someone, you know, I definitely have to do some research on their background and how they were raised as people.

My research process doesn't vary much. I do a little reading to establish a timeline and decide how I'm going to approach the story.

You have to have really wide reading habits and pay attention to the news and just everything that's going on in the world: you need to. If you get this right, then the writing is a piece of cake.

Before doing any interviews I like to know who I'm meeting with and get a bit of an idea of their sensibilities.

Imagine how foolish you'd look if, like one clever salesman who once pitched to me, you tried to license your product to a big industry player without knowing they just launched a competing product. With the right background research, he could have avoided that and other landmines - and so can you.

I once did an event with Ian Rankin where he said he didn't really need to do much background research because his books are set in the present, and I just thought: 'You lucky, lucky beast!' because as a historical novelist, I live constantly on the edge of wondering whether tissues had been invented.

A translation needs to read convincingly. There's no limit to what can go into it in terms of background research, feeling, or your own interests in form and history. But what should come out is something that reads as convincing English-language text.

I never liked the whole idea of [creating your own] background, if it's not pertinent, where the character lived as a child, and who I was and how I was. That never helped me in any way, so I don't even do that.

This means I must pay close attention to the writing, but equally so to the scientific background - which sometimes means doing fairly involved calculations.

You should not ask questions without knowledge.

To me, the contemporary novel suffers from a lack of sense of place - or spirit of place, if you will. It's not important to most writers, I must assume, or they try to research a given background on sabbatical. Not for me. I write about places I've lived long before I ever set pen to paper.

Of course there are many films about the period of Fascism itself but I don't know of any about that period beforehand. But it wasn't that specific fact that they weren't there that got me to think about this in the first place. It's not what led to the basic idea for the film, although it became apparent when I began to think about it.

Before I write the first page of a novel, I spend a long time creating detailed backgrounds for my characters. I imagine the experiences that have formed them, what makes them happy, angry, fearful, and what they yearn for.

Research to me is as important or more important than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built.

Interviewing someone is very similar to preparing a character, isn't it? You're just asking questions: 'Who is this person? Why did they make that choice? Why are they doing that?' You're being Sherlock Holmes.

If I'm interviewing someone I need to know everything about them - I do these massive spider diagrams. Everything under different categories, and certain questions in other categories.

I can't tell you the number of people who pitched something and have no idea whom they are pitching it to. They don't know the background of the investor.

I don't do all the background and the worldbuilding before I start the story. What I do is I work out the bare minimum I need to start the story, and often that really is a bare minimum - it's a character in a situation, and I know nothing about the character, I know nothing about the situation, and then I think about it for a long time, and make notes about where I think the story is going to go and so on, but I don't really make notes to do with the background or the magic system or the world.