Oh, yeah! Two years ago, I read a script about a farmer. Part of a script. It was clear on page 2 that the writer hadn't the faintest clue about tractors and how they're maintained, operated and shared. There was no point in reading further. Despite some excellent writing, the entire story depended on the (imaginary) tractors. Of course, not every script requires lengthy advance work; it depends on the world being described. I tend to write just a little ahead of my research in places, dropping in "zxc" to flag a guess. (It's heartening to occasionally find I've guessed right.) Yes, research slows the writing and can become procrastination. I believe it must do those things to some degree, if done correctly. It's a matter of balance. I've concluded that the only way to know I've researched too long is AFTER I've already done so. I can only try to stop as soon as feasible. But the bigger danger, for me, is not excess research, but the tendency to cram ALL those really nifty facts into my script. I have to reserve the excess for the novel.

Jeff, you raise a lot of good points. To your first comment, all it takes is one significant goof-up when it comes to the writer not knowing what they're talking about (i.e., tractors) to completely lose the reader's confidence in the writer and by extension - the script. Balance is a key word when it comes to research. I don't think there's any rule of thumb on this. Each writer is different. Some may feel the need to know EVERYTHING before they start writing (you may remember this video featuring Dustin Lance Black in which he lets us into his research closet). Others very little. And that can vary per the type of story being written. Find the balance that works for you. But as I say, it's important at some point to do due diligence and confirm key elements of whatever subculture, profession, etc comes off as feeling real. And your final point: What to include? Yeah, we can find fascinating bits of business, but if all they do is clutter the story and not advance the plot, probably not worthy of inclusion.

Yes, Scott, I remember that video well. Black is very organized--a lot of interviews, which need special handling. Index cards are good, but I wish I could still buy Lotus Agenda. Index cards won't do it all.

Well there is explicit research like these writers do. And then there's implicit. If you've seen Redford's Iconoclasts series, there was one with Tarantino and Fiona Apple. Both of them had been dormant for about five years and they were on the same wavelength that what they were doing (paraphrasing here) was to just take in life, think about things, and maybe internally or subconsciously analyze. Fiona put her hands besides her ears with index fingers pointing up like antennas and said that she just receives radio waves until it all builds and then blah! She makes a face like she's throwing up. The vomit draft, right? Soon after that series Tarantino came out withKill Bill I (2003). He hadn't done anything since Jackie Brown (1997). Fiona released Extraordinary Machine in 2005. Her last album had been When the Pawn (1999) and the next would be The Idler Wheel (2012). This stuck with me because I really admire these guys The point being that we live everyday and take in an enormous amount of sensory information. For example, I've been on at least a few hundred job interviews. They are all structured very much the same. But they all have a slightly different cast, including myself. That is a hell of a lot of research if you were doing a story about a guy on job interviews. Catch me if you Can comes to mind. In fact I change things up sometimes to throw interviewers off just to see their reactions. That's what I call research. And I've heard this before. You write about what you know. You may very well have an encyclopedia of research in your mind you hadn't thought about.

Jon, you make a really solid point. When we think of research, what most likely comes to mind is a specific intentional area of focus related to some aspects of whatever story we're writing, e.g., baseball, space travel, Vietnam War. That would be an example of what you call explicit research. But yes, we are receiving information and life 'content' constantly, intentional and otherwise. And this implicit content does equate to research in providing an "encyclopedia" in your mind. It's interesting. Most of the writers I know are a curious bunch. I'm a member of some private writer message boards and it's amazing the breadth of knowledge writing communities have. I can post something on a forum: What were the colors of a Louisiana license plate in 1936 and someone will know it. Finally write what you know. Yes. But I'm drawn to write what I don't know as well. In part because I love to learn new stuff. Right now, for example, I'm doing some historical research for the script I'm writing after this next one. Curiosity may have killed the cat... but it enlivens a writer.

This brings to mind another aspect of research, and that is how well it is received. Rhetorically, maybe there is a tractor like the writer describes. I've had feedback on scripts multiple times that what I was writing about could never happen and was too unreal; while in fact, I'd experienced those very things in life. But readers do not accept feedback. We often tend to accept the status quo, while what that actually means is what we've been conditioned to believe, especially in the media and marketable movie fairy tale land. But truth is stranger than fiction and makes for better and original stories. Getting past a reader is the hard part.

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