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Getting sucked into research (in a bad way)

Dragonie

Scribe
Sometimes when I'm doing research for a story I end up spending WAY too much time looking up various things that are maybe only a tiny bit related to what I was originally researching. It's fun, because I learn about new things, but it's annoying because I'm spending time where I could be writing reading about, like, slugs or something. Does this happen to anyone else?
 

Gryffin

Scribe
That happens to me frequently. I will start researching a historical person and get tied into their family and then whatever location they lived and so on. It's especially bad if I'm reading Wikipedia because I will start on the page for Henry VIII and then end up reading about a specific type of flower or something.
 

DameiThiessen

Minstrel
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed when I'm studying history, thinking "Oh, I'll just look at an overview of Croatia's history of Turkish/Hungarian relations in the 1400s" and then realizing that I have to look up the million other tiny events that lead up to it. So I get stuck on royal families, invasions from 100 years before, the history of each nation involved, land conflicts, religious conflict, racial tension, government structure, and by that time I've got notes from all over the map on things that have nothing to do with my story. :rolleyes:
 

ascanius

Inkling
I did this for a while but more on account of not finding the information detailed enough. I would spend hours doing google searches for the specific information i was looking for. I don't like overviews but as much details as I can possibly get. Then I simply "save page as" in the browser file pull down and save it to my research folder to use when needed. I still spen hours doing this but manage to get a lot more if I save it for later use. You might want to try just saving the page and move on to the next topic you are researching.
 
Do what I do in the grocery store. Make a list. Go in. Get what's on the list. Get out.

I used to do too much research. I guess I was looking for that one key factoid that, once absorbed, would let the story write itself. It happens, I suppose, but it's more like a lightning strike than a light bulb, and just as rare.
 
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