Step Four: Research
Welcome back! I’ve missed this series and am excited to get back to work.
I’ve written about research many times over my career—so many that I wasn’t quite sure where to begin. My goal is to help you think outside the box and maybe find a new idea or two about tackling what can sometimes seem like an insurmountable task.
From ride-alongs with patrol offices and homicide detectives to autopsies to visits with FBI profilers and field offices, I’ve spent a lot of time doing hands-on, first-person research with the folks who live the lives I like to write about. For years, I wrote books about characters who knock on people’s doors to deliver bad news or are arriving at a crime scene, and that takes a strong stomach and a lot of humility to execute well.
When I shifted into standalone suspense, I found myself writing from the other side of the door, and, naturally, my research changed. I was diving deep into the lives of the people whose doors are knocked upon and telling their stories, which usually centered on turning their worlds upside down.
I still had a deep knowledge base to lean on, and I have law enforcement components in almost all my books, but I needed to broaden my horizons. My characters almost always have something in their lives that I’m fascinated with. That’s what makes the research fun. I like to say I get a Ph.D. with every book—and it’s almost all self-directed education. Whether it’s an Olympic-level skier, a writer, an artist, an assassin, an architect, a headmaster, a cop, or an astronaut, I have to learn who they are from the inside out and become a temporary expert in their chosen field in the process.
How? Primary, secondary, anecdotal, and online research.
