Riffing on what Cedar posted yesterday, I wanted to tackle an incredibly nebulous, fuzzy line and try to make it a clear judgement call for you. Namely, when do you know enough to write the story?

I may go overboard on this end, as each novel often has several hundred hours of research. Even worse, it doesn’t get better as the series goes along, because I have to dig deeper in and build out the world as I go, instead of the glancing first introduction that something got in another book…

But it comes down to this: am I still learning something that will go into a clearly defined spot in the book? Or am I researching to avoid writing?

Most of you are familiar, between Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and Tiktok, with little reels – 30-second videos. How many of you have gone looking for one thing, or stopped to watch one thing, and half an hour later realized you were just endlessly scrolling through video after video without remembering what half of them were? (footnote 1)

Wiki-wandering, diving down the research rabbit hole, and endless worldbuilding all have one thing in common: they’re not actually moving your story forward. Does this directly touch on your character arc in this particular story? Is this worldbuilding needed to solve this particular plot?

If not, stop researching and write the story.

But what if you still have great gaping holes in your worldbuilding? What if your protagonist is lacking most of his backstory? What if you don’t know how to solve the problems set up in the beginning in order to reach the Really Cool Scene at the end?

The holes don’t matter. Push past the fear and just start writing the story. Because what seems like an endless tapestry of worldbuild and interconnections in your brain, full of endless potential ways it could go… will collapse from infinite possibilities to one actual story on the page as you write it.

The hole you don’t know how to cross? The worldbuilding you hadn’t done yet? The story will force you to make choices, and open up surprising new opportunities and revelations. You will often find, by the time you hit that gap, you’ve already put in the preconditions earlier in the story to solve it.

The characters will grow and change from initial plans, too, and come up with their own solutions. I never saw Crane coming… I just needed someone to give a briefing. And then I needed someone to be in this spot with this info… and suddenly he wasn’t Random Intel Guy anymore, but something a lot higher-up with a very personal interest in the matter.

Sometimes you may need to talk it out with a friend, or a handy rubber duck (footnote 2). Because your subconscious already has all the elements it needs to solve the problem – it just needs you to put in the time and attention to how the pieces fit together to walk yourself through to the flash of insight. (Friends are more likely to feed you sushi and make comments that you have then to defend why that’s the wrong suggestion… which is nothing more than putting in that time and attention to get to the solution, but with sushi.)

All the moving parts are hard to pin down when in nebulous free-floating thoughts, and it’s hard to see your blind spots. So slow it down, condense it into story, line by line, bit by bit, and find the solution.

And then Just Write It.

…at least, until you hit the next thing that you actually do need to research.

(Footnote 1: great description of how and why this is an effect that is designed for here: https://www.thefp.com/p/social-media-shortens-your-life-heres-how-to-get-time-back )

(Footnote 2: https://rubberduckdebugging.com/ )