Research

Hi all :) I remember I was once reading a book and they talked about what a beautiful island Waikiki, Hawaii is. Now as a proud local islander (and no, not a Hawaiian), I can't quite express how blasphemous this statement is. For one, Waikiki is not an island, it's a tourist metropolis that is constantly clogged with an onrush of tourists from morning till night. Anyway, I feel like this egregious error could have been prevented with something we learned in college: research. All you had to do was pull up a google search box and type in Waikiki. Relatively simple and you would know very quickly that Waikiki is not one of Hawaii's eight islands. Anyway, I digress, research is something very important when you're writing a book.

For me, I research almost everything I do and research is not limited by genre. It doesn't matter if you are writing fiction, nonfiction, fantasy, biography or science-fiction. Even if you're writing a fiction novel, it is important to have some sort of fact inside your writing so that it obtains a sense of realism. For example, in one of my own pieces of writing, one of the characters is a grease monkey. I don't even drive a car, so I had to research cars and models, horsepower, etc. You need to know what you're talking about if you want to convince your audience that your character does the same. The knowledge can be as small and seemingly unimportant as the amount of horsepower in a Bugatti Veyron or the names of the eight Hawaiian islands. Research not only makes your writing better but it also increases your credibility as writer. Look at writers like Dan Brown and Jeffrey Deaver for instance, both research extensively for their books and as a result,  their books are believable, incredibly realistic and very popular for those exact reasons. So for these reasons, I highly encourage you to research your work and give the best you can for your readers!
What do you think? Agree, disagree, like or dislike, let me know! :)