Things you do in the name of research

I don’t know about other writers, but for me, at least half the fun in the book writing process is in the research. Creating a world that is so vivid and realistic for the reader that they can almost picture themselves alongside you watching events unfold is critical. As a reader, it draws you in and allows you to invest something of yourself in the characters and their situation.

That’s why when I am researching I have to physically find the places that I want to use to create my world. For “The Bitterest Pill”, I needed to set part of the story on an inner city housing estate that conveyed poverty and threat in equal measure. It’s not good enough to try and summon this up in my mind, I need to go there, find it, touch it and smell it and describe those senses to bring the place to life. For me, this turned out to be an estate in Erith in South London where I spent an afternoon, walking, observing, feeling fearful, making notes and trying to capture the atmosphere which I hoped I would then be able to pass on.

Perhaps the most extreme version of this was getting myself arrested…by prior arrangement, of course. Nothing frustrates me more than reading a book where clearly guesswork has been the primary source of research for the author. When my main character, Paul, in The Bitterest Pill is arrested for drink driving and subsequently for causing death by reckless driving, I needed to know what he would be going through, how he would be treated.

So it was my good fortune to be able to present myself at a South London police station one Saturday morning as if I was Paul, to be breath-tested, to be cautioned, charged and locked in a holding cell and then to be able to talk through the events of the book and to see how the police’s treatment of this juvenile would be handled. I believe, and others have been kind enough to remark, that it adds a degree of reality to the narrative that helps the reader buy-into Paul’s situation.

To tell you about the research for the book I am currently completing would be to give too much away at this stage, though I hope that the challenges it gives me as a writer will transfer into a more authentic and satisfying reading experience for those who choose to read the books.