As promised, I’d like to give you all a little exercise that my fantasy author friends might appreciate and immediately recognize. This is an example of how I do my research, and I’m offering it to you to put more questions in your mind than answers, to challenge not only what you write—but how.

For those of you who are familiar with research methods, you will notice that some of the steps are out of order. For my own work and curiosity, it has become necessary to formulate my hypothesis after I read my source material to reduce personal slant and remain objective.

Research Exercise: Avoiding a Common Trope in Your Setting

Step One: Identify your Intent

Create a dark-skinned race of characters that do not adhere to the common fantasy trope: all dark-skinned characters are primitive, barbaric, or villainous.

Step Two: Recognize Potential Sources of the Belief or Trope

Specific to fantasy there might be: Dungeons and Dragons, Tolkien’s the Lord of the Rings, or Conan the Barbarian. In this area, I would also recognize the need to read history or other nonfiction source material.

Step Three: Investigate a Major Influence for the Belief or Trope

Tolkien is often considered the father of fantasy and, in fact, heavily influenced early Dungeons and Dragons.

Step Four: Create a List of Author Influences

In this bucket, I sometimes either write down or note a variety of things about the author. For example: When was the book written? Where did the author hail from? How did the author create the trope or belief? Was the trope intentional? Did the writer have any prevalent or outspoken beliefs?

Step Five: Formulate your Opinion

Here is where you, the author, come into play. In this really basic example, you’ve done your homework to pinpoint what you believe is the reason why this trope was created and where it came from. Knowing those two things can really help you engineer other ways to avoid the trope or realistically portray a belief.

Step Six: Read Others’ Opinions

When appropriate, it might be a good idea to read other people’s opinions when appropriate. Literary criticism might be a great resource in this example or even commentaries from other writers. This step ends up becoming more important if you’re researching the origin of Halloween, for example, or myths and legends that cross time, cultures or countries.

Step Seven: Return to Your Original Goal

As the last step in the process, I recommend circling back to your goal and writing one paragraph to complete your thoughts. Sometimes, the act of writing down how you’d like to infuse your story with that different perspective can make all the difference.

What process do you use to marry research elements with your work? How do you manage collective thoughts and creativity into your projects? If you have other methods you use, feel free to share! Happy scribing!