According to Adlerian Psychology, once a child’s most basic physical needs of food and shelter are met, he then craves two essential emotional needs: belonging and significance. It should come as no surprise, then, that many (most?) children’s books heavily feature those themes. 

If I were a betting gal, I’d wager that the first book you pull from your shelf would feature some element of those themes. It’s instinctual to write about the things we desire most. So, what are you writing? How will your characters achieve that sense of belonging that every child craves, and that sense of significance that comes by taking action for themselves? If you look at your manuscript in that light, how might it change your problem, your solution, or even your characters? Happy Writing!

"When I research an historical nonfiction book, I like to read newspapers of the day. This often necessitates travel, but not always. With down-loadable articles, websites like newslibrary.com, newspapers.com, newspaperarchive.com, and the New York Times archives can help you research from home.” 

Archives and history museums and societies are valuable sources of information, Larry says. He provides this example of how librarians can lead us to more than we expected: “For my fall 2015 book, The Rain Wizard: The Amazing, Mysterious, True Life of Charles Mallory Hatfield, I wanted to know what the weather was like in Fort Scott, Kansas, in July 1875. I contacted the Kansas Historical Society with that question, and the reference librarian there provided me not only with detail about weather conditions at that time, but also mentioned that many of the articles from the Fort Scott Daily Monitor had been digitized and were available online.” 

Larry advises that for narrative nonfiction, research is vital. He offers questions the nonfiction writer should consider, but I think fiction writers would also do well to consider these when plotting their stories. “What was the general atmosphere like in a place during the time under study? Who were the key players? What were their attitudes? What else was going on in the world during the time you’re writing about?”

Here’s just one of Larry’s marvelous non-fiction books, Black and White.

Knowing the time and energy research takes, Connie likes to make some of the research come to her. So, among other things, she creates a Google alert on her topic (https://www.google.com/alerts) and signs up to receive press releases from organizations that write about her topic.

Two other helpful tips from Connie are:

1) She usually buys several used books on the subject of her current work-in- progress. They’re inexpensive and she can mark them as needed.

2) She also advises that we all learn how to use the footnote feature in Word. As you move blocks of text around, your footnote/endnote goes along for the ride. For Connie, who writes mostly about health and science topics, nearly everything requires complete reference notes. 

For my board book research, I used Evernote for keeping notes. It worked beautifully for my purpose of gathering information on how baby animals nap and bathe. Evernote makes it easy to pull in websites and images, which I wanted to have.

So don’t forget the appropriate research when writing non-fiction or fiction. It can inspire you, lead you to amazing facts you didn’t even know you were looking for, and take your non-fiction or fiction to a whole new level, one an editor will be happy to read.