Opposition Research: Where to Get the Best Info for Your Novel
Now that you’ve written the first draft of your novel, you may find that you need to do some extra research to fill in those plot holes and polish up your story. Today, author Jodi Compton is here to shine some light on researching elements of your story between drafts:
I’m a crime and mystery novelist. It’s a genre which requires a good deal of research—a daunting task many Wrimos will be tackling for the first time in December and beyond. Many of us research between drafts, writing the first version straight through as a ‘proof of concept’ rough draft. Writing “[research tk]” at strategic points in a first draft can be an essential part of getting to 50K.
For that reason, I want to share a secret I’ve learned about good research. At first, I’ll be using crime fiction as my example, but the lesson is applicable to all genres, which I’ll address. (Hang tight, you hordes of fantasy writers!)
When I first began writing crime fiction, I did what most mystery novelists do. I read books on investigative work and forensics. I watched documentaries on the same subjects, including Dateline and Forensic Files and Women and the Badge. Later, when I had very specific questions, I found sources in the law-enforcement world and asked directly.
The upshot of all the books, documentaries, magazine articles and interviews tended to be this: There’s always forensic evidence. It’s always correctly gathered. The DNA test is always right. The polygraph is always reliable. And everybody involved—the police and prosecutors—almost always do the right thing.
This past year has—to put it mildly—called those assumptions into question. But that’s the subject of another article. However, long before this troubling year, I’d noticed something interesting. Crime-fiction writers like myself are always trying to write a story about the exceptions—the locked-room story, the extremely clever criminal who almost gets away with a murder or a heist, or a story in which the most unlikely person imaginable is actually the killer.
So why are we always looking at sources in which the most likely suspect is, in fact, the murderer, in which standard operating procedure gets the investigative job done, there’s always DNA at the scene, and the polygraph tells you exactly who did it?
Because, mystery writers might argue, there’s no source for stories about cases where things went sideways. Nobody writes about those, and no source on the inside wants to talk about them.
That seems true, at first. Ask me how I know: My first novel, The 37th Hour, deals with an FBI agent-in-training who does a Very Bad Thing just before his term at Quantico starts. To flesh this out, I spoke to a public information officer at the FBI—who dismissed my concept out of hand. That really wouldn’t happen, she told me. Our psychological screening would catch someone like that.
It didn’t seem very productive to say, Like your psych screening caught Robert Hanssen? So I didn’t. (Plus, I didn’t think of it until hours later).
It was only later in my writing career that I learned that there are people who talk and write about how the criminal-investigation process runs off the rails: They’re called defense attorneys. Behind them, and fighting a larger battle, are the ACLU and the Innocence Project—lawyers, law students and investigators who uncover false convictions. These convictions can be those due to mishandled DNA, inconclusive polygraph results interpreted as guilt, false confessions made by exhausted, hungry and confused people in interrogation rooms, or naive, easily-swayed juries.
You have to get off the beaten path to find these stories, told in smaller-circulation magazines or blogs or documentaries. The “Dateline Saturday Night Mystery” has been immensely popular for years. No network is going to air the “ACLU Saturday Night Miscarriage of Justice” any time soon. But the latter, I think, would be as fascinating as the former. And, for the novelist looking for ways to complicate a straightforward crime, very profitable.
Okay, you say. That’s fine for crime writers, but the most popular genre in National Novel Writing Month is fantasy. How do we fit into this situation?
I hear you. Fantasy is to NaNoWriMo what Thin Mints are to Girl Scout Cookies. So let’s say you’re writing a story in which characters have supernatural powers. This is where—though science is considered the opposite of magic—an understanding of physics, biology, chemistry and more could add great verisimilitude to your novel.
A study of magicians and their tricks can be useful as well. Many magicians are diehard skeptics about the paranormal—James Randi, of course, being the most famous example. But they also know a lot about physics: For example, the manipulation of light and how it affects what people see, or think they see. Might your genuinely-magical character manipulate light to create glamours or illusions?
‘Opposition research’ will be of varying use to writers in varying genres, but I’d argue that there’s almost always something to be gained in doing it. Conflict is the engine of virtually every story. Whenever you look at ‘maps’ or ‘graphs’ of a novel’s plot, you’ll see points labeled ‘conflict 1’ or ‘first setback.’ Understanding what opponents or devil’s advocates have to say about your protagonist’s quest will be of great help in creating conflict or setbacks in that journey.
Jodi Compton is the author of four crime novels, starting with The 37th Hour, about Minneapolis detective Sarah Pribek. Her fifth book, Redball, will be released by Amazon early in 2021. She is an eight-time National Novel Writing Month participant.
