“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” – Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun was a man of science, an aerospace engineer who, among other things, designed the Saturn V rocket that lifted the NASA Apollo missions to the moon. The fields of technology rely so heavily on research that the cliché of a mad scientist surrounded by experiments, poring through tomes of calculations to create a monster or build an apparatus to shoot humans into space isn’t even a cliché. It really is what scientists do.
Artists, on the other hand, are not so readily associated with the exercise of research. The inspiration to create art comes from the gut, or the heart, or falls from the sky in the arms of your muse, right?
No. It comes from none of those places. While inspiration is a necessity for artists, it is no miracle of nature. Painters study the work of the masters, musicians listen to those performers who built the canon of recorded song, and writers read.
For writers, the value of Braun’s quote is in knowing that inspiration is often found by wandering around in the unfamiliar wilderness of a topic until you stumble into a story you didn’t know was there. At Chautauqua, editors regularly see engaging, well-written pieces marred by factual inaccuracies that could have been avoided by simply delving further into the background of the subject matter. Allowing one inspiring quote or viral factoid to be the sole source for your work is never a good idea. Dig deeper, stumble around, the fun is in the search.
Fact-finding need not involve countless hours going blind in dusty archives; it can be as simple as reading biographies on the subject of your interest or as complicated as a journey to interview eyewitnesses in a far-flung locale. Google is a fine start, but don’t stop there, unroll maps to get a lay of the land, scan government documents, or invade some dead person’s diary, they won’t mind.
A properly researched story is easier to outline and organize, and is the best defense against both factual errors and writer’s block. This combination of study and strategy does not fly in the face of the artistic aesthetic; it enhances it. As noted by Philip Gerard in his book, The Art of Creative Research, “Being artistic and making a plan are not incompatible.”
As for Wernher von Braun, if your knowledge of his life was limited to the pithy quote and sparse description at the top of this piece, and you set out to write an ode to his pursuit of the goddess Luna, you would be remiss to not undertake further investigation. Before guiding America to its “giant leap for mankind,” Braun the rocket scientist had once been the less-than-enthusiastic director of Germany’s World War II V-2 missile program. His complicated life is a reminder that there is a story within every story, but to find it, you may have to get lost looking.
—Don Stutts
Photo: Nicholas A. Tonelli, via Flickr Creative Commons