Whether the story you want to write is set in the present, the past or the future, you’ll need to find things out: material facts, dates and times, ideas, manners, details and people. Maybe what inspired you in the first place was a real event or person. And even fiction set at a time about which historians know almost nothing must be as vivid and individual as if it’s set in your home town – and of course your dragons must be believable. But the very real-ness of what you research or remember can also cause problems in anything from wooden dialogue and the dreaded info-dump, to complete creative paralysis.

So how do you make sure that your research serves your storytelling, not the other way round? How do you create a world out of materials you’ve only just unearthed? And what happens when the the facts contradict what you wanted to write?

In this two-hour tutorial, we will start by thinking about the relationship between imagination and research, and then dig into ways to make sure you root your story in real material without getting stuck in the mud. We will explore the research process, planning, writing process and writing techniques that will help your story come alive.

There will be time for questions, and by the end you should have much more confidence in working with real-world materials and bringing them to life in your storytelling.