Thoughts On Fiction Research ... And the Great Plains
Melissa Zilinskas
5/20/20261 min read
Unwelcome takes place in the Kansas countryside, near a fictional town called Leeson.
Why Kansas?
Short answer: I have no idea. I’ve never even been to Kansas.
Long answer: I wanted my ghost story to happen in the heartland of America, a scenic farming community where the pace of life is slower and the people are family-oriented and down to earth. A place where everything seems, well, normal.
Also, the prairie states have always captured my imagination. In my mind, they have an enchanting beauty, with open spaces under a vast sky, fields of sunflowers and wheat swaying in the wind.
And speaking of wheat . . .
Kansas is known as the wheat state, the nation’s breadbasket.
I knew nothing about wheat before writing this book. Now ask me something about wheat. Go ahead, ask.
Few people realize that research is in the job description for novelists. Yes, we have a certain amount of artistic freedom but if you include a factual error in your book, you will likely be called out for it, eventually. Someone out there knows the types of wheat and when they’re harvested in Kansas. Someone else knows all about lethal mushrooms. Settings, time periods, and other particulars must be accurate, or the suspension of disbelief will be broken for a reader with knowledge of these aspects of your story. In sum, the writing must be plausible or you’ve lost a reader.
But we never want to overload readers with too much detail. After all, we don’t research to share our newfound knowledge; we do it to avoid inaccuracies. Balance is key. I’ve heard that only about ten percent of what we learn through research should make its way into the book.
I researched—among other things—mushroom toxicity, secret societies, and Kansas wheat. I sincerely hope that Unwelcome contains no errors. But it’s quite a challenging task to keep track of the innumerable details within an 80,000-word manuscript, and it is very easy to overlook something, so I’m not holding my breath.
The setting for my current work-in-progress is the mysterious state of Nebraska. Another place I’ve never seen. But I do see corn research in my future.