October 25, 2024 • 7 min read
Every writer has a different relationship with research. Some treat it as a necessary evil, doing the minimum required to avoid embarrassing mistakes. Others disappear down research rabbit holes for months, accumulating far more information than they’ll ever use.
I fall somewhere in between, and I’ve learned that for psychological thrillers specifically, the type of research matters as much as the amount.
Research the World, Not Just the Plot
When I started writing The Psychotic Intruder, I could have jumped straight into researching crime and psychology. Those are obviously relevant to the story. But I started somewhere different: I researched the everyday life of a taxi driver.
This might seem odd for a psychological thriller, but it was essential. Johnny Allen’s world had to feel completely real before I could start breaking it apart. I needed to understand the rhythms of his work day. The social dynamics at the taxi rank. The small frustrations and small pleasures of the job. The money. The hours. The types of customers.
This kind of research grounds the story in specificity. It’s the difference between a character who works as a taxi driver and a character who happens to be labeled as a taxi driver. Readers can feel the difference even if they can’t articulate it.
Talk to People
Books and internet research will only take you so far. The best insights usually come from actual conversations with people who have lived experience relevant to your story.
For this book, I spent time talking to people in various jobs and situations that related to my characters. Not formal interviews necessarily. Often just conversations where I listened more than I talked. People are usually happy to share their experiences if you approach them with genuine curiosity rather than treating them as research subjects.
What you get from these conversations isn’t usually facts you could find in a book. It’s the emotional texture of experience. The specific complaints someone has about their job. The particular way they talk about their colleagues. The small details that reveal how a world actually works versus how outsiders imagine it works.
Psychology From the Inside Out
Since The Psychotic Intruder is fundamentally about psychological deterioration, I obviously did research into psychology. But I approached it differently than you might expect.
Rather than starting with clinical definitions and diagnostic criteria, I started with personal accounts. How do people actually describe what it feels like when their mental state starts to shift? What language do they use? What metaphors? How do they explain it to themselves and to others?
Clinical accuracy matters, and I did eventually get into the technical side. But fiction is experienced from the inside. Your reader isn’t observing your character from a clinical distance. They’re living inside the character’s head. So the subjective experience of psychological change matters more than the objective description of it.
Know When to Stop
Research can become a form of procrastination. I’ve definitely been guilty of this. There’s always one more book to read, one more expert to consult, one more detail to verify. At some point, you have to accept that you know enough to write the story and trust yourself to learn more as needed.
My rule is that I do enough research to feel confident writing the first draft, then I do targeted research during revision to fill in gaps and correct mistakes. This keeps the research serving the story rather than replacing it.
Let Details Do the Heavy Lifting
The goal of research isn’t to dump information on the reader. It’s to have enough knowledge that you can select the right small details to make scenes feel authentic. One perfect specific detail is worth ten paragraphs of general explanation.
When you’ve done your research well, you’ll know a hundred things about your character’s world. Maybe five of those things will make it explicitly onto the page. But all hundred will influence your writing in subtle ways that readers feel even if they can’t identify. That’s the real payoff of research. Not what you include, but the confidence it gives you to write with authority.