How I Research my Novels...By Running
Running eight miles every morning wakes me up, eases my stress level, gives me space to ponder Big Thoughts, keeps my body in shape -- and sometimes also helps me conduct research for my novels.
Let me explain.
If, like me, you follow a regular route for a frequent outdoor activity – biking to work, power-walking, chat-walking with friends, whatever –it can get boring day after day, no matter how much you enjoy the scenery. I have my three beloved summer running paths along the East River and the Upper New York Bay in New York City, and my four less-beloved winter paths, but even with all that variety, I cherish any chance to detour further afield.
Luckily, parts of my newest novel, I Meant to Tell You, are set in a neighborhood outside my usual turf yet within a couple of miles of my home. Other scenes take place in Washington DC, where I needed to visit anyway for different research.
Of course, I could have written the book without doing so much personal legwork along Church Avenue in Brooklyn and the National Mall in Washington. However, for better or worse, my journalism career has trained me to get the details right. If my character is exiting the DC Metro at the Federal Triangle station in order to join a major protest march on the Mall, then I’m going to make sure that the walls on the first platform in the station actually look like huge grey waffles, the turnstile is a short walk from the train track, and the sidewalk outside is pebbled.
One more bit of fortunate training: Ever since I started running, I’ve always carried some sort of device to preserve my Big (and little) Thoughts. Years ago, before smartphones were widely available, it was a tiny portable tape recorder; today, my iPhone has Voice Memos.
Usually, I record nothing more significant than: “Buy milk tonight.” Now my device would become an important research tool.
For five mornings during the spring of 2021, as my sneakers pounded the sidewalks of Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood, I carefully noted the types of stores on the main shopping avenue (tax preparer, jeweler, discount-variety, liquor, a small grocery, ladies’ clothes, another jeweler, natural foods ….), the various colors of the bricks on the massive apartment buildings (dark red, beige, alternating beige and light-brown), the aspirational names carved above front doors (Beverley Manor, Court Royale, Cameo Court, Pendant Hall), and the wide variety of facade ornaments (a coat of arms, a Swiss chalet-style arch, plaster urns, a lion’s head). Weaving and backtracking, I plotted out the best route for getting my character frantically lost among the brick canyons while trying to stanch the bleeding from her slashed thumb.
Ditto in DC: Approximately how high are the guard walls on the Arlington Memorial Bridge? What sort of benches line the road leading to the bridge from the Virginia side, where my characters might sit and fight over breaking their engagement?
I had a great time. Did I get any stitches in my side? Did I get tired? Who knows?
The only slight downside lies in the nature of making a recording. Naturally, the last thing I recorded was the first one I heard when I pressed Play, which meant that my character’s itinerary for getting lost unspooled in reverse order. It was a small pain to keep rewinding and then jumping ahead while I transcribed the recording.
In a different way, my routine also came in handy for a scene in another novel, when I wanted to describe a character in the act of running. Paying close attention to the specific pumping up and down of my legs, the coordination with the back-and-forth churning of my arms, the depth of my breaths, the dull ache along the top of my right foot where my shoelaces were tied too tight – all of that wonderfully distracted me from the boredom of my same-old same-old path. (Never mind that I ultimately eliminated that scene from the book, it’s the distraction that counts.)
My newest novel-in-progress is set in California. There were a number of reasons for choosing that location, but it certainly helps that my favorite place to run is alongside a waterway … like, for instance, the Pacific Ocean. I can’t wait to start doing some research on the running path overlooking the Santa Monica Beach!
About Fran Hawthorne
Fran Hawthorne has been writing novels since she was four years old, although she was sidetracked for a few decades by journalism. Her eight nonfiction books -- mainly about consumer activism, the drug industry, and the financial world -- include Ethical Chic (Beacon Press), named one of the best business books of 2012 by Library Journal, and Pension Dumping (Bloomberg Press), a Foreword magazine 2008 Book of the Year. She's also been an editor or regular contributor for The New York Times, Business Week, Fortune, and many other publications. But Fran never abandoned her true love: Her debut novel The Heirs was published in 2018, and now I Meant to Tell You will be published in November 2022 by Stephen F. Austin State University Press.