How DEEP do you research for your VN's?

[curry nochi rice]

Hey guys, I was just wondering, how deep do you research for your visual novels...
from my own experience, to research for my story's plot, i think i go to wikipedia every now then just to research about stuff ranging from Antarctica to Military Technology to Radio Communications.

I also check some blogs about Japan every now and then...

really, i think, IMHO, that the measure of how complex a game's plot and settings is is how deep you research....for something ranging from accuracy to puns just to be used in a game...

[linkdragon0]

I have been doing quite a lot for the one I'm doing now. From researching weapons, to researching ghosts and demons and even learning the abomination-esque language from the cthulhu mythos. So I go pretty far into detail when researching.

[Dark]

It depends on the topic I go with. Personally, I just use some interactions and experiences that I have had IRL, along with researching some general emotional reflexes that realistic humans should have.

[Blue Sky]

I just had to research the structure of VNs. It was pretty fun.

[Aleema]

You should always research when you're writing about stuff you don't know first hand. The amount of research is up to you.
Too much research might result in barfing up facts that the reader really doesn't care about, just to prove you did research.

But something that my professors always said to me when I was studying writing was: "Never let history get in the way of a good story."
It's stuck with me, as sometimes keeping the exact truth doesn't always fit into a narrative structure. So, it's best to use your own judgement when researching.

[sayuri]

My stories usually come from research I've done in the past. After that I just google something if I'm not 100% sure I know what I'm talking about.

[Lusty]

Not really that deep i think, usually i go to wiki or researching use google.
Sometime i also watch TV series or play some VN for reference.

[DaFool]

Ideally, write about a subject you're already an expert in. Like if you were a professor of economics it might be a good idea to have a travelling merchant and a lovely young fox goddess explain the barter system in medieval times. It might seem over the top and pandering, but you'll never be accused of being not authentic.

Even for subject matter I don't care for (shogi, mahjong), I do find some of the stories with these themes entertaining.

[LVUER]

Depending on your genre. If you want to make a magical girl genre, you don't need any deep research. The more realistic and accurate you strive to be, the more research you need to do.

[curry nochi rice]

I'm doing a story with a magic-psychic side-story and setting....I got myself immersed in identifying every esper ability and how would espers react with magicians

[The Nightlinker]

Well for our novel, since it's 100% fiction, we aren't doing a ton of research. I did a little on naming in Japanese culture and picked out a name for my Japanese character but other than that it's mostly getting out there and finding locations to use as backgrounds.

[papillon]

No matter how magical and fictional something is, some research can still be helpful... reality makes all kinds of suggestions that can make a story feel less cliche-driven.

Was just reading someone's review of a book that pointed out the author's spouse was a social worker and that this really affected the portrayal of the street kids in the story... more realistic feelings and motivations for someone who'd grown up in that environment, as opposed to a much better off person imagining what it might be like to be thrown into that environment. Totally fictional environment, of course, the research was not exactly based on real kids growing up in Fantasy Kingdom, but real knowledge can still shape the fiction and make it more interesting.

[Wintermoon]

When I research for a project, I tend to spend so much time researching that I forget about the project. I try to compensate for this tendency by keeping my research during a project to a bare minimum. When contemplating a potential project that would require extensive research, I do my research before committing to the project.

[The Nightlinker]

...more realistic feelings and motivations for someone who'd grown up in that environment, as opposed to a much better off person imagining what it might be like to be thrown into that environment.

Huh. I honestly never thought about it like that. Good insight, thanks.

[Enigma]

Does watching Gurren Lagann count as research?