Melissa Welliver on the research process when you’re writing fiction
How do you research something that hasn’t happened yet? This is the question dystopian authors are constantly asking themselves. What we write isn’t quite fantasy and isn’t quite sci-fi – it’s a guess at a near future, an exploration of what might happen and why it’s important to stop that future from coming into being. So, how did this mindset fold into the research of The Undying Tower, my new alternative future, totalitarian-set Britain?
There is a myth that if you’re writing fiction, you don’t need to do any research. And in some aspects of writing, this is true. As writers we can make up magic systems, we can create whole fake continents, and we can create alien creatures with no basis in reality. But does that really mean we don’t have to undertake any research at all? Absolutely not! One of the most important jobs writers have is making the reader feel like they have stepped into the shoes of our main characters, and that means using real world details to allow the reader to empathise as much as they can with that character. The reader may have never been to Mars, but research into what that environment is really like will help the reader feel like they are there. There aren’t dragons in our world for a reader to connect with, but maybe research into how the mechanics of a large lizard works will help ground the reader in that reality.
The Undying Tower has many universal themes that I hope I explored deeply enough to resonate with readers, which include death, grief, environmentalism and, in some ways, hope. These are all emotions that real people have every day, and therefore it was important to me to create a world within which these themes not only resonated with the reader, but in many ways reflect the world we all live in. With dystopian fiction, we’re often holding up a ‘black mirror’ to the world we live in, creating something that reflects the reality. So in this respect, it was important to me to create a dystopian world that felt like it could truly happen, despite the immortal twist.
Overpopulation is a good example of a threat to our ecosystem that I wanted to explore, through the use of my Undying characters. I made it so that they did not age past 25, based on research I did on when the human body is determined fully developed according to WHO. I looked up what the effect on the environment might be based on previous population booms and data we have, and concluded that should CO2 levels rise to the point where the ice caps melted, the world would flood. I checked flood map data against a map of the UK to determine which parts would still be viable and which parts would be waterlogged, and how the deterioration of the land might affect how we are able to live, especially as a larger population.
I even visited Chernobyl in 2017 and saw the effect of both nuclear radiation and mass human exodus on the environment, which I used to reflect the effects of nuclear fallout in the world of The Undying Tower. Chernobyl was especially useful as a research trip, as it allowed me to experience a scarce landscape for myself, and draw upon all my senses when recreating that for the reader. The emotional price of what happened there wasn’t lost on me either, and it has been a thread that runs through all my dystopian books.
I’m a plotter, so I usually complete all my research before committing to a large plot plan. One of the final things I found while trawling the internet for plausible immortality ideas was actually the Immortal Jellyfish, a species of biologically, naturally occurring, undying fish. The immortal jellyfish is the only animal we know of that reverts to a sexually immature state upon reaching ‘old age’, which isn’t exactly what happens to my Undying characters, but it did feel like the final puzzle piece in the story at the time, the final piece of research inspiration to solidify my world building and make it feel real enough to me to start writing.
So really, all writers research. We have to, to inspire us as much as to settle our readers. So next time you’re down a google rabbit hole and feeling guilty about wasting writing time, fear not: you may be about to find your very own Immortal Jellyfish.
