Research is the process of gathering material from a wide variety of sources. Your writing should reflect a great deal of research so that you write out of an abundance of material. Hopefully you will develop far more knowledge on a subject than will be needed to include in an article or book.
A woman once told me at a writers’ conference that she wanted to become a fiction writer because she hated research. She said, “If I write fiction, I can just make it up! Then I won’t have to spend all that time in stuffy libraries.”
The woman left me speechless, but once I gathered my wits I told her that fiction needs to be every bit as accurate as nonfiction. Fiction must be believable—and so must nonfiction for that matter. Do not lose your credibility with your readers by not researching your subject properly.