There is research behind every great story

A writer cannot convincingly describe a particular historical period without understanding its politics, customs and everyday life. [iStockphoto]

A few days ago, while attending Kakamega Book Club’s monthly book discussion, one of my mentees asked me an interesting question: "Professor, do creative writers really do research?" Without thinking, I answered in the affirmative.

Later, I realised that my answer had been too brief. I thought the question deserved much deeper reflection.

My mentee was giving voice to what many people silently believe whenever they read a novel, watch a play, or read a poem. They imagine that creative writers possess an inexhaustible imagination from which stories simply flow. They rarely think about the long and lonely journey that precedes it.

I think we have romanticised creativity for far too long. We celebrate inspiration but seldom acknowledge curiosity. In some cases, we admire imagination but overlook investigation. That is why we readily accept that scientists conduct research in laboratories, historians in archives and lawyers in libraries. The creative writer, we imagine, merely sits before a blank page and invents an entirely new world. We are wrong. Unfortunately, many young writers believe this crap.

This partly explains why so few enduring stories are emerging from many young writers today. They are eager to write before they have taken time to observe life. Some wish to publish before they have read deeply. The truth is that imagination alone will not compensate for a lack of knowledge. Never. Imagination without research is like a tree without roots. Not even Artificial Intelligence will help you cover this deficit of knowledge.

Permit me to draw from my own experience to illustrate this. Whenever I look back on the stories I have written, I realise that writing occupied only a fraction of the journey. The greater part was spent observing people, revisiting memories, reading widely, asking questions and trying to understand the world more deeply. Long before writing the first chapter of any story, the research had already begun. The published story is only the visible expression of months and sometimes years of invisible preparation.

When I was writing Shadows of Love, I found myself exploring the complexities of campus relationships. I researched beliefs in witchcraft, betrayal in love, narcissism and the realities of patriarchy and single motherhood. Each of these themes required more than imagination. They required listening to people, reading widely, revisiting experiences and understanding the emotional and cultural realities that shape human behaviour. What I mean is that the novelist's responsibility is not merely to entertain. No. The novelist has to be backed by knowledge to portray life convincingly.

The longer I have written, the more I have realised that research is not an activity confined to libraries. It is a way of inhabiting the world. For me, a restaurant is not merely a place to have a meal. It is a place to observe conversations that reveal affection, disappointment, ambition, jealousy or betrayal.

A church is not only a place of worship. It is also a gathering where human emotions quietly unfold. Markets, airports, weddings, funerals, classrooms and bus stations are classrooms. While ordinary people simply pass through these places, the writer leaves carrying fragments of stories.

Observation, however, is only one form of research. There are occasions when a story demands historical accuracy, geographical precision or cultural authenticity.

A writer cannot convincingly describe a particular historical period without understanding its politics, customs and everyday life.

A novel set in a certain context requires an appreciation of the values, fears, humour and contradictions of that society.

This explains why I sometimes laugh when research is discussed as though it exists only within the familiar categories of qualitative and quantitative inquiry. These traditions do not exhaust the possibilities of research.

Creative writers investigate reality differently. They observe, participate, remember, compare, imagine and read across disciplines. Their evidence eventually disappears into dialogue, characters, setting, symbolism and plot. Unlike the historian, who acknowledges sources through footnotes, the storyteller buries them beneath narratives.

Listen. Creative writers are the only researchers whose success depends on making their research invisible.

Readers rarely stop to ask how many books I consulted, how many conversations I held, or how many months were spent observing people before writing my first sentence of a story. Yet when they close the story and remark, "This story felt real," they are paying tribute not only to my imagination but also to the countless hours of inquiry that made the story believable.

That is why I encourage upcoming writers to read far more than contemporary fiction. Read the classics, history, philosophy, biographies, travel writing, memoirs, newspapers and scientific discoveries. Every good book expands the imagination and enlarges one's understanding of life. Writers who have not read well eventually discover that their works are equally limited.

Our universities should recognise Creative Writing as a legitimate field of advanced scholarship. We need postgraduate programmes that not only produce better novels, plays and poems but also deepen our understanding of how creative practice generates knowledge.

No university I know of in Kenya offers a postgraduate degree in creative writing! Such a course will show us that research does not always culminate in a thesis or a journal article. Sometimes it can culminate in a story that helps us understand humanity more profoundly.

So, do successful creative writers carry out research? Yes, they do far more than conduct research. They cultivate a lifelong habit of curiosity. They listen before they write and observe before they imagine. More significantly, they read before they create. Every conversation, forgotten memory and carefully chosen book is part of an invisible library from which stories are born.

The finest works of fiction that continue to feel true long after we have turned the last page are not products of imagination alone. They are products of disciplined curiosity, patient observation, careful investigation and imaginative transformation.

I am convinced that creative writing follows a distinctive process of inquiry that deserves greater scholarly attention. I have begun developing what I call the Narrative Transformation Model. This is an attempt to explain how writers transform observation, experience, reflection and research into stories that illuminate the human condition. That, however, is a conversation for another Saturday.

Prof Egara Kabaji is a writer, educationist and researcher based at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology. He is also the Vice President of the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA) and the Chancellor of Mount Kigali University, Rwanda.