Using Social Media for Writing Research

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There are times when you’re writing you find yourself dead in the water because of one missing fact.  In my case this happened recently when I needed to find out some names for a couple of characters I have.  Unfortunately, the names I needed were obscure Breton names, a people who live in Brittany.

After going through the usual channels of Google, the results were lacking to say the least.  I decided to take my search to the social media networks I frequent.  Almost immediately, I received a reply from one of my friends on Plurk.  He pointed me in the direction of some excellent books in french documenting some 1800 Breton names.  This saved me a considerable amount of time and effort.

In order to have social media work for you as a research tool, you’ll need to join several social media networks.  The best two I’ve found are Twitter and Plurk.  Twitter for the sheer amount and variety of people there and Plurk for the incredible community features and helpful people frequenting the service.  Those are just two services though.  You will want to be on at least five or so to cast as wide a net as possible.

Now, in addition to being on a multitude of services, you also need to have a lot of friends. This doesn’t mean friending or following people indiscriminately, you need to cultivate a broad cross-section of people from different backgrounds.  With this diversity, you’ll be able to ask questions concerning whatever and will be assured an answer.

As writers, sometimes we don’t work well with technology, but sometimes its best just to jump into the waters and start treading.  It is a whole lot easier than performing a public reading and in most cases a lot more fun.