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Sometimes, if I'm suffering from a nasty bout of Writer's Block, I'll find something else that's story related and work on it. This usually entails me doing all sorts of obscure and unneeded research.

Anyway, I do all sorts of unneeded research. For example:

I decide when a character's birthday is. I will intentionally go and find out what their astrological sign is, their Chinese zodiac sign, their birthstone, and their birthflower, and find out all the symbolism and random bits of information. In some cases, it's kind of scary to see how accurate some of the information can be in regards to said character.

I'll also do background research on their home countries, or, if the world is entirely fictional, the countries most similar to their home countries. Architecture, religious rituals, cultural norms, the works.

And, just to make it entirely random, I've done research on what professionals say make or break relationships. Some of the stuff I find is fascinating: I found an article that says the act of giving is masculine while receiving is Feminine. I call bullshit on that, but whatever. The point is, everything I learn somehow gets worked into the story in some way shape or form.

So what about you?

-What random facts have you looked up?
-Did these facts fit well with your story, or was it all jumbled and incorrect?
-Do you intentionally try to apply these random facts to your story, or do you just let them come and see how it goes?
-What prompts you to look up certain facts?

Once I was writing a story and one of the main characters had cancer so I did a ton of cancer research and know a ton about it now.

I also do scientific reserach here and there, though probably not as much as I should. Unless reading sc-fi counts blaugh

I once stayed up until five in the morning looking up haunted dolls and toys. Of course the usual Robert the Doll, voodoo dolls, devil babies, and the like came up, but I also found some neat theories about childhood and bonds between beloved toys.

For example, one lady who studies haunted dolls thinks that toys can develop a sort of "life" that they get from the child's love, one that fades over time as the child grows older. But when the separation is suddenly cut short? I.e., the child dies or the toy is taken away prematurely. What becomes of that "life energy"? The toy does not know how to cope, and thus tries to find a way to deal with that lost bond. Which can have some catastrophic results. She was actually at the time of writing going through a lot of teddy bears that washed up from Hurricane Katrina, and said the sadness was so overwhelming she could only study one bear in the room at a time.

The same theory went into play about a child who had an abusive father, but that father kept finding that child's teddy bear in weird places around the house---often where the father would trip on it or otherwise hurt himself. After one such trip lead down the stairs and into a hospital, he refused to come home until the child outgrew the bear.

None of this had any bearing on my story at the time; haunted dolls and other paranormal things are just a passion of mine.

The above theories do hide in the background, however, as I found a way to fix a plot hole in my story was to add a haunted doll (one that is literally haunted by a ghost, not one that has "emotional energy"). The emotional bond mentioned above is not really relevant, seeing as it is not the doll that has a bond with the child, but the ghost (who is the child's father).

In fact, a lot of the stuff I looked up on haunted dolls are rather irrelevant to the story; I just found some of the prospects and theories to be interesting. Some things about them have helped, however: some who believe that haunted objects in general tend to be more resilient is one, and that the object is usually attached to either its owner, or a certain person (again, subverted in that the doll is actually haunted by a ghost). Even the bond came into play, though in a much more literal example.

When I do research on things that are not immediately relevant to the story, I tend to just look up things that intrigue me---and sometimes this ties into things I want to add to my story, but do not know how to approach it. And sometimes, research on my chosen subject just happens to make it into my story.

Thanks. I think so too. ^^