Why Creative Research Can't Always Happen at Your Desk

Writers understand research. We interview sources, read archives, comb through historical records, and lose entire afternoons to Wikipedia rabbit holes. This is essential work. But there's a form of research that doesn't fit neatly into the category of "things you can Google."

Philip Gerard calls it creative research—the kind of inquiry that goes beyond fact-gathering to immersion, sensory observation, and allowing a place to reshape your understanding. In his book The Art of Creative Research: A Field Guide for Writers, Gerard argues that creative research isn't just about collecting information. It's about discovering what you didn't know you needed to know.

And sometimes, that kind of discovery can't happen at your desk.

What Creative Research Actually Means

Creative research is research shaped by curiosity rather than a predetermined checklist. It's the difference between looking up "what did 18th-century Scottish cottages look like" and standing inside one, noticing the thickness of the walls, the height of the doorways, the way sound carries in a stone room.

It's walking through a market in Bangkok not to photograph it for reference but to understand the social choreography—who defers to whom, how transactions happen, what goes unsaid.

It's spending an afternoon in a village pub in Yorkshire, listening to how locals greet each other, what topics come up naturally, how humor and complaint are woven into ordinary conversation.

Creative research values observation over extraction. It assumes that place has intelligence—that being somewhere teaches you things no book or article can articulate.

This is the research that changes your writing. Not because you now have more facts, but because you understand how things actually work.

When Creative Research Requires Leaving Home

Not every writing project requires travel. If you're setting a story in your hometown, or writing about places you already know deeply, creative research might mean revisiting familiar spaces with fresh attention.

But many writers find themselves needing to understand places they've never been. A historical novelist writing about Scotland. A memoirist tracing family migration routes. A contemporary fiction writer setting a novel in Southeast Asia.

For these projects, desk research hits a limit.

You can learn what a place looks like from photographs. You can learn its history from books. You can even learn local customs from travel guides.

What you can't learn from your desk:

• How a place smells—markets, rain on stone, wood smoke in cold air
• How people move through space—the pace of walking, the physical distances considered normal
• How time feels different—the rhythm of days shaped by climate, work patterns, social rituals
• What seems ordinary to people who live there versus what stands out to visitors
• How language actually sounds—cadence, dialect, what gets emphasized

These aren't decorative details. They're the elements that make a reader believe they're somewhere real.

The Difference Between Research and Lived Experience

There's a passage in Wuthering Heights where the narrator describes the wind on the Yorkshire moors as a constant presence—not just weather, but a force that shapes architecture, behavior, and psychology. Emily Brontë didn't research that. She lived it.

Writers can't always live in the places they write about. But we can visit with the intention of studying rather than touring.

That means:

• Staying long enough for the unfamiliar to become ordinary
• Walking the same routes repeatedly to notice what changes
• Returning to the same cafe or market to observe patterns
• Sitting still long enough to watch how a place works when you're not the focus

This is field work. Not in the anthropological sense of extracting data from a culture, but in the sense of allowing yourself to be taught by a place.

What Makes Field Work Different from Tourism

Tourism is about highlights. Field work is about dailiness.

A tourist visits Edinburgh Castle. A writer doing field work walks through New Town at different times of day, noticing how light falls on Georgian facades, where people gather in the mornings, how the city sounds on a Sunday versus a weekday.

A tourist takes the overnight train through Thailand. A writer doing field work observes who travels on overnight trains, how space is negotiated in a shared sleeper car, what social rules govern interaction between strangers.

Tourism asks: What should I see here?
Field work asks: How does life actually happen here?

Both are valid. But only one teaches you how to write a place with authority.

This is Travel Designed to Support Creative Research

If you're considering research travel—whether a solo trip to gather material or a group experience with other writers—Early & Away can help design an itinerary that supports creative research rather than generic tourism.

We specialize in understanding what writers actually need: where to stay for observation rather than convenience, how to structure days for attention rather than efficiency, which experiences support place literacy rather than just photo opportunities.

Learn more about Research Travel Planning or schedule a consultation to discuss how travel might serve your current project.

What's your experience with creative research? Have you traveled for a writing project? What did you learn that you couldn't have discovered from your desk? Send us an email to share your story.