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• Published: 03 November 2021

The role of literary fiction in facilitating social science research

• Bryan Yazell   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2263-3488 1 , 2 ,
• Klaus Petersen 2 , 3 ,
• Paul Marx 3 , 4 , 5 &
• Patrick Fessenbecker 6 , 7  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  8 , Article number:  261 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Scholars in literature departments and the social sciences share a broadly similar interest in understanding human development, societal norms, and political institutions. However, although literature scholars are likely to reference sources or concepts from the social sciences in their published work, the line of influence is much less likely to appear the other way around. This unequal engagement provides the occasion for this paper, which seeks to clarify the ways social scientists might draw influence from literary fiction in the development of their own work as academics: selecting research topics, teaching, and drawing inspiration for projects. A qualitative survey sent to 13,784 social science researchers at 25 different universities asked participants to describe the influence, if any, reading works of literary fiction plays in their academic work or development. The 875 responses to this survey provide numerous insights into the nature of interdisciplinary engagement between these disciplines. First, the survey reveals a skepticism among early-career researchers regarding literature’s social insights compared to their more senior colleagues. Second, a significant number of respondents recognized literary fiction as playing some part in shaping their research interests and expanding their comprehension of subjects relevant to their academic scholarship. Finally, the survey generated a list of literary fiction authors and texts that respondents acknowledged as especially useful for understanding topics relevant to the study of the social sciences. Taken together, the results of the survey provide a fuller account of how researchers engage with literary fiction than can be found in the pages of academic journals, where strict disciplinary conventions might discourage out-of-the-field engagement.

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Introduction.

Interdisciplinary research has become the buzzword of university managers and funding agencies. It is said that researchers need to think out of the box, be innovative and agile, and—last but not least—be curious about other disciplines in order to solve the complex challenges of the modern world. The tension inevitably generated by calls for more interdisciplinary work between university administrators on the one side and researchers on the other risks obscuring a fundamental question: what exactly is new about interdisciplinary research in the first place? For all the handwringing about interdisciplinarity, there is no clear consensus about what the boundaries of a given discipline are in the first place. Debates have waged over the last several decades about the divisions between the sciences and the humanities, their origins, and possible methods for rectifying them. Perhaps most famously, British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow identified “two cultures” in the academy separated by “a gulf of mutual incomprehension” ( 1961 , p. 4). According to Snow, “literary intellectuals” and “physical scientists” not only distrusted each other’s pronouncements, but fundamentally saw the world differently ( 1961 , p.4, 6). Although this assessment has been influential in framing these respective disciplines for decades, its presentation of a binary division between the hard sciences and the arts does not account for the fields of study with overlapping interests and, at times, borrowed methodological tools: the social sciences and literature departments.

The social sciences and literary studies share an indelible link by virtue of their twinned emergence as academic disciplines in the early twentieth century. Both disciplines in the broadest sense share a keen interest in understanding and describing human behavior and social relationships. However despite—or perhaps owing to—these similarities, the disciplines have historically identified themselves in terms of opposition. On one side, Émile Durkheim’s Rules of Sociological Method, published in 1895, defined the discipline in terms of positivism and quantitative study. On the other side, foundational literature scholars such as Matthew Arnold and F.R. Leavis understood literary study as a crucial component to the project of invigorating the national culture: to identify among the mass of popular culture the most elite examples of art. Critics in this early school of literary study therefore understood literature less as a mirror of society and more as a way to access what is best about cultural ideals or humanistic achievement (Arnold, 1873 ; Leavis, 2011 ). In this early context, social scientists were more interested in making society itself the object of study. While the features of each respective field have undoubtedly changed dramatically over the past century, this underlying division regarding the “science” in the social science persists. If the social scientist and literature scholar can speak with some degree of shared comprehension, they nonetheless are beset by disciplinary boundaries that make the task of mutual exchange harder than it might otherwise appear.

The decision to better document the uses of literature within the social sciences was born from an overarching drive to understand literature’s impact on researchers that often escape notice. After all, literary scholars are in general familiar with (if not thoroughly informed by) the works of sociologists, economists, and political scientists. Moreover, they are likely to be comfortable both with using the toolset of the social sciences in their own work and, more to the point, citing sociologists such as Émile Durkheim, Erving Goffman, and Bruno Latour. Over the last decade, for instance, several prominent literary scholars have advocated for a descriptive model for analyzing literary texts modeled on the social sciences (e.g., Love 2010 ; Marcus and Love, 2016 ). This relatively recent turn to the social sciences does not begin to consider, of course, the much longer history of literary scholars drawing critical concepts from the Frankfurt School (such as Theodor Adorno or Jürgen Habermas) or, more significantly, the works of Karl Marx. All of which is to say, one can easily expect references to sources broadly associated with the social sciences when reading a literary studies monograph.

However, if it is clear that literary scholars are familiar with prominent works by social scientists, it is much less apparent if the reverse is true. In an essay in World Politics, the political scientist Cathie Jo Martin outlines the profound insight literary sources can offer the field. Novels and other literary fiction provide “a site for imagining policy”, help define shared group interests, and create narratives that legitimize systems of governance (Martin, 2019 , p. 432). Elsewhere, Nobel prize-winning economist Robert J. Shiller calls for greater engagement with literature and fiction in Narrative Economics (2019). However, as we show below, cases of social scientists explicitly acknowledging literary sources are few and far in between. Rather than articulate yet another call for better dialog between the disciplines, we instead seek greater insight into the way social scientists are already referring to, engaging with, or simply using literature in their field as researchers and teachers. As explained in detail below, this task is not as straightforward as it may seem.

Our project proceeded in two steps. The first was a qualitative study of social science articles that included references to literary authors drawn from the collection of social science journals cataloged on the JSTOR digital library. The evaluation of literary references captured in our study (outlined below) made it possible to track the proliferation of literary sources across social science research and to create a loose typology of these uses. For the second step, we developed a survey for social science researchers to elaborate on how, if at all, their work engages with works of literary fiction. Before going into the field, the survey was tested and discussed with a small number of academics to ensure that the items capture the concepts of interest. The survey was then sent electronically to 13,784 researchers at all stages (from PhD students to full professors) from the top 25 social science departments as ranked in 2019 by Times Higher Education (World University Rankings).

If academic departments are guardians of their disciplines, then this sample of prominent departments might reflect the international standard for their respective fields. In other words, researchers attached to these institutions may be more inclined to protect conventions than to go against the grain. In contrast, we can imagine that scholars at smaller schools, colleges, or cross-disciplinary research centers might be more inclined to engage with other disciplines. Focusing on the former institutions rather than the later, our survey finds hard test cases for our questions about the use of literary references in social sciences. Finally, by calling attention to the different forms of influence literature may (or may not) assume, the survey made it possible to dwell in more detail on how social scientists esteem literary fiction as a tool for understanding social concepts.

Before conducting our survey, we first developed a typology of what we term uses of literature within the social sciences. This typology is the result of an ongoing project seeking to understand how literature might already play a role in the social sciences, no matter how small this role might appear at first glance. Our investigations were further motivated by the distinct lack of sources on the subject. While there are a number of prominent cases that call for social scientists to incorporate the insights of literature into their research (e.g., Shiller, 2019 ) and teaching (e.g., Morson and Schapiro, 2017 ), there are hardly any that demonstrate how (and where) they might already be doing so. For those of us who wish to expound on the value of not only literature per se but the study of literature specifically, a thorough account of how experts in an adjacent field like social science might already incorporate literary objects in their scholarship is a critical starting point. The absence of a generalized account of the field therefore required us to generate our own.

To do so, we first devised a plan to comb through the entire catalog of published social science articles on JSTOR, which spans nearly a century’s worth of material. Our goal at this point was to identify and categorize where and how social scientists refer to literary fiction in their published work. As will become clear, this approach’s limitations—namely, its reliance on a pre-determined list of searchable terms—set the groundwork for our survey, which was designed to account for surprising or unexpected responses. Nevertheless, the survey provided valuable insight into the more fleeting references to literary fiction in published social science research.

A brief account of this JSTOR project is useful for contextualizing the results of our social science survey. First, it was necessary to generate a delimited archive of social science articles that use, in some shape or another, literary sources. For the sake of producing an adequate number of sources, we composed a list of search terms that consisted of 30 prominent Anglophone authors, along with two famous literary characters, Robinson Crusoe, and Sherlock Holmes (Fig. 1 ). To determine these search terms, we cross-referenced popular online media articles (including blogs, short essays, and user forums) that offered broad rankings of, for example, the most important authors of all time. To best address the historical breadth of the JSTOR catalog, the names were edited down further to focus on authors who published before the middle of the twentieth century. It goes without saying that this initial list was far from exhaustive. Instead, it was intended to produce a large enough body of results in order for us to further generate a working typology of literary references as they appeared in the articles. Footnote 1 Second, we conducted a qualitative analysis of these articles alongside the rough typology of uses Michael Watts, Professor of Economics at Purdue, outlines in his study of economics and literature—the only workable typology we found.

Chart displays search terms (author name or fictional character name) and their corresponding total number of appearances across all social science articles on JSTOR. Figure shows 19 most popular results from the compiled search term list.

According to Watts, economists who engage with literature to any degree tend to do so according to four different categories: 1. eloquent description of human behavior; 2. historical evidence conveying the context of a particular time or place; 3. Alternative accounts of rational behavior that complement or challenge economic theory; 4. Evidence of an antimarket/antibusiness orientation in esthetic works. ( 2002 , p. 377)

When viewed alongside the JSTOR articles, however, the limitations to Watts’s typology were apparent. Most immediately, the emphasis on what one might call deep or sustained engagements with literature means that his typology will not capture those more fleeting uses of literature that make up the vast majority of literary references in the social science archive. Once one recognizes these limits, it becomes clear that any categorization or typology of literature in social science must be sufficiently flexible enough to capture the many and often surprising ways that the disciplinary fields might intersect. Of course, this latter point is underscored by the fact that Watt’s original typology is concerned with economics only. By expanding our search to include the social sciences in general, we allow for a wider scale for evaluating literature’s usefulness as seen by, for instance, political scientists, social theorists, and behavioral economists. After reviewing the JSTOR set of articles, we expanded on Watt’s initial typology to produce a more encompassing categorization of literary uses that better accommodated the range of literary references as they appeared in the archive. Ultimately, we determined that an expanded typology of uses of literature as they appear in published social science articles must include several more categories, never mind the four in Watts’s initial outline:

Literature as argument

Causal Argument/Historical data: marks studies that see literature as an agent of historical change along the lines of something a historian of the period can recognize.

Alternate Explanation: notes studies that see literary writers as rival social theorists whose arguments warrant proper countering.

Philosophical Position: refers to studies that associate an author with an argument that is developed or sustained across that author’s body of work.

Literature as context

Historical Context: designates studies that use information from literary texts as a way of characterizing a particular historical period, without claiming that the work was an agent of change in the period.

Biography: refers to studies that cite biographical details of an author or literary source as a way of situating concurrent historical events.

Literature as metonym

Cultural Standard: names studies that refer to literary texts as a cultural metonym, for example using Shakespeare as a way of referring to Renaissance England or to Western Culture as a whole.

Parable: designates studies that refer to a literary object that has lost its original literary contextualization and now stands in for something else entirely (e.g., Robinson Crusoe as a parable for homo economicus).

Literature as decoration

Literary effects/style: accounts for those literary texts that are evoked subtly via an author’s style or phrasing.

Decoration: names instances when the references to a literary text appear merely decorative and play no significant role in the argument.

Nonfiction quote: denotes direction quotations attributed to authors outside their published works.

Literature as Inspiration: marks moments in which a literary text plays no direct role in the argument but inspired the scholar’s thinking.

Literature as Teaching Tool: acknowledges instances where scholars use literary texts within the classroom or to help explain a concept.

As this expanded typology suggests, our initial assessment of the JSTOR articles highlights literature’s wide range of applications within the social sciences (Fig. 2 ). Moreover, it jumpstarts a dialog on what, exactly, constitutes a use of literature within this field. After all, it seems significant that a great portion of literary references as captured in the JSTOR survey are essentially non-critical uses—pithy quotations from authors or famous literary epigrams—when viewed from the perspective of literary studies. Nonetheless, to account for these references to literature is to acknowledge something of the role literary fiction per se plays, if not in the entire field of social science research, then in the academic conventions of social science publishing.

Chart shows the proportion of literary typographies across JSTOR’s social science catalog from among our compiled search term list. The presented types originate from our expanded typography based on Watts’s categorisations.

At the same time, our attempts to expand this typology ran into several hurdles of its own. First and foremost, our ability to generate search results from the JSTOR archive was limited by the terms we used: because any search for “literature” or “fiction” produces too many non-applicable and generalized results, one must enter specific search terms (e.g., William Shakespeare; Virginia Woolf) to produce relevant results. Along similar lines, our typology can only take shape in view of these limited sources; it is after all possible that an author or literary text that did not appear on our initial list has been received by social scientists in ways that confound expectations beyond even our expanded typology.

Finally, our reliance on both pre-conceived search terms and archived research articles prevents us from evaluating the newest trends in both literature as well as social science research. As our survey results below demonstrate, there is ample evidence that literature produced within the last twenty years has an outsized impact on those social scientists who acknowledge literary fiction as an influence in their work. The conventions of academic publishing in non-literary fields, however, might prevent researchers from likewise acknowledging these contemporary examples in their published material in favor of more familiar, canonical examples. In view of the affordances and limitations to our initial JSTOR study, we decided to approach the subject of literature and social science from another direction: by going directly to the source.

If publications are the end products of academic work, the product does not always reflect all details of the research process. Nobody leaves the scaffolding standing when the house is completed; likewise, the notes, readings, and other sources of inspiration that lay the foundation for an article or academic monograph often go unacknowledged. To be sure, simply searching for references to literary fiction in the published text of these sources is likely to return some results—for instance, the frequent conflation of the homo economicus model with the protagonist of Robinson Crusoe, albeit in a manner that elides any reference to Daniel Defoe, the author (Watson, 2017 ). As the example of Crusoe suggests, the small pool of literary sources that appear in the text of social science articles cannot adequately account for the wide range of influences literature might have at all stages of research. To better capture these invisible or unacknowledged uses of literature in the social science, we decided to simply ask social scientists themselves. The survey asked a few simple questions on their use (or not) of fictional literature in any stage of their academic work. The survey questions are included in the supplementary material as supplementary note . We received 875 responses at a response rate of 7 percent, a number which we deemed acceptable for allowing us to detect some overall patterns. Given the use of THE rankings, the sample is dominated by North American and European social science departments. The sample includes all career stages: Ph.D students (35 pct.), postdocs and assistant professors (20 pct.), and tenured staff (42 pct.). It includes the four major social science disciplines: economics (20 pct.), sociology (31 pct.), political science (26 pct.), psychology (19 pct.), whereas a small group (4 pct.) identified with other disciplines. A full demographic breakdown (Table S.1) is included in the supplementary material .

Discussion: what do social scientists say?

To be clear, not all social scientists use literature in a manner conforming with our typology above or even consider literature a factor in their work life. In the survey, we focused on the non-explicit uses of literature and the considerations behind their uses. In other words, the survey is meant to supplement our findings from the study of social science journals from the JSTOR digital library. The survey should not be taken as a test of the above-mentioned categories developed from the empirical study of academic publications. Still, it is possible to glean some points of overlap between the two approaches. Several of these categories can be easily applied to responses from the survey, especially the categories relating to literature’s inspirational value or its usefulness as a teaching tool. At the same time, other categories that feature heavily in the published articles—especially “literature as decoration” and “literature as metonym”—were hardly mentioned at all in the survey responses. The gap between what social scientists say about literature and what appears in social science articles reiterates the value of the survey, which captures some of the underlying motivations for using literature (or not) that otherwise would not come across in view of published academic work.

Even considering the general self-selection bias—i.e., respondents who react positively to the idea of using literature are also more likely to participate in the survey—93 percent agreed that “Literature often contains important insights into the nature of society and social life”, while only 2 percent disagreed. However, it is one thing to acknowledge that literature offers general insights into life and quite another to affirm that literature plays a role in individual research biographies. To address this issue, we posed the question if “Reading literature played a role in the formation of your research questions or the development of your research projects.”

We were somewhat surprised to learn that this was the case for almost half of the respondents (46 precent agree or totally agree), and only a third (34 percent) rejected this premise (Table 1 ). Looking at the comments in the open sections shed light on this. For some researchers there was a very clear link. For example, one respondent explained: “Toni Morrison and other women of color (Ana Castillo, for example) greatly enriched my understanding of the role of gender in society (I am a man).”

Raising the bar even higher, we then asked about publications. Publications are arguably the most delicate matter in our survey. After all, publications can make or break careers inasmuch as they factor into promotions and tenure reviews. In response to our publishing question (“How often do you quote or in other ways use a work of fiction in your publications”), 25 percent recorded occasionally using literary fiction in some form and an additional 13 percent affirmed doing so often or very often. In other words, almost 40 percent of the respondents acknowledge using literary sources in their publications (Table 2 ).

However, it must be stressed that these uses vary in form and substance. Based on our qualitative assessment of a subset of social science sources (outlined above), we found that explicit engagements range from the superficial (e.g., brief quotations of famous quips or observations from literary sources), the decontextualized (e.g., Robinson Crusoe functions only as a model of economic behavior), to more sustained engagements with the arguments or ideas presented in literature (e.g., Thomas Piketty’s references to Jane Austen and Balzac in Capital in the Twenty-First Century). In other words, a great many of these applications of literature do not resemble the type of work one finds in literature departments. Moreover, the depth or method for engagement is rather unsystematic.

Of course, publications and research only constitute part of the work academics do at the university. Our survey also asked about teaching in order to capture other literary uses that published papers are unlikely to acknowledge. As noted above, Robinson Crusoe appears in textbooks on microeconomics in the figure of the homo economicus. Elsewhere, there are several examples of sources who call for incorporating literary fiction in the teaching of the social sciences in order to benefit from the imaginative social logics embedded in, for instance, science fiction novels (e.g., Rodgers et al., 2007 ; Hirschman et al., 2018 ). As our survey demonstrates, most of the respondents use or have used literary sources as pedagogical tools: less than a third (30 percent) never do so, most do so at least sometimes, and a few (12 percent) frequently use literature in their teaching (Table 3 ).

If we had expanded the category from literature to art in a wide sense (including, for example, movies, television series, paintings, and music) we suspect the numbers would have been significantly higher.

Finally, our survey provides some insight into what characterizes social scientists who use literature in their work. We generally find only small differences between disciplines within the field of social science, with economists marginally more skeptical of literature’s usefulness in the classroom than researchers in sociology, political science, and psychology (Table 3 ). This confirms earlier findings. A survey from 2006 showed that 57 percent of economist disagreed with the proposition that “In general, interdisciplinary knowledge is better than knowledge obtained by a single discipline.” For psychology, political science, and sociology the numbers were 9, 25 and 28 percent respectively (Fourcade et al., 2015 ).

Larger contrasts appear when considering the career stage of the researchers. We find a very clear general pattern of early-career, non-tenured researchers expressing more skepticism regarding literature’s insights compared to tenured and more senior researchers (Table 4 ). This pattern is most apparent when the respondents consider the use of literature in their own publications. A striking 75 percent of PhD students and 78 percent of postdocs have never quoted literature in their publications, compared to 48 percent in the senior professor group.

Arguably, this gap might simply reflect the much larger publication portfolio expected of senior professors in relation to early-career scholars, but the same pattern holds when we asked more general questions on the importance of literature.

This last point casts into relief some of the internal and generational gaps existing between senior researchers and junior and early-career researchers facing an increasingly precarious academic workplace. For early-career researchers, there is little immediate benefit to working outside established borders when recognition and professional assessment (such as promotions and tenure) still largely derive from work within disciplinary camps (Lyall, 2019 , p. 2). At the same time, stepping into uncharted territory requires one to navigate disciplinary traditions, departmental gatekeeping, and new methodologies. These professional limitations are what observers have in mind when they call interdisciplinary research risky at best (e.g., Callard and Fitzgerald, 2015 ) and “career suicide” at worst (Bothwell, 2016 ).

Rather than ascribing literary interests to some form of academic maturity, then, we suspect this gap between early and later-stage researchers partly reflects how disciplines work. In general terms, it is easy to imagine how the institutional pressures on early-career researchers can translate to a stricter adherence to disciplinary guidelines. Facing an unstable job market and competing for a limited pool of external funding, these scholars are highly dependent on the recognition of their peers and will tend to be more risk-adverse with respect to publications. As noted above, explicit signals of inter- or cross-disciplinary interests may sound appealing in the abstract (and may be promoted by international funding agencies) but they face much more skepticism within academic departments and hiring committees. As a result, using literature in academic publications—and perhaps explicitly cross-disciplinary research in general—is a luxury that only the more professionally-secure researchers can afford.

This explanation might account for the lack of explicit references to literary fiction in social science research, but not the absence of more indirect literature-research relationships. For example, 39 percent of PhD students “totally agree” that one can “learn a lot about what humans are like from literature” as opposed to 60 percent of associate professors and over half of professors. While outside the bounds of our current project, this generational gap may also be evidence of the diminishing presence of literature departments on university campuses after successive years of administrative funding cuts and public pressure against humanities-oriented education in general (Meranze, 2015 ). Fewer literature classes may result in as scenario where even advanced degree holders in an adjacent field like social science may be less studied in literature than their more senior colleagues.

What is the social scientist reading list?

There is no shortage of arguments for those in the social sciences to read literary fiction. As noted in the introduction above, there are a handful of social scientists in fields like sociology and economics who emphasize not only the general value of reading literature but also the profound insights literature can offer their research. However, beyond acknowledging the need to read in general, the question remains: which books to open, and which pages to turn? As is perhaps unsurprising canonical examples of realist fiction, with their aspiration to represent the breadth of the social world, are often the first to come to mind. Critics interested in bridging the gap between literature and economics, for instance, tend to hold up nineteenth-century novels as key examples of the relevant insight fiction might offer (Fessenbecker and Yazell, 2021 ). This preference for major classics was also confirmed by the participants in our survey, who cited such canonical novelists as George Orwell and Leo Tolstoy with high frequency (Table 5 ). The full list of literary recommendations for “understanding society better” includes novels and authors and spans different national literary canons, with authors associated with novels far eclipsing other forms of literature.

The above list of frequently referenced authors comes with few surprises. Anglophone—and especially US—literature and writers dominate, which reflects of the high number of US and UK universities on our list of top departments in the field of social science. All authors except Homer, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Austen, Eliot, and Twain belong to the twentieth century. The most contemporary authors are women—Adichie and Atwood the only living authors within the top twenty—in contrast to the heavily-canonized, uniformly male authors in the top five positions. These more recent authors to different degrees push back against the conventions of the realist novel. Atwood’s speculative fiction and the fantasy and utopian fiction of LeGuin thus demonstrate the range of novelistic genres cited in the survey responses.

The list also suggests something of the formative power of the standardized literature curriculum. Books typically assigned in US high schools are heavily represented on the list of recommended texts below, which includes The Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird (Table 6 ). The uncontested most recommended read for social scientists is the British novelist and essayist George Orwell. The specific recommendations include his most best-selling books, 1984 and Animal Farm, which together form the two most recommended titles according to the survey respondents.

Conclusion: the uses of trivia

To briefly summarize, we set out to study the way social scientists use literature in two broad ways. First, we compiled a dataset comprising a century’s worth of scholarship in the social sciences. Second, we conducted a survey of a large number of contemporary working social scientists. A qualitative review of the dataset revealed a number of different ways social scientists have used literature; these uses were categorizable into six broad categories, several of which contained discernible sub-categories. The survey reinforced parts of this analysis while diverging in intriguing ways. Almost all the surveyed social scientists agreed on the cognitive value of literature, and almost half (46%) reported that literary works had played important roles in their own intellectual biographies. Yet some common uses of literature in the dataset received virtually no mention in the self-reports and the survey revealed suggestive evidence of the impact of institutional structures on whether and how scholars use literature. Ultimately the analysis points towards the value of further research. Both the list of uses compiled from the dataset and the list of works compiled from the survey are necessarily limited in scope and would benefit from a more comprehensive consideration of social scientists and their research.

But by way of conclusion, it is worth responding to the worry that much of the data collected here is somewhat less than consequential—the collection of an offhand reference here, a novel read in grad school there—and to that extent cannot answer our opening question about the nature of interdisciplinarity. Or, perhaps more soberly, it does answer the question, but simply in the negative. There is in fact not much of a meaningful use for literature in the conduct of the social sciences, and one of the pieces of evidence for the argument is the limited use such scholars have made of it thus far. Such an objection is wrong in two ways, one rather boring and one relatively more interesting. The boring objection is simply the observation that the history of a discipline does not predict its future: it would not be at all surprising to see a discipline change as a new archive of material or a new method of analysis became available to it. Indeed, this is often precisely what leads disciplines forward. The more interesting objection is the implicit premise that interdisciplinary scholarship must make its interdisciplinarity overt and extensive, and that a new interdisciplinary connection must be innovative.

We reject both halves of this second premise. The kind of interdisciplinarity we have traced here is light and casual, using a quotation here or there, and there is little that is new about it: it has been with the social sciences for much of their history. However, interdisciplinarity need not be utterly novel to be worth explicating, theorizing, and defending. Against the model of interdisciplinary development that considers the key question to be the difficulty and complexity of bringing two disciplines together, we want to highlight how easy it really is. If it were to become ordinary practice to read a novel and a piece of literary criticism that addressed whatever issue a given social scientist happened to be working on, this would for many social scientists simply normalize and bring to awareness the way they already work. Moreover, rather than shaming social scientists for not using literature more, we submit a better way to evoke greater respect for and greater use of literature and criticism is to highlight the ways in which they already do. Carrots, as they say, rather than sticks.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

The JSTOR search terms did not include John Steinbeck, who is heavily cited by the respondents in our later survey. The omission, while regrettable, underscores the usefulness of the survey’s open-ended questions. Further research might well consider additional authors beyond this improvised list.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Rita Felski, Anne-Marie Mai, and Pieter Vanhuysse for their helpful feedback during the design of the survey. Thanks are also due to JSTOR for making available their digital archive and to the nearly 1000 colleagues who responded to the survey and, in some cases, provided additional comments by email. Research in this article received funding by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF127) and the Danish Institute for Advanced Study (internal funds).

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Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark, Odense M, Denmark

Bryan Yazell

Danish Institute for Advanced Study, Odense M, Denmark

Bryan Yazell & Klaus Petersen

Danish Centre for Welfare Studies, University of Southern Denmark, Odense M, Denmark

Klaus Petersen & Paul Marx

Institute for Socio-Economics, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn, Germany

Program for Cultures, Civilizations, and Ideas, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

Patrick Fessenbecker

Engineering Communication Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

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Correspondence to Bryan Yazell .

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The project design was approved by SDU-RIO (ref: 10.646). As the project does not involve human biological material, approval by the Research Ethics Committee SDU is not applicable.

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Data collection for this study and the use of data for research were approved by SDU-RIO (ref: 10.646) following Danish Data Protection Law [databeskyttelsesforordningen] §10.

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Yazell, B., Petersen, K., Marx, P. et al. The role of literary fiction in facilitating social science research. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 8 , 261 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00939-y

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How to Research a Novel: 9 Key Strategies

by Joslyn Chase | 3 comments

Have you ever started a story, gotten halfway through, and realized you don't know key facts about your story's world? Have you ever wondered how to find out the size of spoons in medieval England for your fantasy adventure story? Is that even relevant to your plot, or could you skip that fact? Here's how to research your novel.

As fiction writers, our job is to sit at a keyboard and make stuff up for fun and profit. We conjure most of our material from our imagination, creativity, and mental supply of facts and trivia, but sometimes we need that little bit of extra verisimilitude that research can bring to a project.

When it comes to research, there are key strategies to keep in mind to help you make the most of your time and effort.

9 Strategies to Research a Novel

Readers who’ve posted reviews for my thriller, Nocturne In Ashes , often comment about how well-researched it is. While that can be a positive sentiment, that’s not really what you want readers to notice about your book. The best research shouldn’t call attention to itself or detract readers from the story so I’m always relieved to hear those same reviewers go on to rave about the thrills and suspense.

When you're writing, you want to get the facts right and create a believable world. Doing research for your novel is the way to do that. But you also don't want to get sucked into a research hole, so distracted by the local cuisine of a small town in 1930s France that you never actually write. And you want to hook your readers with a page-turning story , not a dissertation on some obscure topic.

Here are nine key research strategies I’ve learned to write an effective (and exciting!) story.

1. Write first, research later

Research can be a dangerous enterprise because it’s seductive and time spent in research is time taken away from actual writing of the creative process. Getting words on the page is job one, so it’s important to meet your daily writing goal before engaging in research.

So if the piece you’re working on requires research, your first order of the day should be to write something else that doesn’t need research, something you can draw purely from imagination and your own mental well. Fill your word quota, practice your skills, meet your production goals, and THEN move on to research, so you don't derail your writing process with it.

I always have multiple works in progress. I’m writing project A while researching project B and thinking about and planning projects C through M.

2. Research is secondary; telling a good story comes first

After all the precious time boosting your knowledge of historical events or the feel for a subject, this point might hurt: only use a tiny fraction of your research in the story.

Don’t give in to the temptation to dump everything you've learned into the story. Sure, it’s fascinating stuff but you risk burying the story in scientific or historical detail.

A little bit of researched material goes a long way. Only use info related to the issues your character would know about and be concerned with. Leave out the captivating but irrelevant details.

Your research should enhance the story, not dominate it.

3. Write for your fans

Your story should be targeted to the readers who love what you write—your fans. Stop worrying about the five people out there who might read your story and nitpick that your character used the wrong fork or wore the wrong kind of corset.

A lot of writers fake it or write only from the knowledge they do have. They don’t let their lack of esoteric knowledge get in the way of the story. They do research for their novels, grab a few details for the sake of authenticity, and wing the rest.

With the exception of 11/22/63, Stephen King does very little research, but there are few who can write a more riveting story.

4. Don’t obsess over accuracy

Frankly, there are instances and reasons where you don’t really want to be accurate. For example, if you write historical romance, research might show that people of that time period rarely bathed and lost most of their teeth and hair at a young age. That’s probably not how you want to portray your heroine and the man of her dreams.

Sometimes, including a historically or scientifically accurate detail would require pages of explanation to make it credible for today’s audience—almost a surefire way to lose your reader. When in doubt, leave it out.

And no matter how hard you work at it, you’re not likely to cover every detail with one hundred percent accuracy, so don’t obsess over it. Do your best, but remember—story is what matters, not accurate details.

5. Go with the most interesting version

When researching an event, you’ll usually find a number of different accounts, especially when using primary sources, none in perfect agreement with the others. When this happens, do what the History Channel does—go with the most entertaining version of events.

Remember, you’re a storyteller, not a historian. Your goal is to grab and hold your reader’s attention and keep them turning pages. If it makes you feel better, you can include endnotes with references so interested readers can dig deeper into the “facts.”

6. Keep a “bible”

This is especially important if you’re writing a series. You can’t be expected to remember every important detail about the characters and settings you put in book one when, years later, you’re working on book seven.

Record these details in an easy-to-reference format you can come back to later to provide continuity and reader confidence in your ability to tell a coherent story.

7. Don’t fall down the wormhole

I love doing research. It’s fun, fascinating, and absorbing—so absorbing, it can suck you in and keep you from moving on to the writing. You need to be able to draw the line at some point. As Tina Fey says in her book, Bossy Pants , “The show doesn't go on because it's ready; it goes on because it's 11:30.”

Know when it’s time to leave the research and get to the writing. Pro tip: set yourself a time limit or a deadline. Even if you don't “feel” finished with research, you'll have a clear marker for when you have to put the research down and get back to writing.

8. Save simple details for last

Sometimes when you’re writing along in your story, you’ll find yourself needing a simple detail. Make a notation, resolve to come back to it later, and move on. Don’t let this interrupt or distract you from getting the story down on the page.

Later, you can come back and do the minimal research to fill in these little details like a character name , a location, a car model, etc. Shawn Coyne calls this “ice cream work” because it’s fun and feels frivolous after the concentrated work of writing the story itself.

9. Finish THIS project before starting another

One great thing about research is that you learn so much and find the seeds for so many new story ideas. The challenge is to not get distracted from your current project.

Make a note to yourself to pursue these other ideas somewhere down the road. Let those seeds sprout and grow in the back of your mental garden, but keep your focus on the story you’re writing now .

Resources: Where to Actually Research Your Novel

I’ve touched on how to do the research. Here, I’m adding a few suggestions about where to go for the goods.

• Wikipedia, and don’t forget to dig into the links at the bottom of the article
• Reenactor sites for historical battles, uniforms, etc.
• Costuming sites
• Travel guides
• Writer’s Digest Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in … fill in the blank (these are loaded with details of landscape, clothing, household items, and more)
• Biographies and autobiographies, and don’t overlook their bibliographies and footnotes
• Blog posts of expert and amateur historians
• Journals and diaries
• Weather reports
• Price lists, to find out how much were salaries, groceries, mortgage payments, etc.
• Birth and death certificates, court documents
• Etymology websites
• Museum exhibits and gift shops, including the little touristy booklets, maps, tour guides
• Libraries! Talk to a reference librarian—they’re awesome at plumbing resources.

Novel research rocks!

Research really is intriguing and a lot of fun. There’s so much to discover, but beware because you can get lost in it and never find your way out. You’re better off under-researching than over-researching, so know when to get out and move on.

Also, be aware that your novel's research requirements will differ somewhat based on the genre you’re writing . For instance, with historical fiction, you need to give your readers a travel adventure into the past with sensory details to draw them into the time period.

With science fiction, you need to be able to extrapolate from scientific fact and theory to the fictional premise of your story. In doing so, don’t get bogged down in the journey from point A to point B. Just get to the conclusion. The more you explain, the less credible it sounds to the reader.

With fantasy, it’s the little world-building details that count for so much. Know what your reader expects and craves and meet those demands.

And no matter how much research your book requires, don't discount your personal experience with being human—those emotional, intellectual, and philosophical experiences often cross time and space.

I wish you many happy hours of successful novel research, but don’t forget to write first!

How about you? Do you do research for your novels? Where do you turn for information? Tell us about it in the comments .

Use one of the prompts below or make up your own. Conduct a little research—just enough to add verisimilitude to the scene, a few telling details. Spend five minutes researching two to three facts that will help you set the scene. Then, take the next ten minutes to write a couple of paragraphs to establish the character in the setting.

The death of her father leaves Miss Felicity Brewster alone in regency England and places upon her the burden of fulfilling his last wish—that she marry a safe, respectable gentleman.

Accused of treason, Frendl Ericcson sets out to find his betrayer and restore his honor.

Dr. Vanessa Crane makes a breakthrough in her nanotechnology research. But will her discovery benefit mankind, or destroy it?

With the help of his mortician friend, Victorian-era detective Reginald Piper must use cutting-edge forensic methods to solve a string of murders.

When you are finished, post your work the Pro Practice Workshop here and don’t forget to leave feedback for your fellow writers! Not a member yet? Check out how you can join a thriving group of writers practicing together here.

Joslyn Chase

Any day where she can send readers to the edge of their seats, prickling with suspense and chewing their fingernails to the nub, is a good day for Joslyn. Pick up her latest thriller, Steadman's Blind , an explosive read that will keep you turning pages to the end. No Rest: 14 Tales of Chilling Suspense , Joslyn's latest collection of short suspense, is available for free at joslynchase.com .

I wish I’d read point 6 – keep a bible a couple of years ago before I wrote my 450k word magnum opus, because I’m now writing several supplemental short stories in that universe and I’m forever digging through for minor character’s names, details of meeting places etc

I did this too and winded up go through the complete series (5 stories) to note down those small details I couldn’t seem to remember. You could try to go back through and and make it now. It is time consuming but it should save you time later if your still writing your short stories.

My current WIP is involving a lot more research than I expected. I had to re-write a hunting scene twice, because the first version, which I showed to a real bow-hunter, had him going after the deer right away, and my hunter-friend said to wait a half hour before you start tracking a deer. I don’t hunt myself, so I took his word and re-wrote it, but my gut said it wasn’t right. So I did some surfing and found both his advice, and advice that said you should go after a hip shot right away (basically agreeing with what my gut said should be happening). So was he wrong, were the sources that agreed with me wrong, or was he getting a wrong impression of what was going on? I decided I was overly in love with the opening sentence of the scene and re-wrote the whole thing yet again, using the “simple details” I’d discovered to clarify the deer had taken a hip shot. Minor scene, but a major position: it’s introducing the #2 member of my hero team.

Could it wait until later? Possibly, but I’m seriously considering serializing this thing, so the beginning chapters might be getting published before the end chapters of the first book get written, and I’m hoping for seven books out of this (probably close to 1M words total).

The Devil is in the details!

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• Tags: Fiction Research , Fiction Writing

The most basic understanding of “fiction” in literature is that it is a written piece that depicts imaginary occurrences. There is this unspoken assumption that fiction, because it is of imagined events, has nothing to do with reality (and therefore researching for a novel is not important). This is far from the truth. 

The history of fiction writing presents an inherent paradox: the most gripping of novels require you to write of imagined events in a realistic way. If we accept literature as a reflection of the world around us, then we must also acknowledge that the best of fiction stems from reality. It may be an account of imaginary events, but is still heavily rooted in the real. 

Elevate your novel after research and writing. Learn more

For a writer, this means in-depth research about various aspects of novel writing , including cultural and social context, character behavior, and historical details. 

Your task is (ever so slightly) easier if you are writing about situations contemporary to you. But the further you go back, through the annals of history, the harder it becomes to strive for such authenticity.

Grammar mistakes are jarring, but so are plot holes. An inconsistent story is off-putting to even the most immersed reader. So, here’s the bottom line: do n’t assume, and get your research down.

Why is research important for fiction?

Because even William Shakespeare, one of the most iconic figures of literature, erred in making anachronisms. One of the most famous literary anachronisms is in his play Julius Caesar , in Cassius’ line:

“The clock has stricken three.” (Act II, Scene 1)

The error is that clocks that “struck” were invented almost 14 centuries after the play was set! 

But Shakespeare was a giant. We have forgiven these misgivings because Shakespearean literature is rich even with such minuscule errors. As for us foolish mortals, it’s probably best to do our research thoroughly. 

Having a detailed understanding of the landscape that you are writing about is one of the most effective ways to draw your reader into the story world. Your extensive knowledge of your chosen topic will also give you a stable and authoritative voice in your writing.

What should you be researching?

As you might have realized by now, there are various aspects of your novel you should be researching. To start with, we’ve split fiction writing research into two categories: content and form. By content, we mean the details and elements you should focus on within your story. By form, we mean the style and genre of writing you wish to eventually adopt.

Needless to say, these two categories will overlap with each other as you make your story more streamlined.  

A story’s setting is one of the most important elements of fiction writing. It is essentially the time and space that your narrative is set in or the story’s backdrop. A story might have a gripping narrative and well-rounded characters, but it is incomplete if the reader doesn’t have a sense of where it’s all happening. As part of your setting, you can include geographical, cultural, social, and political details that you feel are relevant to the story.

In other words, you are essentially creating a “world” for your story . These may seem like tiny details to add to your otherwise imaginary story, but they provide depth and plausibility to your story.

One cool way to get a lowdown on these intricate spatial details like roads, mountains, hills, monuments, and other geographical landmarks is through tools like Google Maps and Street View . This is especially useful if you have to write about a place you can’t visit or you simply want to get geographical descriptions right.

The worst thing you could do as a writer is to assume things. This is a misstep that is quite unnecessary and can easily be avoided with some research. The information you have already gathered while researching your setting is a good enough start. What you now need to do with all these seemingly scattered pieces of information is to make sure they do not contradict each other.

Character details and human behavior

In plotting your story, you will also automatically gain an understanding of the intention and goals of your characters. In order to flesh them out and ensure that they are dynamic and interesting, research is required.

An understanding of human behavior and nature is a very important skill for a good writer. The stereotype of a perceptive and observant writer is, in fact, due to quite a practical need! Even if your characters do not exist in reality, they should seem real enough for your readers to be able to relate to them.

Historical and social background 

Your story world is not just the time, place, and immediate surroundings of your characters. Irrespective of what setting your story has, it also has the larger context of the world that your characters reside in. This could be from a real point in history (like Victorian England, 1920s jazz era, etc.) or it could be completely made up (Oceania from 1984, or Panem).

But irrespective of whether you’re writing historical fiction or creating a new world altogether, it must be thorough and consistent in supporting your plot. As a writer, you must clearly understand the culture and systems that your characters are a part of. A well-rooted universe also gives readers an insight into a character’s identity.

Writing style and genre 

If you are writing a novel in a particular genre, it’s important to be aware of writing conventions and tropes commonly used in that genre. The best, and most obvious, way to do this is to read novels and stories in your genre of choice. Look at the top-rated and critically acclaimed books and study them carefully. Be critical in your study, try to understand the author’s creative writing process, and look at the style and tone they try to evoke. 

Aside from this, you could also take a look at books about novel writing in general. These will give you general, but useful information about novel writing, like when to write long descriptions and when to cut straight to the action.

How should you be researching?

• Read about what you are researching. Books, articles, and other forms of print media are great ways to gather information on culture, history, and society. Biographies and memoirs are great for character insight (especially if you’re basing your book on a real person). If you’re basing your novel in the real world, you know what to do next. If you’re creating your own world, this is still a good basis for whatever you cook up within your world.
• Films and TV are great sources for helping you develop your character as they help you understand character traits and motivation in your story. Additionally, they might also help you visualize your story.
• If you are writing about characters with a niche profession (for example), take interviews with people who are in that field. For instance, if you are writing a detective story, talk to people in your police precinct and observe their behavior.
• If you are writing about specific locations, read up about that. In the age of the internet, there are many resources and forums where you can interact with people around the world.
• Try to visit the locations you are writing about and spend some time there , to gain an insight into what life in that place is like.

Incorporating research into fiction

Be selective about your details. Whether or not you actually incorporate the details that you have researched, knowing your world well will make your writing infinitely better. 

Because of all the information you have amassed, there is a certain bias you acquire as an “expert” on the subject of your story. So if you include a lot of information, there is a danger of your work sounding too technical.

Make sure that every detail you include is directly relevant to the plot. Keep it simple: and avoid unnecessary plot holes.

You can use these practical tips to research for your next story. Once you research and complete your story, the next step is to edit and publish your work.  As a trusted brand offering editing and proofreading services , we’d love to help you refine your work. 

Here are some other articles you might find interesting: 

• 5 Elements of a Short Story & 6 Stages of a Plot
• What is Flash Fiction? Definition, Examples & Types

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EH -- Researching Short Stories: Strategies for Short Story Research

• Find Articles
• Strategies for Short Story Research

Page Overview

This page addresses the research process -- the things that should be done before the actual writing of the paper -- and strategies for engaging in the process.  Although this LibGuide focuses on researching short stories, this particular page is more general in scope and is applicable to most lower-division college research assignments.

Before You Begin

Before beginning any research process, first be absolutely sure you know the requirements of the assignment.  Things such as  

• the date the completed project is due 
• the due dates of any intermediate assignments, like turning in a working bibliography or notes
• the length requirement (minimum word count), if any 
• the minimum number and types (for example, books or articles from scholarly, peer-reviewed journals) of sources required

These formal requirements are as much a part of the assignment as the paper itself.  They form the box into which you must fit your work.  Do not take them lightly.

When possible, it is helpful to subdivide the overall research process into phases, a tactic which

• makes the idea of research less intimidating because you are dealing with sections at a time rather than the whole process
• makes the process easier to manage
• gives a sense of accomplishment as you move from one phase to the next

Characteristics of a Well-written Paper

Although there are many details that must be given attention in writing a research paper, there are three major criteria which must be met.  A well-written paper is

• Unified:  the paper has only one major idea; or, if it seeks to address multiple points, one point is given priority and the others are subordinated to it.
• Coherent: the body of the paper presents its contents in a logical order easy for readers to follow; use of transitional phrases (in addition, because of this, therefore, etc.) between paragraphs and sentences is important.
• Complete:  the paper delivers on everything it promises and does not leave questions in the mind of the reader; everything mentioned in the introduction is discussed somewhere in the paper; the conclusion does not introduce new ideas or anything not already addressed in the paper.

Basic Research Strategy

• How to Research From Pellissippi State Community College Libraries: discusses the principal components of a simple search strategy.
• Basic Research Strategies From Nassau Community College: a start-up guide for college level research that supplements the information in the preceding link. Tabs two, three, and four plus the Web Evaluation tab are the most useful for JSU students. As with any LibGuide originating from another campus, care must be taken to recognize the information which is applicable generally from that which applies solely to the Guide's home campus. .
• Information Literacy Tutorial From Nassau Community College: an elaboration on the material covered in the preceding link (also from NCC) which discusses that material in greater depth. The quizzes and surveys may be ignored.

Things to Keep in Mind

Although a research assignment can be daunting, there are things which can make the process less stressful, more manageable, and yield a better result.  And they are generally applicable across all types and levels of research.

1.  Be aware of the parameters of the assignment: topic selection options, due date, length requirement, source requirements.  These form the box into which you must fit your work.  

2. Treat the assignment as a series of components or stages rather than one undivided whole.

• devise a schedule for each task in the process: topic selection and refinement (background/overview information), source material from books (JaxCat), source material from journals (databases/Discovery), other sources (internet, interviews, non-print materials); the note-taking, drafting, and editing processes.
• stick to your timetable.  Time can be on your side as a researcher, but only if you keep to your schedule and do not delay or put everything off until just before the assignment deadline. 

3.  Leave enough time between your final draft and the submission date of your work that you can do one final proofread after the paper is no longer "fresh" to you.  You may find passages that need additional work because you see that what is on the page and what you meant to write are quite different.  Even better, have a friend or classmate read your final draft before you submit it.  A fresh pair of eyes sometimes has clearer vision. 

4.  If at any point in the process you encounter difficulties, consult a librarian.  Hunters use guides; fishermen use guides.  Explorers use guides.  When you are doing research, you are an explorer in the realm of ideas; your librarian is your guide. 

A Note on Sources

Research requires engagement with various types of sources.

• Primary sources: the thing itself, such as letters, diaries, documents, a painting, a sculpture; in lower-division literary research, usually a play, poem, or short story.
• Secondary sources: information about the primary source, such as books, essays, journal articles, although images and other media also might be included.  Companions, dictionaries, and encyclopedias are secondary sources.
• Tertiary sources: things such as bibliographies, indexes, or electronic databases (minus the full text) which serve as guides to point researchers toward secondary sources.  A full text database would be a combination of a secondary and tertiary source; some books have a bibliography of additional sources in the back.

Accessing sources requires going through various "information portals," each designed to principally support a certain type of content.  Houston Cole Library provides four principal information portals:

• JaxCat online catalog: books, although other items such as journals, newspapers, DVDs, and musical scores also may be searched for.
• Electronic databases: journal articles, newspaper stories, interviews, reviews (and a few books; JaxCat still should be the "go-to" portal for books).  JaxCat indexes records for the complete item: the book, journal, newspaper, CD but has no records for parts of the complete item: the article in the journal, the editorial in the newspaper, the song off the CD.  Databases contain records for these things.
• Discovery Search: mostly journal articles, but also (some) books and (some) random internet pages.  Discovery combines elements of the other three information portals and is especially useful for searches where one is researching a new or obscure topic about which little is likely to be written, or does not know where the desired information may be concentrated.  Discovery is the only portal which permits simul-searching across databases provided by multiple vendors.
• Internet (Bing, Dogpile, DuckDuckGo, Google, etc.): primarily webpages, especially for businesses (.com), government divisions at all levels (.gov), or organizations (.org). as well as pages for primary source-type documents such as lesson plans and public-domain books.  While book content (Google Books) and journal articles (Google Scholar) are accessible, these are not the strengths of the internet and more successful searches for this type of content can be performed through JaxCat and the databases.  

NOTE: There is no predetermined hierarchy among these information portals as regards which one should be used most or gone to first.  These considerations depend on the task at hand and will vary from assignment o assignment.

The link below provides further information on the different source types.

• Research Methods From Truckee Meadows Community College: a guide to basic research. The tab "What Type of Source?" presents an overview of the various types of information sources, identifying the advantages and disadvantages of each.
• << Previous: Find Books
• Last Updated: Sep 3, 2024 10:23 AM
• URL: https://libguides.jsu.edu/litresearchshortstories

Open-Access Scholarship on Love in Popular Culture

Note from the Field: Reflecting on Romance Novel Research: Past, Present and Future

By A. Dana Ménard

Abstract: In 2011, I co-authored an article in the journal Sexuality & Culture describing a study that I had done on sexual scripts in romance novels entitled, “‘Whatever the approach, Tab B still fits into Slot A’: Twenty years of sex scripts in romance novels” (Ménard & Cabrera, 2011). Shortly after the article appeared, a discussion about the paper took place on “Teach Me Tonight,” an academic blog devoted to the study of popular romance novels. The goal of this article is to further that discussion by exploring previous research on romance novels in the social sciences, explaining the rationale behind the methodology of my study, critically evaluating that study, and making suggestions for future work by romance novel researchers.

About the Author: A. Dana Ménard is a senior PhD candidate in clinical psychology at the University of Ottawa and is currently completing a one-year residency at the London Health Sciences Centre. She would like to thank Shannon Lawless, M.A., Vicki So, B.J., Chelsea Honeyman, Ph.D., and Christine Cabrera, M.A., for their assistance in strengthening this paper.

• contemporary single-title romances
• psychology research methods
• sexual script theory

In 2011, I co-authored an article in the journal Sexuality & Culture describing a study on sexual scripts in romance novels. The paper was entitled, “‘Whatever the approach, Tab B still fits into Slot A’: Twenty years of sex scripts in romance novels” (Ménard & Cabrera, 2011). Shortly after the article appeared, a discussion about the paper took place on “Teach Me Tonight,” an academic blog devoted to research on romance novels. Romance novel researchers and fans offered their comments, questions and critiques on the study, and the editor of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies invited me to write a piece reflecting on [End Page 1] my original article and on the exchange—in particular, on the methodological and disciplinary issues that seemed to be at stake.

The purpose of this paper, then, is to continue and elaborate on that discussion, with specific references to the original study and to the dialogue that was generated from the “Teach Me Tonight” post. My goals are to provide additional details about how that study was developed, so as to clarify and contextualize the findings from the research, and to make some suggestions, based on my own limited experience, for how romance novel researchers might proceed going forward. To that end, this paper will include an evaluation of previous research on romance novels, an explanation for the rationale behind the methodology of the sexual script study, a critical evaluation of the strengths and limitations of that study, and some suggestions for what might be done by future romance novel researchers.

Introduction

I am currently a senior PhD student in clinical psychology. I came up with the idea for the original study in my second year of the program, conducted the bulk of the research during my third and fourth years, and am writing now from the vantage point of my sixth and final year. My primary area of research since 2005 has been human sexual functioning, with a specific focus on optimal sexual experiences (e.g., Kleinplatz & Ménard, 2007; Kleinplatz et al., 2009a, b). My secondary area of interest is in depictions of sex and sexuality in the media. Prior to undertaking an investigation of sex and sexuality in romance novels, I had researched and co-authored a study on depictions of “great sex” in lifestyle magazines (e.g., Cosmopolitan , Men’s Health ) (Ménard & Kleinplatz, 2008). I am also currently involved in a project investigating depictions of gender roles, sex and sexuality in “slasher” movies (Weaver, Ménard, Cabrera & Taylor, in press). Although I have conducted and published research on romance novels, I do not identify as a romance novel researcher, per se . My research interests in this area are focused on the study of sex and sexuality within the context of psychology, and I chose to investigate romance novels as an example of a widespread, popular media.

Goals of the original study

My goal in undertaking this research was to add to the body of knowledge concerning the content of media depictions of sexuality, as well to gain additional experience designing and conducting research, with an eye to publishing the findings in a peer-reviewed psychology journal. The study was not undertaken in order to receive course credit, but was, truly, a labour of love for both myself and my original co-author. I have long felt that researchers in psychology tend to focus on unusual or outlying human experiences—especially on those that are negative or unpleasant. I am personally more interested in the idea of studying everyday life experiences in order to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of them and of what it means to be human. Reading romance novels is an experience that many people in the general public share; therefore, I [End Page 2] thought that this study might be relevant and interesting to people outside the world of academic psychology. On a more personal level, I was raised in a home where romance novels sat on bedside tables and bookshelves; I read many of them myself, including many by Nora Roberts. My mother, grandmother, and aunt all traded romance novels back and forth among themselves and their friends, a practice that continues to this day.

Previous researchers have tended to focus on the degree to which individuals’ beliefs about sex and sexuality are consistent with dominant sexual scripts; however, personal attitudes and beliefs in this area are not created in a vacuum, but, rather, are influenced by the wider cultural context. Research in psychology on representations of sex and sexuality in the media has tended to focus on the impact of consuming such material (e.g., Brown et al., 2006; Kim & Ward, 2004; Pardun, l’Engle & Brown, 2005) rather than the content of the material itself. This is a problematic omission and has created a situation where we know that people are impacted by media messages but we do not know much about the messages themselves. It was hoped that the results of this research would extend previous findings on sexual scripts as well as add to the literature on media representations of sex and sexuality.

The goals of the original study (i.e., Ménard & Cabrera, 2011), which will be referred to in this paper as the “sexual script study,” were, first, to gain an understanding of how sex and sexuality are portrayed in single-title, contemporary romance novels and, second, to determine whether these portrayals had changed over the last 20 years (i.e., from 1989 to 2009). It was hypothesized that most depictions of sex and sexuality in romance novels would adhere to traditional Western sexual scripts, and that adherence rates would not change significantly over time. Gagnon and Simon, the developers of Sexual Script Theory (SST), state that the purpose of sexual scripts is to identity the “who, what, when, where and how” elements of a sexual encounter (Gagnon, 1977; Gagnon & Simon, 1973; Simon & Gagnon, 1986, 1987). These scripts allow people to identify appropriate sexual partners, times, places, behaviours, and sequences, based on cultural norms (Wiederman, 2005). For example, men in Western culture are thought to focus almost exclusively on sexual pleasure and experimentation while women are thought to demonstrate a greater focus on the romantic context for sexual activity (Wiederman, 2005).

It was hypothesized that the male and female protagonists in the study sample would be young, attractive, Caucasian, able-bodied, heterosexual and single. Couples would not demonstrate obvious discrepancies on any of these variables (i.e., one partner bisexual and the other heterosexual, or one character able-bodied and the other disabled). It was expected that most sexual encounters would be initiated by the hero and would take place in a bedroom, at night. Sexual behaviours were expected to follow a particular sequence, i.e., kissing, touching, manual/oral sex and penile-vaginal intercourse to orgasm, within each scene as well as across the book (e.g., couples would kiss earlier in the book prior to engaging in oral sex). “Kinky” sexual behaviours (e.g., BDSM-inspired, threesomes, and anal sex) were unlikely to occur (where the word “kinky” is used in reference to dominant sexual scripts rather than to the personal sexual values of the co-authors). Finally, it was predicted that books published from 1989 to 1999 would not differ significantly on any of these variables from books published from 2000 to 2009. [End Page 3]

Description of the original study

To evaluate these hypotheses, a content analysis was done on sex scenes and characters from the 20 most recent winners of the RITA award for best single-title contemporary romance novel. A coding form and a coding manual were created in collaboration by the two co-authors based on readings in SST. Pilot coding was done using a book from the research sample as well as several books outside the sample. Both researchers read each of the 20 books included in the sample to identify and code relevant scenes. Researchers met frequently throughout the process in order to ensure comprehensiveness and consistency in coding, with the goal being complete agreement on coding. This resulted in a final sample of 46 scenes and 44 characters, where the scenes and characters represented the “units of analysis” for statistical purposes. Variables were coded categorically in most cases. The results from the first major hypothesis were presented using descriptive statistics, i.e., the percentage of characters or scenes conforming to pre-study predictions. T-tests, with an alpha level set at .05, were used to determine whether there were differences between the sexual behaviours of male and female characters. The second hypothesis, whether there were differences between novels published from 1989 to 1999 and those published from 2000 to 2009, was also evaluated using T-tests, again with an alpha level set at .05.

The results showed that the original hypotheses for the study were supported with respect to characterization of the male and female protagonists, characterization and context of the romantic relationships, and order and nature of sexual behaviours. Specifically, romance novel characters in the novels studied—a sample drawn from the 20 most recent winners of the RITA award for best single-title contemporary romance novel, as explained above—were consistently attractive, Caucasian, heterosexual, single and young; 86% of heroines and 77% of heroes fit this description perfectly. The majority of romance novel relationships did not involve a significant discrepancy in terms of these variables (77%); that is, within a relationship, both characters were attractive, both were Caucasian, both were heterosexual, etc. Most of the time, sexual behaviours occurred in the “correct” sexually-scripted order across the book (77% of the novels) as well as within any given sex scene (90%). In addition, sex scenes never included “kinky” elements, such as anal stimulation or BDSM-influenced behaviours. A surprising finding was that, despite the prevailing stereotypes around romance novels in the popular media, very few of the scenes (17%) included “romantic” scene-setting elements, such as flowers, candles or lingerie. There was more variation in terms of location and time: 65% of scenes took place in an “appropriate” location (i.e., a private place, such as a bedroom) and slightly more than 72% took place in the evening or at night. More than half of the sexual encounters were initiated by the male character (54%), followed by female initiation (33%) and “initiated simultaneously” (13%).

In terms of the second hypothesis, there were no significant differences between books published between 1989 and 1999 and those published from 2000 to 2009 in terms of protagonist characterization, relationship characterization, order of sexual behaviours across the book, order of sexual behaviours within sex scenes or location and timing of sexual activities. The only finding that reached statistical significance was an increased [End Page 4] usage of contraception by characters in the second time block (from 18% of the scenes in the first time block to 58% in the second).

Evaluating Past Romance Research

To provide a context for the design of the sexual script study, the methodologies employed by other romance novel researchers will be described and critiqued. The focus will be primarily on romance novel research within psychology and the social sciences, as this has been the sole focus of my academic training. I believe it would be intellectually dishonest of me to evaluate research on romance novels from other disciplines (e.g., English), as I am not familiar with the standards or expectations within other academic traditions. I could not evaluate these writings in an informed manner and accord them the respect that they deserve. In addition, given the different norms between the two fields, it seems meaningless to compare and contrast literary criticism to social science studies. It may be noted that some studies are cited here that were not included in the publication of the original study. In some cases, the omission was made because the results from these papers were considered “outdated” by psychological standards (i.e., 30+ years old), and the specific findings may be less relevant in a world where sexual mores are rapidly evolving, even over the last five years (e.g., the advent of “sexting”). However, I have included these studies here because they were influential in the design of the sex script study as well as the selection of research questions and variables of interest. Likewise, since the development and publication of the sex script study, which began in the fall of 2008, a few more articles about romance novels have appeared in scientific journals (e.g., Cox & Fisher, 2009; Fisher & Cox, 2010). These papers have also been included in an attempt to provide the most comprehensive overview of different methodological approaches to romance novel research and in the hope of suggesting some direction for future romance novel researchers.

Within the social sciences, research on romance novels has tended to center on how gender roles, sex and sexuality are depicted in these books. More specifically, researchers examining gender roles have looked at romance characters’ professions, personal qualities, family roles, and physical appearance characteristics (Clawson, 2005; Ruggiero & Weston, 1978). Romance novel researchers concerned with portrayals of sex and sexuality in these books have studied contraception usage, sexual behaviours, and sexual communication and initiation (Diekman et al., 2000; Thurston, 1987). With certain exceptions (e.g., Cox & Fisher, 2009; Fisher & Cox, 2010), romance novel researchers tend not to adopt a specific theoretical framework to guide the design of the study or the evaluation of the results. The content analysis of films, television shows, music videos and books has a long history within research on sex and sexuality; however, it is less easy to explain and understand why other important phenomena (e.g., parenting, mental health, friendship) have not been studied within the context of romance novels. If media represents a mirror to predominant cultural beliefs, there are no limits to what might be interesting and useful to investigate through the lens of romance novels.

Studies on romance novels in the social sciences have varied significantly in terms of sample size and composition. Researchers have chosen to investigate as few as 24 novels [End Page 5] (Weston & Ruggiero, 1978) or as many as 120 (Clawson, 2005). Cox and Fisher (2009) included 15,019 romance novels in their study, but they focused exclusively on words appearing in the titles of these books. It should be noted that virtually all researchers have constructed their samples using entire romance novels rather than scenes or characters from these books. This may represent a limitation to earlier studies because the use of entire novels may obscure differences between various sex scenes in the novel. Romance novel authors have multiple opportunities to reinforce a particular message (e.g., “real sex” must involve intercourse, heroes must be hyper-masculine) or to introduce varied approaches to the same idea (e.g., “real sex” may involve a variety of behaviours, heroes can be androgynous), if they wish. Therefore, analysis at the level of the scene may be a more precise measurement of the messages contained in the novel. Within the field of content analysis, sample sizes are generally smaller than population-based research; a sample size of 30 units, where “units” are defined as novels, magazines or films, is sometimes recommended (Lacy & Riffe, 1996). It should be noted that a small sample size does not represent an inherent limitation to a study, as specific statistical analyses have been designed to correct for different sample sizes.

Romance novel researchers in the social sciences usually reported the range of publication dates for the novels (e.g., from 1960 to 1980) but rarely provided additional details, such as the number of books selected from each year. This is a concern because it is unknown whether the sample included an over-representation of books from a particular era (e.g., the more sexually-conservative 1980s). In addition, previous romance novel researchers have not studied changes over time with respect to their research questions. Again, this seems surprising as romance novels, like other forms of media, both shape and reflect social changes. Romance novel authors are raised with a particular set of cultural expectations around sex and sexuality, which are shaped by the media, family, friends, teachers, etc.; their personal beliefs about sex may then influence how they choose to write about this. In turn, their books may then have an impact on the beliefs and values of their readers. Authors may also be influenced by the guidelines that they receive from publishers and editors, as well as from the traditions or conventions of the particular sub-genre; these guidelines may evolve over time as the publishing houses react to and shape changes in social mores. Whether or not changes in romance novel parallel social changes over time is an important question and one that future researchers would be advised to consider when constructing their research samples.

Within the social science literature on romance novels, the criteria used to identify books for inclusion in the study sample varied considerably. Some authors focused on popular authors within a sub-genre (e.g., Ruggiero & Weston, 1978), while others focused on specific publishers or specific lines within a publishing house, where the publisher, in most cases, was Harlequin (e.g., Clawson, 2005; Cox & Fisher, 2009; Fisher & Cox, 2010). It is likely that selecting only books published from one specific house may limit the applicability of findings from that study to books from that publishing house alone. Similarly, the focus on a particular subset of authors may illuminate commonalities in those authors’ books but may limit applicability of findings to those specific authors. However, in some cases, limiting the focus of the sample may be a desirable strategy as certain publishing houses or authors may have a proportionately greater influence both on readers and on the stylistic choices of fellow authors. Diekman et al. (2000) randomly selected every third “modern romance novel” at three different bookstores, which is the strategy [End Page 6] that methodologists believe is most likely to lead to generalizeability of study findings. However, the random selection of romance novels from a bookstore or library may result in over- or under-representation of particular authors or sub-genres, depending on the taste of the store manager or librarian. So far, no researchers in the area of romance novels have used bestseller lists to select novels (e.g., the New York Times , Publisher’s Weekly ), although this strategy has been used to study other kinds of books (e.g., self-help books; Zimmerman, Holm, Daniels & Haddock, 2002). Each of the approaches listed above are viable and informative as long as researchers are clear about the generalizeability and limits thereof of their findings.

As expected, the methods that researchers used to select romance novels and the inclusion of romance novel sub-genres were correlated. Some researchers chose to deliberately focus only on specific subgenres, such as Christian romances (Clawson, 2005), erotic/historical romances (Thurston, 1987) or gothic romances (Ruggiero & Weston, 1978). In their study of Harlequin romance titles, Fisher and Cox (2009, 2010) included books from many different sub-genres (e.g., historical, intrigue, blaze). In some cases, the composition of the study sample with respect to sub-genres is unclear (e.g., Diekman et al., 2000). The decision to focus specifically on one sub-genre or to mix multiple sub-genres in one study has important ramifications for the interpretation of results. The applicability of findings from studies focused on one sub-genre will be limited to that sub-genre alone, but results from those studies may result in a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of that area. If the study sample includes a variety of sub-genres, the results may represent a better picture of the state of romance novels as a whole but may lead to a distorted picture of the “average” romance novel (if such a novel could be said to exist). Given the diversity of books included under the more generic “romance novel” umbrella, it seems unlikely that the results of research on one sub-genre of romance novel could be generalized with any accuracy to another sub-genre. Romance novel researchers who include multiple sub-genres in their study sample would be advised to focus on a few sub-genres, and to analyze findings separately before pooling results.

Evaluating the Sexual Script Study

In April 2011, I stumbled upon the discussion on Teach Me Tonight of the study I co-authored. The tone of the discussion seemed more elevated and respectful than is typical of many Internet debates, and I felt welcome to participate and to try to address some questions about the study. (In contrast, my thesis supervisor and I were once referred to as “ivory tower lab rats” by a commenter on The Globe and Mail , in reference to our research on optimal sexual experiences).

Commenters on the original Teach Me Tonight blog post focused on a few specific aspects of the study (I have chosen not to include the names of the commenters or the specific wording of their comments out of a desire to maintain their privacy). Some had concerns with the research question itself: Why the focus on sex and sexuality? Others expressed concerns that seminal authors in the academic romance world had been overlooked. Many expressed doubts about the size of the research sample (i.e., 20 books and 46 scenes) and the impact of this limitation on the study findings. Many others had [End Page 7] concerns about the representativeness of the sample. Why had we focused on contemporary single-title romance novels? Why had we selected RITA award-winners? In the following section, these concerns will be addressed, including the alternatives that were available, the rationale behind these decisions, and the strengths and limitations of those approaches. It should be noted that in designing the study, I prioritized my role as psychologist first, sex researcher second, and media researcher third. The intention, from the beginning, was to publish the findings in a journal devoted to sex research and so methodological decisions were made with that goal in mind.

Review of Literature and Research Question

In developing this study, an extensive review of the academic literature was conducted within psychological and social science literature. In practical terms, this review involved searches using PsycINFO (a psychology abstract database) and Google Scholar. When relevant papers were identified, the reference lists of these papers were consulted in order to locate additional sources. In addition, websites devoted to the academic study of romance novels were reviewed (including Teach Me Tonight), and Internet list serves focused on romance novel research were consulted. The website of the Romance Writers of America was reviewed, as were those of several publishing houses (e.g., Harlequin). Past studies focused on the content analysis of television, movies, lifestyle magazines, non-romance fiction and self-help books were also consulted in order to develop and refine the research methodology. Finally, publications on sexual script theory were consulted in order to develop the coding sheet and manual.

Some commenters from the Teach Me Tonight discussion expressed concern that important works in romance novel research had not been cited in the published paper. In fact, both my co-author and I had read literary criticism on the subject of romance novels by seminal authors in the field (e.g., Janice Radway, Ann Snitow, Carol Thurston, and Kristin Ramsdell); these works provided valuable information about the history and evolution of the romance novels and helped us to identify variables to evaluate. Although these sources were consulted, they were not cited in the final published paper, as the goal from the beginning had been to present the findings of this study in a psychology-oriented journal, where it is not customary that researchers in the social sciences cite literary criticism from the humanities. Given that I did not have any training in literary criticism, it did not feel reasonable or fair to critique work done outside of the social sciences. In retrospect, the wording of the final published paper was misleading: Rather than state that little research had been done to date on sex and sexuality in romance novels, the wording of the paper should have specified that little research had been done within psychology or the social sciences, whereas there has been a rich tradition of examining romance novels within literary criticism. I quite agree with the Teach Me Tonight commenters that we barely scratched the surface of the body of literature in this area.

Some commenters who participated in the discussion wondered why the focus of the study was on portrayals of sex and sexuality in romance novels. For me, it was never a question of studying anything else! My research studies to date, including my MA and PhD dissertations (Ménard, 2007, 2013), as well as my “side projects” (e.g., Ménard & [End Page 8] Kleinplatz, 2008; Ménard & Offman, 2009; Weaver et al., in press), have focused exclusively on the study of sex and sexuality, which reflects my interest and expertise as a researcher in psychology. I do agree with many of the commenters on the Teach Me Tonight discussion that romance novel research within the social sciences has been extremely limited in its focus, which may perpetuate unwarranted stereotypes about romance novels (e.g., they are “pornography for women”). This is undoubtedly frustrating for those who would prefer that researchers take a broader, more comprehensive look at romance novels. Hopefully, more research can be done on romance novels within the social sciences that will increase the visibility of the field and pave the way for other psychologists to research a broader spectrum of topics within these books—but as I say, my own interest and expertise guided this particular inquiry.

Research Design and Methodology

From the outset, the design of the sexual script study was constrained by several limitations. Limited resources in terms of time, money, and personpower had a major impact on the study design, primarily in terms of the relatively small sample size of this study. Because I was a graduate student and not a faculty member, I was not eligible to apply for a grant from the major governmental funding body in social sciences (the Social Science and Humanities Research Council [SSHRC]) or from Romance Writers of America, which is open only to “dissertation candidates who have completed all course work and qualifying exams” (this did not include myself or my co-author when the study was conceived). My original collaborator and I feared that putting together a grant application and waiting for the results would have caused such a considerable delay that it might have been impossible to complete the project within a reasonable time frame, given other academic obligations (i.e., coursework, dissertations, clinical work). Therefore, only two researchers were available to find the books (no small feat for the older novels in the sample, some of which were out of print), read them, code them, compare codings, compile the data, and run the analyses; this lack of personpower significantly restricted the number of books that could be read. For example, the coding sheet for each novel in the sample was three pages long, and the coding form for each sex scene in the book was four pages; one book with three sex scenes would involve 15 pages of coding (3 for the novel and 3×4 for the sex scenes).

In retrospect, one of the major factors impacting the design of the study was that it was conducted in academic isolation. At the time, I was not aware of other psychologists or social scientists who were currently researching romance novels and who could have provided valuable guidance, suggestions and/or feedback based on their experience. As a researcher who believes in multi-disciplinary collaboration and consultation, I consulted many professionals during the development of this project in order to ensure the reliability and validity of the findings. These professionals included an expert in psychological research design, two experts in Sexual Script Theory, an expert in statistics, and, finally, the editors and reviewers at Sexuality and Culture . In addition, the results of the original study were presented at a meeting of the Canadian Sex Research Forum in Toronto in 2010 to a group of sex researchers from a variety of academic backgrounds (e.g., sex educators, [End Page 9] nurses, psychologists, sociologists). Although these other professionals were very helpful methodologically, none had specialized knowledge about the romance novel community or had insight into specific issues or limitations inherent to romance novel research.

Study Sample Selection

The first major consideration in designing the study was selection of the study sample; this proved much more difficult than was originally anticipated. The primary goal of the study was to look at novels that had had the potential to have a significant impact on romance novel readers (e.g., books that had won acclaim and/or books that had sold many copies, although demonstrating “impact” is certainly a vexed and difficult issue). In addition, I felt strongly about studying changes in romance novel portrayals of sex and sexuality over the time; therefore, it was important to have a standardized selection criterion.

In content analysis, a randomly chosen sample is desirable in order that results be generalizeable to the larger population of messages (Neuendorf, 2002; Riffe et al., 2008). However, the use of convenience samples in content analysis may be justified under certain conditions, i.e., “when a researcher is exploring some underresearched but important area” (Riffe et al., 1998, p. 85).  There is no question that portrayals of sex and sexuality in romance novels are underresearched, and the goal of publishing this study was to provide a preliminary picture rather than a definitive statement about portrayals of sex and sexuality in contemporary romance novels. Several methods of selection were considered, and ultimately, inclusion of the winners of the RITA awards for best contemporary single title romance was deemed preferential to the others. Let me briefly explain how we came to this conclusion.

My first idea during initial study design was to study the best-selling romance novels of all time; however, I soon discovered that those statistics do not exist, a fact that was subsequently confirmed by discussions with a representative from the Romance Writers of America (RWA; personal communication, 2009).

After this first idea was abandoned, my next idea was to study romance novels that had appeared on the New York Times (NYT) bestsellers list; however, this idea also had to be discarded because of practical and methodological reasons. The original idea was to include all of the romance novels that appeared on the NYT bestseller list for November and May in 1967, 1977, 1987, 1997 and 2007 (these months were randomly selected). We consulted an archive of the NYT bestseller lists that included the top-10 bestsellers for each week going back to 1950. The creator of the archive informed us that older versions of the bestseller list included only the top 10 bestsellers for the week, plus a few other books that were categorized by the NYT as “also selling” (Petersen, personal communication, 2009). The books that appeared on the NYT bestseller list were not classified by genre, so it became necessary to research roughly 80 titles per sample year, or 400 books total, in order to determine whether or not they were romance novels. However, in doing this research, it became clear that bestselling titles showed significant stability over a month. For example, in May of 1967, only 14 different novels appeared on the list for the entire month and for the entire year of 1967, only four different titles hit the number one slot (see [End Page 10] http://www.hawes.com/1967/1967.htm). Of those 14 novels, only one could hypothetically be considered a romance novel— Valley of the Dolls , by Jacqueline Susann—and even that title might not be considered a “true” romance novel. It soon became clear that it would be necessary to go through the list of bestsellers for each year included in the study sample and to research each title. However, the idea of two people researching and correctly classifying 2,600 novels (52 weeks x 10 books x 5 years) was unrealistic and unfeasible given our limited resources; in addition, it seemed very likely that significant bias might be introduced by the researchers through incorrectly excluding and/or including books in the sample. For example, it might be difficult to distinguish between a contemporary single title romance and a novel with strong romantic elements, and there are cases where authors who write novels with very strong romantic elements (i.e., Nicholas Sparks [Breznican, 2010]) have disavowed the genre, which adds to the difficulty in classifying the work. In general, the idea of using bestseller lists for creating study samples might be problematic. The selection criteria of the NYT have never been made publicly available (Diamond, 1995), which means that selection of books for inclusion on the list may reflect unknown biases. These lists may also underestimate a book’s readership and its potential influence, which may be particularly true in the case of romance novels as it has been estimated that each romance novel purchased may be read by seven people (Thurston, 1987). Finally, previous research in which the bestseller lists have been used to select a sample of books for content analysis resulted in an undesirable overrepresentation of one or two authors (c.f., Zimmerman et al., 2002).

The idea of selecting every third romance novel at the library or bookstore was considered, similarly to Diekman et al. (2000). Selection of novels at bookstores was not realistic as any money spent on the project would come out of the co-authors’ personal funds. The public libraries in two major Canadian cities were consulted, however these presented unanticipated difficulties. It was discovered that the selection of romance novels at public libraries may be biased towards or against particular sub-genres of romance novels, which may also be a limitation inherent to randomly selecting these books from bookstores. For example, one library that was considered showed a significant over-representation of paranormal romances, suggesting a preference on the part of the librarian or perhaps of the readers in that catchment area. University libraries were not useful for study sample selection as they tend to stock literary criticism (including scholarly works on romance novels, at least potentially), but, as a rule, they do not stock popular fiction of any kind. Interlibrary loans are available that allow access to many public libraries throughout North America; however, books that were ordered using this method took several weeks to several months to arrive. In addition, neither bookstores nor libraries tend to stock older romance novels, likely due to physical deterioration of the books, and so it would not have been possible to make the comparison in portrayals of sex and sexuality across time.

RITA Award Winners

In the end, then, the decision was made to study the RITA award winners for best single-title contemporary book. Presented by the RWA, RITA awards acknowledge [End Page 11] excellence in one of the categories of romantic fiction. Using the RITA award winners ensured that books within the sample were comparable to each other and were clearly defined as romance novels since the book authors themselves chose the categories that they felt were most reflective of their novels’ content. RWA’s process of allowing romance novel writers to select and rank the novels seemed democratic and valid on the surface, although some commenters on the Teach Me Tonight post suggested that this was not the case and that the awards are quite subjective. [1] From my perspective, the RWA was extremely helpful and cooperative in answering questions about romance novels. A representative from the RWA provided extensive details about the competition process, suggesting a transparency in their approach to selecting award winners.

Clearly, RITA award-winners would not be representative of all romance novels published in any given year, or even of all contemporary single-title romance novels. However, it was thought that the sample might reflect the general trends within the industry as well as the novels that might have more of a potential to influence fellow authors, somewhat like studying popular movies by focusing on Oscar winners. In addition, virtually all of the books that were included in the sample had also appeared on one or more bestseller lists and so had the potential to influence a significant number of readers. A major limitation of using RITA award winners is, obviously, generalizeability: Results may only be generalizeable to other award-winning novels and/or to other novels written by the authors included the sample. However, it was hoped that including books published over the course of 20 years would help to address issues of generalizeability. In addition, by including books selected by community itself as “exemplary,” it was hoped that the sample would reflect a kind of distillation of the best that the community has to offer.

Sub-genre Selection

Considering all of the subgenres represented by the RITA awards, we chose to limit our scope to contemporary romances (as opposed to, for instance, paranormal, historical, and inspirational romances) because they would be most likely to reflect current social mores regarding sexuality. Portrayals of sexuality in other romance novel sub-genres might be influenced to a greater degree by the set of rules particular to that sub-genre rather than by social norms, which was the primary research question. For example, historical romance novels might be less likely to include depictions of safer sex behaviour or contraception if birth control was not available in the historical period during which the book is set. Sex scenes in paranormal romances might be strongly influenced by the fantastical elements of the novel rather than by social conventions. In addition, certain sub-genres have only recently become more popular, and so it would have been impossible to make a comparison across time. Mixing different sub-genres in the same sample would have introduced confounds into the results and would have necessitated a much, much larger sample. It would certainly be interesting to replicate the study using a different sample to determine the degree to which depictions of sex and sexuality differ based on sub-genres. I had originally hoped to do another study comparing contemporary to historical romance novels and retain hope that this type of study may be possible at some future date. The field [End Page 12] of psychology itself is limited by the need to ask focused and parsimonious research questions, which may limit our understanding of complex concepts in their entirety.

Single titles were chosen, as opposed to “series” novels, because it was believed that such novels would more likely reflect the perspective and beliefs of the author rather than those of the publisher. For example, Harlequin publishers specify that authors wishing to write novels for the “Blaze” series are expected to include “fully described love scenes along with a high level of fantasy, playfulness and eroticism”; heroes and heroines are expected to be in their early 20s and up (Harlequin, 2009). It was thought that the sexual content of such novels might be more homogenous than that of single-title contemporary romances.

Some commenters on the Teach Me Tonight blog post expressed concern that the researchers were not aware of the existence of sub-genres within the romance novel world. This was not true (not least because of my original co-author’s fondness for historical romances!). It was certainly never intended that conclusions from the sexual script paper be generalized to romance novels as a whole. In retrospect, the word choices that were used in the published paper may have obscured this point. Rather than use the term “romance novels,” it would have been preferable to use “RITA award-winning contemporary single-title romance novels” to clarify the limitations of the findings. Language may be an issue for those who wish to publish romance novel research, as there is often a tendency to fall back on certain heuristics to simplify communication, but which may have the added side effect of introducing confusion. (For example, one of the reviewers for Sexuality & Culture requested that references to “heroes” and “heroines” be changed to male and female protagonists.)

Study Sample Size

Many commenters on the Teach Me Tonight post suggested that the study sample (20 books) was far too small. Although this number is slightly smaller than that usually recommended for content analyses, this number of books was chosen because it was planned that the statistical analyses would be done at the level of the scene, rather than on the entire books. The original assumption was that 20 books would probably result in a sample size of 100+ sex scenes (i.e., approximately five scenes per book), rather than the actual number of 46. The limited number of sex scenes in the study sample did not become apparent until data gathering was well underway. In order to account for the limitations in the sample size, an expert in statistical analysis was consulted to determine the appropriate statistical tests to run. Despite appearances, the conclusions drawn from the statistical analyses that appear in the final paper were valid, despite the small sample size. In cases where the expected effect size is large, even small samples may produce statistically significant results, as it was in this case. So many of the sex scenes that were analyzed conformed to the expectations of traditional sexual scripts that a larger sample of RITA award-winning single title contemporary romance novels (as opposed to a larger sample that included other subgenres or categories of romance) was unlikely to generate much additional information. [End Page 13]

Certainly, it would have been preferable, as one commenter in the Teach Me Tonight discussion suggested, to read and analyze all of the finalists within a given year, i.e., eight or nine books per year, for a total of 160-180 books and potentially 400-500 sex scenes. However, a project of that size would have been tantamount to completing a second PhD dissertation and/or would have required the services of a research assistant, at the very least. In addition, it became increasingly difficult to locate the older books—i.e., those from the early 90s—as many of them were no longer in print and had to be purchased online. I agree that selecting finalists for the RITA awards would be a very viable selection method for future researchers, especially given the lack of difference that was observed in the novels over the sampling period. An expansion of the original sex script study that would include the finalists for the award might also compare the sex scenes in winning novels versus runners-up. Statistically significant differences between the two groups might suggest that adherence to sexual norms might be part of the judging criteria, whether this is a conscious or unconscious bias on the part of the judges.

Future Directions for Romance Novel Research

Romance novels are a fertile area for investigation within psychology, sociology, English, media studies, cultural studies and many other fields in academia. Some may choose to study romance novels in order to build the body of knowledge focused on romance novels; others may pick romance novels in order to study manifestations of a particular theory. I believe that either approach will build the body of knowledge and increase the legitimacy of romance novel research for others. In closing, I’d like to reflect on the challenges and opportunities facing those who pick up where my earlier study leaves off.

Challenges within romance novel research

Romance novel research is subject to a variety of unique challenges, which are likely to evolve over the next few years as the genre itself continues to evolve. Romance novels are so commonly a part of everyday life that some researchers may not deem them worthy of investigation. In particular, researchers in psychology tend to focus on negative life experiences (Seligman, 1990), while romance novels, by their very definition, are positive. The prevailing “misery mindset” in psychology represents a significant obstacle to romance novel research. It is hoped that the increasing popularity of the positive psychology movement, with its focus on positive experiences, might pave the way for more research about everyday life experiences within the field. Psychologists, in particular, would be encouraged to engage in interdisciplinary collaborations to take advantage of differing but complementary perspectives between the social sciences and the humanities.

Given that romance novels have been deemed silly, trivial and/or anti-feminist within popular conceptualizations, grant proposals based on romance novel research may be passed over by (uneducated) funding committees due to a general shortage of research funding. This situation may impose a variety of restrictions on researchers in terms of [End Page 14] procuring research materials, paying research assistants, and disseminating findings, with the result being much smaller, shorter-term investigations. The question of who is to provide the funding is complex. Over the past 10 years, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council has provided funding for one romance-related study, in the form of a scholarship to a Master’s level student. The RWA offers a grant of $5,000 but this amount would be insufficient to establish an ongoing, multi-year major research investigation. [2] Nora Roberts, a prominent romance author, has endowed McDaniel College with a $100,000 grant; while this is very generous, it seems impractical for romance authors themselves to fund romance research on a large scale. Although funding from industry is common in psychology (e.g., pharmaceutical companies), it is not clear how major publishing houses would benefit from funding romance novel research. Unfortunately, this situation creates a Catch-22 whereby more research is required to increase the legitimacy of the field, but this research cannot be done without the funding that would only be accorded to an already-established field.

In some cases, the romance community itself may present challenges to romance novel researchers. Some community members may have grown tired of waging a constant battle for legitimacy and respect; the result, in these cases, may be a sense of defensiveness or suspicion regarding outsiders to the romance community. [Unwillingness to cooperate with researchers has been observed with certain minority groups (e.g., BDSM practitioners), who have felt exploited or betrayed by previous researchers (Kleinplatz & Moser, 2006)]. This may have significant implications for cooperation between researchers and the romance community. Although most of the comments on the Teach Me Tonight discussion were constructive, one commenter compared the sexual script study to spousal abuse as an example of negative attention and stated that the paper did more harm than good. Those outside the community who wish to study romance novels would be well-advised to do extensive preliminary research.

In terms of changes in the industry, e-publishing has recently taken off: Sales of romance e-books increased by 164% in 2010, with 29% of books being purchased in e-book format (RWA, 2012). In addition, there appear to be significant differences between the two groups of readers; readers who purchase e-books are younger and have higher incomes than readers of “analog” romance novels. This discrepancy may create some difficulties in determining what constitutes a representative sample: Researchers may need to decide whether to include e-books as well as print copies in their sample, or whether it is preferable to focus on just one format. The composition of the study sample may also be influenced by differences in sub-genre sales between the different formats; e-book readers, for instance, are more likely to purchase erotic and paranormal titles. Another major change within the industry, related to the increase in e-book sales, is the increasing proliferation of ever more specific romance novel sub-genres, a kind of narrowcasting to romance fans. Again, this may have a significant impact on sample composition. It may no longer be possible or accurate to draw conclusions about romance novels as a whole but only about increasingly specific sub-genres. The findings from future romance novel research may demonstrate great specificity but limited generalizeability. An alternative approach for researchers would be to focus their questions on qualities that are common across all romance novels and are therefore unaffected by the specific “rules” of the sub-genre (e.g., characteristics of the happy ending, characteristics of the central romantic relationship [RWA, 2012]). [End Page 15]

On a purely physical level, it may become more and more difficult to study older romance novels. In doing the sexual script study, it was difficult to locate romance novels from 20 years ago as many were out of print. Books that could be located on eBay or from used book stores were sometimes in poor condition due to age and poor paper quality. The inability to locate books may limit the ability of researchers to study changes in romance novels across time. I believe that studying changes across time is important to determine to what degree romance novels both shape and reflect realities for readers. Hopefully, romance novel publishers might be encouraged to continue the process of digitizing (and, thus, preserving) older novels, with the side benefit of being able to sell them as e-books. Indeed, Harlequin has already begun to take the lead in this effort, and perhaps other publishers will follow suit.”

Opportunities within romance novel research

Romance novels offer many unique opportunities to study human experiences; there are many, many aspects of these books that remain unexplored, at least in the social sciences. Although the focus of research questions has often been on representations of sex, sexuality and gender, researchers might also look at portrayals of religion, politics, family, children, physical and mental illness, employment, leisure activities, communication styles, interpersonal relationships, etc. Previous research has tended to analyze the books in their entirety, but research questions could also be focused at the level of the characters, the relationships, families, scenes, titles, or covers. Studies could be done specifically on characters’ behaviours, speech and/or attitudes. Researchers who look at questions from multiple angles would be in a position to evaluate the consistency (or not) of certain ideas within and across books and the implications of any discrepancies.

The interdisciplinary possibilities within romance novel research may present both challenges and opportunities. In academic research, the guiding values of one’s field will determine appropriate research questions, study design, the nature and process of accumulating supporting evidence and interpretation of findings. Questions about generalizeability, reliability, and validity as they relate to research methodology—questions that are paramount in psychological research—may be meaningless for literary critics. Although both social sciences and humanities are concerned with the human condition, a major difference between them is the empirical mindset that guides research in the social sciences, which suggests that gathering evidence in the form of multiple investigations may allow us to converge on some central “Truth” about the area of interest. Literary criticism, which is not guided by empiricism, allows for and encourages the validity of multiple perspectives. This fundamental difference has important repercussions for study design. For example, the need to choose a random sample of novels so that results may be generalizeable to other books is a concept that may seem absurd to literary critics. Another major distinction may be sample size; researchers from the social sciences might include more novels in their sample (relative to literary critics) but go into less depth in their analyses. This procedure may also have implications for the process of the research, as those in the social sciences are more likely to conduct their research in teams rather than as individuals. A researcher studying novels from the perspective of literature may be [End Page 16] more concerned about the artistry or ideas of a particular author, whereas a psychologist might be more interested in the impact of reading popular romance fiction on the romantic and sexual behaviors of readers. [3]

However, there may be much to gain from interdisciplinary collaborations as they apply to romance novels. The opportunity to share theories and concepts across disciplines may help address lacunae in our own field (e.g., psychoanalytic analysis, feminist approaches). Certain research methodologies may also be complementary: A study of the metrics and rhythm in the language of romance novels would be a perfect fit with a psychological study involving discourse analysis. In our case, the focus of the sexual script study was on the manifest behaviours of the characters; a partnership with a humanities researcher might have helped to uncover additional information represented within the latent content of the novels. In general, results from the social sciences may provide a greater breadth of information about romance novels, whereas studies in the humanities may provide greater depth and complexity of interpretation.

Previous studies in the social sciences have begun to elucidate depictions of sex, sexuality and gender in romance novels. Sample size, selection criteria for novels, and inclusion of different sub-genres varied considerably across these investigations. These methodological differences have shed light on certain aspects of the books but have also created gaps in the research knowledge, suggesting further areas for exploration. The sexual script study was constrained by limitations (e.g., sample size, limited focus) but offered a broader look at sexual behaviours in the books than had been studied previously. Future researchers in the area would be encouraged to take into consideration changes within the romance industry, such as the proliferation of specific sub-genres and the rise in popularity of e-books. They might also expand their questions of interest and study the books from different angles (e.g., characters, scenes, titles). Interdisciplinary collaborations might help to provide a richer, more complete picture of romance novels.

[1] Please see comments related to the award process in the discussion around the Teach Me Tonight post

[2] I hypothesize that establishing a permanent, ongoing “romance novel research laboratory” within a psychology department that would be capable of doing large-scale, multi-year studies would necessitate an annual budget of approximately $25,000 (CDN). This figure would cover research materials, office equipment and supplies, travel costs, and personnel. Personnel, in the form of graduate students and/or research assistants, would be a major expense given the time-intensive nature of this type of research.

[3] The complex questions about the impact of media consumption on readers have not been considered in this paper but may be important for future researchers to consider. [End Page 17]

Breznican, A. (2010, March 12). Nicholas Sparks, Miley Cyrus share a ‘Last Song’ love story. USA Today . Retrieved April 2, 2012 from http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2010-03-11-lastsong11_CV_N.htm

Brown, J.D., L’Engle, K.L., Pardun, C.J., Guo, G., Kenneavy, K., & Jackson, C. (2006). Sexy media matter: Exposure to sexual content in music, movies, television, and magazines predicts Black and White adolescents’ sexual behavior. Pediatrics, 117 , 1018-1027.

Clawson, L. (2005). Cowboys and schoolteachers: Gender in romance novels, secular and Christian. Sociological perspectives, 48 , 461-479.

Cox, A., & Fisher, M. (2009). The Texas billionaire’s pregnant bride: An evolutionary interpretation of romance fiction titles. Journal of social, evolutionary, and cultural psychology, 3 , 386-401.

Diamond, E. (1995). Behind the Times: Inside the New York Times . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Diekman, A.B., McDonald, M., & Gardner, W.L. (2000). Love means never having to be careful: The relationship between reading romance novels and safer sex behavior. Psychology of Women Quarterly , 24, 179-188.

Fisher, M., & Cox, A. (2010). Man change thyself: Hero versus heroine development in Harlequin romance novels. Journal of social, evolutionary, and cultural psychology , 4, 305-316.

Gagnon, J. H. (1977). Human sexualities . Glenview, Il: Scott, Foresman and Company.

Gagnon, J., & Simon, W. (1973). Sexual conduct: The social sources of human sexuality . Chicago, Il: Aldine Publishing Company.

Harlequin (2009). Writing guidelines: Harlequin Blaze. Retrieved March 12, 2009 from http://www.eharlequin.com/articlepage.html?articleId=544&chapter=0

Kleinplatz, P.J., & Ménard, A. D. (2007). Building blocks towards optimal sexuality: Constructing a conceptual model. The Family Journal, 15, 72-78.

Kleinplatz, P.J., Ménard, A.D., Paquet, M.-C., Paradis, N., Campbell, M., Zuccarini, D., & Mehak, L. (2009a). The components of optimal sexuality: A portrait of ‘great sex’. Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 18, 1-13.

Kleinplatz, P.J., Ménard, A.D., Paradis, N., Campbell, M., Dalgleish, T., Segovia, A., & Davis, K. (2009b). From closet to reality: Optimal sexuality among the elderly. The Irish Psychiatrist, 10 , 15-18.

Kleinplatz, P.K., & Moser, C., (2006). Sadomasochism: Powerful pleasures. Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press.

Lacy, S., & Riffe, D. (1996). Sampling error and selecting intercoder reliability samples for nominal content categories: Sins of omission and commission in mass communication quantitative research. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 73, 969-973.

Ménard, A.D., & Cabrera, C. (2011). ‘Whatever the approach, Tab B still fits into Slot A’ : Twenty years of sex scripts in romance novels. Sexuality & Culture , 15(3) , 240-255.

Ménard, A.D., & Kleinplatz, P.K. (2008). 21 moves guaranteed to make his thighs go up in flames: Depictions of “great sex” in popular magazines. Sexuality & Culture, 12 , 1-20. [End Page 18]

Ruggiero, J.A., & Weston, L.C. (1983). Conflicting images of women in romance novels. International journal of women’s studies, 6 , 18-25.

Romance Writers of America [RWA], (2012). About the romance genre. Retrieved March 27, 2012 from http://www.rwa.org/cs/the_romance_genre/romance_literature_statistics/industry_statistics

Seligman, M. E. (1990). Learned optimism . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Simon, W., & Gagnon, J. (1986). Sexual scripts: Permanence and change. Archives of sexual behavior, 15 , 97-120.

Simon, W., & Gagnon, J. (1987). The sexual scripting of oral genital contacts. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 16 , 1-25.

Thurston, C. (1987). The romance revolution: Erotic novels for women and the quest for a new sexual identity. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Zimmerman, T.S., Holm, K.E., Daniels, K.C., & Haddock, S.A. (2002). Barriers and bridges to intimacy and mutuality: A critical review of sexual advice found in self-help bestsellers. Contemporary family therapy, 24 , 289-311. [End Page 19]

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The Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2022

Featuring bob dylan, elena ferrante, zora neale hurston, jhumpa lahiri, melissa febos, and more.

We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2022, in the categories of (deep breath): Fiction ; Nonfiction ; Memoir and Biography ; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror ; Short Story Collections ; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime ; Graphic Literature ; and Literature in Translation .

Today’s installment: Essay Collections .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing  by Elena Ferrante (Europa)

12 Rave • 12 Positive • 4 Mixed

“The lucid, well-formed essays that make up In the Margins  are written in an equally captivating voice … Although a slim collection, there is more than enough meat here to nourish both the common reader and the Ferrante aficionado … Every essay here is a blend of deep thought, rigorous analysis and graceful prose. We occasionally get the odd glimpse of the author…but mainly the focus is on the nuts and bolts of writing and Ferrante’s practice of her craft. The essays are at their most rewarding when Ferrante discusses the origins of her books, in particular the celebrated Neapolitan Novels, and the multifaceted heroines that power them … These essays might not bring us any closer to finding out who Ferrante really is. Instead, though, they provide valuable insight into how she developed as a writer and how she works her magic.”

–Malcolm Forbes ( The Star Tribune )

2. Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri (Princeton University Press)

8 Rave • 14 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Lahiri mixes detailed explorations of craft with broader reflections on her own artistic life, as well as the ‘essential aesthetic and political mission’ of translation. She is excellent in all three modes—so excellent, in fact, that I, a translator myself, could barely read this book. I kept putting it aside, compelled by Lahiri’s writing to go sit at my desk and translate … One of Lahiri’s great gifts as an essayist is her ability to braid multiple ways of thinking together, often in startling ways … a reminder, no matter your relationship to translation, of how alive language itself can be. In her essays as in her fiction, Lahiri is a writer of great, quiet elegance; her sentences seem simple even when they’re complex. Their beauty and clarity alone would be enough to wake readers up. ‘Look,’ her essays seem to say: Look how much there is for us to wake up to.”

–Lily Meyer ( NPR )

3. The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster)

10 Rave • 15 Positive • 7 Mixed • 4 Pan

“It is filled with songs and hyperbole and views on love and lust even darker than Blood on the Tracks … There are 66 songs discussed here … Only four are by women, which is ridiculous, but he never asked us … Nothing is proved, but everything is experienced—one really weird and brilliant person’s experience, someone who changed the world many times … Part of the pleasure of the book, even exceeding the delectable Chronicles: Volume One , is that you feel liberated from Being Bob Dylan. He’s not telling you what you got wrong about him. The prose is so vivid and fecund, it was useless to underline, because I just would have underlined the whole book. Dylan’s pulpy, noir imagination is not always for the squeamish. If your idea of art is affirmation of acceptable values, Bob Dylan doesn’t need you … The writing here is at turns vivid, hilarious, and will awaken you to songs you thought you knew … The prose brims everywhere you turn. It is almost disturbing. Bob Dylan got his Nobel and all the other accolades, and now he’s doing my job, and he’s so damn good at it.”

–David Yaffe ( AirMail )

4.  Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos (Catapult)

13 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed Read an excerpt from Body Work here

“In her new book, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative , memoirist Melissa Febos handily recuperates the art of writing the self from some of the most common biases against it: that the memoir is a lesser form than the novel. That trauma narratives should somehow be over—we’ve had our fill … Febos rejects these belittlements with eloquence … In its hybridity, this book formalizes one of Febos’s central tenets within it: that there is no disentangling craft from the personal, just as there is no disentangling the personal from the political. It’s a memoir of a life indelibly changed by literary practice and the rigorous integrity demanded of it …

Febos is an essayist of grace and terrific precision, her sentences meticulously sculpted, her paragraphs shapely and compressed … what’s fresh, of course, is Febos herself, remapping this terrain through her context, her life and writing, her unusual combinations of sources (William H. Gass meets Elissa Washuta, for example), her painstaking exactitude and unflappable sureness—and the new readers she will reach with all of this.”

–Megan Milks ( 4Columns )

5. You Don’t Know Us Negroes by Zora Neale Hurston (Amistad)

12 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed

“… a dazzling collection of her work … You Don’t Know Us Negroes reveals Hurston at the top of her game as an essayist, cultural critic, anthropologist and beat reporter … Hurston is, by turn, provocative, funny, bawdy, informative and outrageous … Hurston will make you laugh but also make you remember the bitter divide in Black America around performance, language, education and class … But the surprising page turner is at the back of the book, a compilation of Hurston’s coverage of the Ruby McCollom murder trial …

Some of Hurston’s writing is sensationalistic, to be sure, but it’s also a riveting take of gender and race relations at the time … Gates and West have put together a comprehensive collection that lets Hurston shine as a writer, a storyteller and an American iconoclast.”

–Lisa Page ( The Washington Post )

6. Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

11 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed Listen to an interview with Rachel Aviv here

“… written with an astonishing amount of attention and care … Aviv’s triumphs in relating these journeys are many: her unerring narrative instinct, the breadth of context brought to each story, her meticulous reporting. Chief among these is her empathy, which never gives way to pity or sentimentality. She respects her subjects, and so centers their dignity without indulging in the geeky, condescending tone of fascination that can characterize psychologists’ accounts of their patients’ troubles. Though deeply curious about each subject, Aviv doesn’t treat them as anomalous or strange … Aviv’s daunted respect for uncertainty is what makes Strangers to Ourselves distinctive. She is hyperaware of just how sensitive the scale of the self can be.”

–Charlotte Shane ( Bookforum )

7. A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast by Dorthe Nors (Graywolf)

11 Rave • 1 Positive Read an excerpt from A Line in the World here

“Nors, known primarily as a fiction writer, here embarks on a languorous and evocative tour of her native Denmark … The dramas of the past are evoked not so much through individual characters as through their traces—buildings, ruins, shipwrecks—and this westerly Denmark is less the land of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales and sleek Georg Jensen designs than a place of ancient landscapes steeped in myth … People aren’t wholly incidental to the narrative. Nors introduces us to a variety of colorful characters, and shares vivid memories of her family’s time in a cabin on the coast south of Thyborøn. But in a way that recalls the work of Barry Lopez, nature is at the heart of this beautiful book, framed in essay-like chapters, superbly translated by Caroline Waight.”

–Claire Messud ( Harper’s )

8. Raising Raffi: The First Five Years by Keith Gessen (Viking)

4 Rave • 10 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from Raising Raffi here

“A wise, mild and enviably lucid book about a chaotic scene … Is it OK to out your kid like this? … Still, this memoir will seem like a better idea if, a few decades from now, Raffi is happy and healthy and can read it aloud to his own kids while chuckling at what a little miscreant he was … Gessen is a wily parser of children’s literature … He is just as good on parenting manuals … Raising Raffi offers glimpses of what it’s like to eke out literary lives at the intersection of the Trump and Biden administrations … Needing money for one’s children, throughout history, has made parents do desperate things — even write revealing parenthood memoirs … Gessen’s short book is absorbing not because it delivers answers … It’s absorbing because Gessen is a calm and observant writer…who raises, and struggles with, the right questions about himself and the world.”

–Dwight Garner ( The New York Times )

9. The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser (Doubleday)

8 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed • 1 Pan Watch an interview with CJ Hauser here

“17 brilliant pieces … This tumbling, in and out of love, structures the collection … Calling Hauser ‘honest’ and ‘vulnerable’ feels inadequate. She embraces and even celebrates her flaws, and she revels in being a provocateur … It is an irony that Hauser, a strong, smart, capable woman, relates to the crane wife’s contortions. She felt helpless in her own romantic relationship. I don’t have one female friend who has not felt some version of this, but putting it into words is risky … this collection is not about neat, happy endings. It’s a constant search for self-discovery … Much has been written on the themes Hauser excavates here, yet her perspective is singular, startlingly so. Many narratives still position finding the perfect match as a measure of whether we’ve led successful lives. The Crane Wife dispenses with that. For that reason, Hauser’s worldview feels fresh and even radical.”

–Hope Reese ( Oprah Daily )

10. How to Read Now by Elaine Castillo (Viking)

8 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from How to Read Now here

“Elaine Castillo’s How to Read Now begins with a section called ‘Author’s Note, or a Virgo Clarifies Things.’ The title is a neat encapsulation of the book’s style: rigorous but still chatty, intellectual but not precious or academic about it … How to Read Now proceeds at a breakneck pace. Each of the book’s eight essays burns bright and hot from start to finish … How to Read Now is not for everybody, but if it is for you, it is clarifying and bracing. Castillo offers a full-throated critique of some of the literary world’s most insipid and self-serving ideas …

So how should we read now? Castillo offers suggestions but no resolution. She is less interested in capital-A Answers…and more excited by the opportunity to restore a multitude of voices and perspectives to the conversation … A book is nothing without a reader; this one is co-created by its recipients, re-created every time the page is turned anew. How to Read Now offers its audience the opportunity to look past the simplicity we’re all too often spoon-fed into order to restore ourselves to chaos and complexity—a way of seeing and reading that demands so much more of us but offers even more in return.”

–Zan Romanoff ( The Los Angeles Times )

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RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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• Research paper

How to Write a Research Paper | A Beginner's Guide

A research paper is a piece of academic writing that provides analysis, interpretation, and argument based on in-depth independent research.

Research papers are similar to academic essays , but they are usually longer and more detailed assignments, designed to assess not only your writing skills but also your skills in scholarly research. Writing a research paper requires you to demonstrate a strong knowledge of your topic, engage with a variety of sources, and make an original contribution to the debate.

This step-by-step guide takes you through the entire writing process, from understanding your assignment to proofreading your final draft.

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Table of contents

Understand the assignment, choose a research paper topic, conduct preliminary research, develop a thesis statement, create a research paper outline, write a first draft of the research paper, write the introduction, write a compelling body of text, write the conclusion, the second draft, the revision process, research paper checklist, free lecture slides.

Completing a research paper successfully means accomplishing the specific tasks set out for you. Before you start, make sure you thoroughly understanding the assignment task sheet:

• Read it carefully, looking for anything confusing you might need to clarify with your professor.
• Identify the assignment goal, deadline, length specifications, formatting, and submission method.
• Make a bulleted list of the key points, then go back and cross completed items off as you’re writing.

Carefully consider your timeframe and word limit: be realistic, and plan enough time to research, write, and edit.

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There are many ways to generate an idea for a research paper, from brainstorming with pen and paper to talking it through with a fellow student or professor.

You can try free writing, which involves taking a broad topic and writing continuously for two or three minutes to identify absolutely anything relevant that could be interesting.

You can also gain inspiration from other research. The discussion or recommendations sections of research papers often include ideas for other specific topics that require further examination.

Once you have a broad subject area, narrow it down to choose a topic that interests you, m eets the criteria of your assignment, and i s possible to research. Aim for ideas that are both original and specific:

• A paper following the chronology of World War II would not be original or specific enough.
• A paper on the experience of Danish citizens living close to the German border during World War II would be specific and could be original enough.

Note any discussions that seem important to the topic, and try to find an issue that you can focus your paper around. Use a variety of sources , including journals, books, and reliable websites, to ensure you do not miss anything glaring.

Do not only verify the ideas you have in mind, but look for sources that contradict your point of view.

• Is there anything people seem to overlook in the sources you research?
• Are there any heated debates you can address?
• Do you have a unique take on your topic?
• Have there been some recent developments that build on the extant research?

In this stage, you might find it helpful to formulate some research questions to help guide you. To write research questions, try to finish the following sentence: “I want to know how/what/why…”

A thesis statement is a statement of your central argument — it establishes the purpose and position of your paper. If you started with a research question, the thesis statement should answer it. It should also show what evidence and reasoning you’ll use to support that answer.

The thesis statement should be concise, contentious, and coherent. That means it should briefly summarize your argument in a sentence or two, make a claim that requires further evidence or analysis, and make a coherent point that relates to every part of the paper.

You will probably revise and refine the thesis statement as you do more research, but it can serve as a guide throughout the writing process. Every paragraph should aim to support and develop this central claim.

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A research paper outline is essentially a list of the key topics, arguments, and evidence you want to include, divided into sections with headings so that you know roughly what the paper will look like before you start writing.

A structure outline can help make the writing process much more efficient, so it’s worth dedicating some time to create one.

Your first draft won’t be perfect — you can polish later on. Your priorities at this stage are as follows:

• Maintaining forward momentum — write now, perfect later.
• Paying attention to clear organization and logical ordering of paragraphs and sentences, which will help when you come to the second draft.
• Expressing your ideas as clearly as possible, so you know what you were trying to say when you come back to the text.

You do not need to start by writing the introduction. Begin where it feels most natural for you — some prefer to finish the most difficult sections first, while others choose to start with the easiest part. If you created an outline, use it as a map while you work.

Do not delete large sections of text. If you begin to dislike something you have written or find it doesn’t quite fit, move it to a different document, but don’t lose it completely — you never know if it might come in useful later.

Paragraph structure

Paragraphs are the basic building blocks of research papers. Each one should focus on a single claim or idea that helps to establish the overall argument or purpose of the paper.

Example paragraph

George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” has had an enduring impact on thought about the relationship between politics and language. This impact is particularly obvious in light of the various critical review articles that have recently referenced the essay. For example, consider Mark Falcoff’s 2009 article in The National Review Online, “The Perversion of Language; or, Orwell Revisited,” in which he analyzes several common words (“activist,” “civil-rights leader,” “diversity,” and more). Falcoff’s close analysis of the ambiguity built into political language intentionally mirrors Orwell’s own point-by-point analysis of the political language of his day. Even 63 years after its publication, Orwell’s essay is emulated by contemporary thinkers.

Citing sources

It’s also important to keep track of citations at this stage to avoid accidental plagiarism . Each time you use a source, make sure to take note of where the information came from.

You can use our free citation generators to automatically create citations and save your reference list as you go.

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The research paper introduction should address three questions: What, why, and how? After finishing the introduction, the reader should know what the paper is about, why it is worth reading, and how you’ll build your arguments.

What? Be specific about the topic of the paper, introduce the background, and define key terms or concepts.

Why? This is the most important, but also the most difficult, part of the introduction. Try to provide brief answers to the following questions: What new material or insight are you offering? What important issues does your essay help define or answer?

How? To let the reader know what to expect from the rest of the paper, the introduction should include a “map” of what will be discussed, briefly presenting the key elements of the paper in chronological order.

The major struggle faced by most writers is how to organize the information presented in the paper, which is one reason an outline is so useful. However, remember that the outline is only a guide and, when writing, you can be flexible with the order in which the information and arguments are presented.

One way to stay on track is to use your thesis statement and topic sentences . Check:

• topic sentences against the thesis statement;
• topic sentences against each other, for similarities and logical ordering;
• and each sentence against the topic sentence of that paragraph.

Be aware of paragraphs that seem to cover the same things. If two paragraphs discuss something similar, they must approach that topic in different ways. Aim to create smooth transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and sections.

The research paper conclusion is designed to help your reader out of the paper’s argument, giving them a sense of finality.

Trace the course of the paper, emphasizing how it all comes together to prove your thesis statement. Give the paper a sense of finality by making sure the reader understands how you’ve settled the issues raised in the introduction.

You might also discuss the more general consequences of the argument, outline what the paper offers to future students of the topic, and suggest any questions the paper’s argument raises but cannot or does not try to answer.

You should not :

• Offer new arguments or essential information
• Take up any more space than necessary
• Begin with stock phrases that signal you are ending the paper (e.g. “In conclusion”)

There are four main considerations when it comes to the second draft.

• Check how your vision of the paper lines up with the first draft and, more importantly, that your paper still answers the assignment.
• Identify any assumptions that might require (more substantial) justification, keeping your reader’s perspective foremost in mind. Remove these points if you cannot substantiate them further.
• Be open to rearranging your ideas. Check whether any sections feel out of place and whether your ideas could be better organized.
• If you find that old ideas do not fit as well as you anticipated, you should cut them out or condense them. You might also find that new and well-suited ideas occurred to you during the writing of the first draft — now is the time to make them part of the paper.

The goal during the revision and proofreading process is to ensure you have completed all the necessary tasks and that the paper is as well-articulated as possible. You can speed up the proofreading process by using the AI proofreader .

Global concerns

• Confirm that your paper completes every task specified in your assignment sheet.
• Check for logical organization and flow of paragraphs.
• Check paragraphs against the introduction and thesis statement.

Fine-grained details

Check the content of each paragraph, making sure that:

• each sentence helps support the topic sentence.
• no unnecessary or irrelevant information is present.
• all technical terms your audience might not know are identified.

Next, think about sentence structure , grammatical errors, and formatting . Check that you have correctly used transition words and phrases to show the connections between your ideas. Look for typos, cut unnecessary words, and check for consistency in aspects such as heading formatting and spellings .

Finally, you need to make sure your paper is correctly formatted according to the rules of the citation style you are using. For example, you might need to include an MLA heading  or create an APA title page .

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Checklist: Research paper

I have followed all instructions in the assignment sheet.

My introduction presents my topic in an engaging way and provides necessary background information.

My introduction presents a clear, focused research problem and/or thesis statement .

My paper is logically organized using paragraphs and (if relevant) section headings .

Each paragraph is clearly focused on one central idea, expressed in a clear topic sentence .

Each paragraph is relevant to my research problem or thesis statement.

I have used appropriate transitions  to clarify the connections between sections, paragraphs, and sentences.

My conclusion provides a concise answer to the research question or emphasizes how the thesis has been supported.

My conclusion shows how my research has contributed to knowledge or understanding of my topic.

My conclusion does not present any new points or information essential to my argument.

I have provided an in-text citation every time I refer to ideas or information from a source.

I have included a reference list at the end of my paper, consistently formatted according to a specific citation style .

I have thoroughly revised my paper and addressed any feedback from my professor or supervisor.

I have followed all formatting guidelines (page numbers, headers, spacing, etc.).

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