How to Research for Narrative Storytelling: 5 Takeaways from ‘You Are A Writer’

For emerging writers, the research process can be riddled with questions. Where do you begin? How do you know which facts deserve a place in your story and which should be discarded? And at what point do you simply have to force yourself to put down the books you’re reading, pick up a pen, and start writing?

The first workshop in PEN America’s 2026 You Are A Writer series brought together three accomplished writers — moderator John Manuel Arias (Crocodopolis) and speakers Charmaine Craig (My Nemesis) and Judy Batalion (The Last Woman of Warsaw) — who provided guidance to early career writers on how to conduct research for narrative storytelling. If you missed the session, check out five takeaways below and make sure to register for the upcoming sessions.

1. Consider the variety of forms research can take.  

Research often involves digging deep into the archive, but that’s not all it can be. Over the course of Batalion’s career, she’s also conducted plenty of interviews and on-the-ground research. For her nonfiction work The Light of Days, which provides accounts of young, Jewish women who resisted Nazism, she traveled to Będzin — and, upon her arrival, learned that the whole Polish city sat atop a hill. 

“No one mentioned that [in books], because that wasn’t an important part of the World War II testimony,” Batalion said. “But when you’re writing descriptively about a place and trying to understand someone’s hiding, or their journey, or their dangerous risk-tasking effort, you need to know that.” She acknowledged that financially or otherwise, traveling to the places you’re writing about isn’t always a possibility, but said her senses aid her greatly when she can put them to use.  

To read the full article on pen.org, click here