What Researching Online Can Teach You—And What It Can't
THE DREAM BEFORE THE TRIP
Back when I was stuck behind a desk at a law firm working on mundane projects, I always dreamed of traveling. I would sneak glances at my phone on Facebook of friends who'd gone off to far off places, like Iceland. Their pictures of the country captivated me, and I couldn't stop thinking about them. I was trying my hand at writing fantasy (don't ask me how that went, I don't want to talk about it), and Iceland was the perfect backdrop for the novel I was working on at the time.
Because my PTO was very limited back then and my schedule barely allowed me any time off in general, the only thing I could do at the time was research. So I looked through photo after photo on Google Images then moved onto Pinterest. But my research capabilities back then were limited. I didn't think to look up what the temperature could be like, what the winds were like, or well… anything that could help shape that fantasy novel. I was a fledgling novelist and I had a lot to learn. I still hadn’t learned what it was like to use all those five senses to encapsulate the setting in my stories. So trust me when I say that I see you, doing exactly what I was doing before—just looking for pictures, googling weather, trying to make a place feel real from a screen. And I know exactly how exhausting and empty it feels. It’s what pushed me to stop scrolling and just go.
So in 2019, I decided to take the plunge and go to Iceland. I had a trip planned for September… 2020.
Then the pandemic happened, and after months of hoping that things would change, that there was a slim chance I could still go. But I got the cancellation email, a week out from the departure date. And to rub salt in the wound, my renewed passport arrived twenty seconds later.
That first chance to go to Iceland literally slipped through my fingers.
WHAT THE INTERNET CAN (AND CAN'T) GIVE YOU
So during that time of being shut in my home, I took up reading and learned to hone my craft. Since I gave up on writing fantasy altogether after writing yet another one that didn't do so hot in the query trenches, I did some soul searching on what I really wanted to write as a writer. I read books like the A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas, IT by Stephen King, the Grishaverse books by Leigh Bardugo, and so many others, marveling at how these authors could create such a world where creatures and monsters exist. But one book really sparked my interest the most, that I still think about to this day: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. How she took a REAL setting and history of Yale University (her alma mater) and weaved in the various myths and lores into the story. It heavily inspired me. Ninth House taught me that the real power isn't inventing a world from scratch—it's finding it buried in a real one.
Here’s what actually works when you’re researching from a distance: the internet is a strong starting point for the basic background information—such as historical records on when a building was built, a starting point for folklore, etc. Google and Reddit are your friends on all fronts. I should warn you, reader, that I'm a millennial who uses social media and the internet like an outdated boomer trying to stay cool. Most of the time, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing.
The point is: I've found Google and Reddit searches to be a strong starting point. But the rest… I honestly relied on books.
For example, because Iceland was still on my mind at the time, I nearly went down a rabbit hole in Nordic culture, mythology, and music… To this day, I still listen to Neo-Pagan music. I used up a lot of screen time on my phone and laptop delving into the depths of Google researching the various takes on Norse mythology, even sifting through Reddit. Sometimes they all offered different versions of one Norse myth. It was hard to discern what was true and what wasn't. I wanted to find a way to weave those myths into my writing, but I wanted the true source.
But I will say that writing the story, trying to imagine what Iceland was like—it actually hurt my storytelling. I didn't know the seasons all that well, I didn't know what the winds were like, or honestly how epic it really was. Because spoiler alert: it was breathtakingly epic. The longer I researched places without visiting them, the more that gap between expectation and reality grew.
WHAT ONLY BEING THERE COULD TEACH ME
So in 2022, when things settled down, I finally booked that trip to Iceland with my first new paycheck, turning it from a long weekend trip… to a two-week one at the suggestion of my wonderful friend, Ana. She crafted my itinerary and helped me book hotels, and my entire route. And it's a trip I constantly think about to this day.
In all the time I waited for the trip, I looked through photos on Google, Pinterest, and Instagram, at the photos my friends posted from their visits. And I will say this: the internet doesn't fully capture Iceland's epicness. It can flatten it to a degree.
The day finally arrived on May 31, 2023 when I took my red eye flight from DC to Reykjavík. I was as prepared as I could've been—with packing, budgeting, and itinerary. But being there, that was a whole other story.
When you look up Iceland on the internet, it shows you sweeping mountains, the Northern Lights, waterfalls, bright sunny days. When I arrived, my first three days were foggy and cloudy as hell. I was lucky if I could see part of a mountain. But that fog… it was like something out of Silent Hill. While I would've loved to have seen those mountaintops, the weather still gave it a spooky, moody edge. The perfect setting for a horror novel set in Iceland. Hell, it would've been perfect for a horror movie. Just all of Iceland… it's so cinematic.
On my third full day in Iceland, I was traveling north where I learned I have a fear of driving through mountain passes with little to no guardrails. Then, somewhere along the Ring Road, about forty minutes outside of Akureyri, Iceland's northern capital, I got a bone-deep chill. Goosebumps exploded over my body and I started shaking… hard. I had to pull over, thinking that it was just my anxiety and fear of driving in near-inclement weather in a country with which I wasn't familiar. The gale force was strong enough to nearly push my car off the road and the drizzle was starting to turn into hail.
I got out of the car at this lookout point, an area called Öxnadalsheiði (don't even try to pronounce it). It was there that I caught a flash of a scene that would be in a book I would later write. A book that still lives in me and I will attempt it again when I'm ready. But for now, I'm letting it brew.
So I stood there, taking in the scene around me: the grass was a muted mossy green and flat, mixed with light brown mud. There was a milky blue river trisecting three mountains, and I could picture the whole thing clearly. I would never forget how the air, despite it being summer, was so frigid in my lungs, that faint whiff of sulfur in the atmosphere, a trademark of Iceland since the whole country is basically volcanic.
I then went back to my car and continued onto Akureyri, white-knuckling my steering wheel as I went down a steep, curving slope… down a damn mountain. I'll reiterate that I loved that trip, and I loved North Iceland, but that part of the road trip scared the holy hell out of me.
The next day, I wandered around Akureyri, bought a notebook and sat down at a cafe that would become my favorite haunt in North Iceland called Blàa Kannan Cafe. It took me three hours to outline that book, back when I was plotting every little detail. Later, I would learn that being a plotter would be my downfall as a writer.
wHEN YOU CAN'T GO BACK: DUBLIN
Iceland was just the beginning. Scotland, Portugal, Italy—they all fed my writing in their own way. But it's Dublin that's taught me something new: what to do when you can't just book a flight back.
As of right now, I'm working on a supernatural horror set in Dublin. I spent a long weekend there when I had to leave Portugal to activate my visa and just walking around Dublin at night helped set the scene for my book. But now, as I dive into Act Two, I realized there were things that I missed during that trip. So now, I'm back to relying on the internet and using my imagination to create new details.
For example, I wanted one of my characters' stakes to be higher than the other. So I thought to separate them, to let them fight the evil that is haunting them on their own. My friends recently talked about The Descent and it got me thinking about putting my character underground.
After a Google search on what's under Dublin, I found out there's a buried river used by Vikings when they invaded Ireland. Finding out that little fact was such a victory, and it felt like discovering a piece of the puzzle you didn't know that was missing. Just because you can’t get back to a place doesn’t mean the story has to wait—that tour guide you met, the bookstore salesperson who knew every local ghost story, the person online who grew up on those streets—those connections are research too. Sometimes the limitations leads you somewhere better.
Even crafting my villain, there's very little lore to the creature. And honestly, it was in my favor because I could create my own lore without the fear of being wrong. I used a baseline—a paragraph written about it from a book on Irish Fairy Tales and Folklore by W.B. Yeats—and went from there. I researched Irish etymology and numerology to add "meat" to its bones.
There were some limits to my research, like seeing if there were any other underground tunnel systems. Some YouTube videos helped, but it all felt vague and not very helpful. So, using my own creativity and imagination, I crafted a catacomb tunnel system that intersected with the river. I had to imagine the whole thing to be deeply claustrophobic, humid, and damp… the air thinning the longer one remains underground, chased by an unseen entity.
While it feels impossible to find a way to get to that place, there’s always a starting point. Eight years ago at that law firm desk, all I had were photos and a dream of a place I'd never been. Now I'm at a different desk in my home office in Lisbon, passport full of stamps, building a world underground from a buried river and a paragraph in a Yeats book, plus a wealth of knowledge from a friend who was born and raised in Dublin. The imagination has had time to grow.
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