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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27121
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27121
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I would suggest that the key question you should be asking yourself is whether you actually have a story to tell. The heart of any story is a decision. The protagonist (and possibly other characters as well) have to make a decision which is hard for them. Either decision they make will cost them something.

The meat of a story is, what is it like to be faced with that decision, what circumstance bring the protagonist to this point, and what will it cost them to decide and to live with the decision they have made. (Think of The Little Mermaid -- the real story, not the Disney travesty -- in which in choosing to have legs she accepts that every step will feel like she is walking on knives.)

The world of a story is simply the set of circumstance in which the character is brought to this decision. This does not mean that world is not a concrete and vivid place -- it must be, because a story is not an abstract philosophical treatise of values, but a recounting of an actual human being in an actual place and time being faced with such a decision. The particularities of time and place are vital to making it a story rather than a thinly veiled essay.

There are a thousand ways to bring a character to the point where they must decide what suffering they are willing the bear for love. Andersen creates a mermaid and an undersea kingdom to dramatize that decision, and all that must seem real and concrete within the frame of the story or we will not be moved to tears by the mermaid's sacrifice, or by her disappointment, or by her eventual fate. We cannot feel it if we do not feel all of it.

But that is all that the setting does for the story. If you are doing research or worldbuilding beyond what is needed to create the concrete circumstances in which the protagonist will be brought to the point of decision, you are doing something that is not only unnecessary, but antithetical to the story. The point of decision is the magnetic pole of a story and everything else points to it.

The question is, why are you continuing past that point? One reason might be that either you do not know what the central decision that will defines your story will be, or that you are afraid to face it. Being afraid to face that decision is legitimate. To write it convincingly, you have to imagine your way through it, which essentially means you have to face it yourself. How much emotional detachment you can maintain and still write the story in an honest and convincing way, I am not certain. I suspect it may vary from one person to another.

But if you want to put a limit to your research, you need to face up honestly to what is holding you back from telling your story.

Original score: 4