by Can Tran

Created on: February 21, 2009

I came to learn that ideas are the root towards writing something. It does not matter what you write whether it is an article, a short story, an essay, a thesis, a poem, a novel, or a screenplay. Ideas come from inspiration. Inspiration comes from anywhere. One of the biggest sources of inspiration comes from research. You will have to do some sort of research for whatever it is you are going to write.

During my senior year of high school, I took English IV Honors. As a requirement, we had to write a thesis. I was not very good at essays. I had to write a thesis on eighteenth century English literature. Back then, I did not know jack squat about eighteenth century English literature. Luckily I ended up getting a ninety-six percent on my thesis. Since I did not know much about eighteenth century English literature, I had to get cracking.

With that said, I had to do research. Luckily my teacher was there to give me direction. I would cover almost every nook and cranny on nineteenth century English literature. I must say that research was most of the fun. By doing research, I had learned so much about such a topic. Unfortunately, I had lost appeal for "Gulliver's Travels."
This was one of my favorite childhood stories.

I had to research the author of Gulliver's Travels. It was written by Jonathan Swift. Originally, I thought it was an interesting story for children. The more I delved into Swift's life I saw what the story was about. It killed my joy for the story. But, I would not know much about Swift until I researched about him. Swift's life was an integral part of my thesis for the class.
This made me understand and respect the importance of research when it had come to writing.

Even today, I continue doing my research. I have seen that research is essential when you are writing stories. One of the important parts of a story is plausibility.
If you can make a story convincing, you give it life. Research is crucial towards establishing plausibility.

Around 2003, I had started work on a romance-themed screenplay. I did research on the locations. That helped me establish where the story would take place. I would research on Asian-American and Italian culture.
My main protagonist is a Vietnamese-American male. The lead female is an Italian immigrant. I had to do research on my own sad love life to create certain characters. I created a character based off of my psychotic ex-girlfriend. Even a simple romance story required me to do the proper research.

I worked on a new

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