Guest Post! Research and Endings by Jessica Warman

Today I have the great pleasure of welcoming Jessica Warman to the blog today! Jessica has been kind enough to write a guest post about the research she did for her book Beautiful Lies!

When it comes to research… it’s never been a strength of mine. I don’t enjoy it, and as a result I try to do as little as possible. If I had to make a list of “things I avoid at whatever cost necessary,” research would probably be number three. (Number one would be death; number two would be olives.) 

That being said, sometimes doing research is unavoidable; this was the case with Beautiful Lies. I spent a lot of time talking to the twins in my life (my husband’s sisters) and reading about twin phenomenon online. There are tons of interesting stories out there, so it was pretty painless. 

As far as anything that didn’t make it into the final version of the book – that’s actually a very interesting question to me. As a matter of fact, there was a lot of back-and-forth about the ending. I’m the kind of writer (and reader) who doesn’t like neat, tidy endings. I like ones that are messy and ambiguous, much like real life. In the past few years, I’ve come to realize that I am in the minority with this opinion. And as much as I wanted to stay true to the original ending I had in mind, the fact is that I’m not writing these books for myself. I’m writing them for my readers; to refuse to alter my ideas simply because I preferred them seemed short-sighted and selfish. 

In the end, I was very happy with the ending of the book. It’s still somewhat vague and confusing (as it’s supposed to be), but it’s not like I’m saying, “Ha, ha! You got all the way to the end, but nothing’s going to happen!” As I said, these stories aren’t written for me nearly as much as they are for you. If I ignored that fact, it would be like somebody giving me a sandwich with a bunch of black olives hidden underneath the lettuce, just because they happen to like them.

YES! Talk about a crazy ending! That ending had me reeling! If you haven't read my review on Beautiful Lies by Jessica Warman you can check that out here! I hope you guys enjoyed this guest post and that you pick up Beautiful Lies soon, if you haven't read it!