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Crafting your magnum opus? Weaving threads of fantasy and reality together to create a new world that'll transport readers into a realm of delight? Constructing a thoroughly accurate historical masterpiece that captures the past perfectly? Putting together a highly technical detective fiction plot with no room for plebeian errors?

Then at some point in your writing schedule, you'd best make time for accessing and navigating public records. You're supposed to write what you know, and nothing will supplement a lack of first-hand experience like research. Lots of research. So here's a breakdown of the kind of information you can look up online:

Vital Records

Vital or civil registration records generally contain information like dates and places of birth, marriage and death, making them incredibly useful as a starting point for looking up information on specific people. So if you're writing a non-fiction account of a real person, or using the life story of a real person as character inspiration, this is a good place to start. For historical accounts – whether real or fictional – this is a useful way of tracing ancestry or genealogy, either for yourself or for the characters you're writing about, especially if they're of an ethnic lineage different to you.

Census Records

Census records provide a more detailed description of the lives of a person or a family – covering all the aforementioned information but also including accounts of relationships, occupations, and places of work, for example. Looking up census records is a useful way of fleshing out your knowledge for a nonfiction work, or your inspiration for writing fiction.

Immigration Records

This is especially handy for anyone looking to research a historical piece – you'll probably find yourself having to use immigration records to see how a family or a line developed and changed through moving to other countries.

Newspapers

Most libraries and archives contain reams of old newspapers that can help you chart the history of a particular place or the life of a particular person or group of people. Court cases, obituaries, and the general atmosphere of the time are all just small examples of things that can be found through newspapers – and provide a different kind of insight than bureaucratic documentation.

Cemetery Records

If you have difficulty accessing more standard public records, churches often keep detailed lists of local residents – including the information available in census records but also spouse names, children names, maiden names, and possibly birthplaces. Plus, the type and design of tombstone may point to any military, social or religious connections.

These days, records like civil and criminal court cases and other forms of information tend to vary in their availability – depending on the country (or state), such information can sometimes only be accessed by certain people (like employers) or for a fee, or upon request under certain legislation.

Essentially, if you make use of the available resources, work out what's available in person or what's available online, you should be able to access a whole wealth of information that proves handy for your writing.

Got any more tips for researching through online records? Talk about them in the comments!

Author Bio
Elise Lévêque shares her social media and general internet savvy by blogging for White Pages.