Research is admittedly one of the suck parts about writing, but... well, it also is necessary. There's a few different ways to research any given topic, but the main two are through actual observation - which can be awkward, some ponies really don't like when you stare at them all day while jotting down notes about them and may call the police on you... not... not that that's ever happened to me or anything... - and through hard research. You know, textbooks, studies, papers, all that stuff.
Yes, it is possible to pretty much make up whatever the hell you want as you go, and get away with most of it. And yes, even if you research every last little detail, someone out there is going to scoff 'no, you're wrong, that's not what we do here at all.' The last, of course, also depends on the field you're researching. Coffee donut guy is going to be a little less defensive about defending the sanctity of his institution than brainshrink guy or lawyer guy or Horses of Heaven forbid priest guy.
Once while spying on a caretaker for the Canterlot cemetery, I saw the guy pop up a nearby loose tombstone and use that to hold the gates open while moving some gardening equipment inside. He did that pretty regularly, even around the other employees, none of whom really seemed to take an issue with it. But see, no one's going to tell you that they're using old Mr. Fizzle's grave marker to hold a door open because it's nice and loose anyway.
Okay, not a perfect example. More just a quirk. But you get the idea, yeah? Some stuff you really can just make up and toss out. And of course, depending on what kind of story you're writing, other stuff is possible to fiddle with too. Physics don't always have to be perfect, you can write about miraculous survivals, you can fudge the facts about myth and monster. As a matter of fact, the last is often actually something important to remember: if you're writing a story about say... the Nightmares of Melinda the Sky Witch, then you probably want to fudge some of the facts or use a different interpretation for phrases like "daggers of the holly branch" than simple thorns: maybe they can only be killed by wooden stakes or something, I dunno. It all depends on the kind of story you're writing.
What I'm saying is this. Be true to your story, but if that means you have to concoct some weird quibble or change the research text a little... do so. Most of the time, that's the better idea to do than to reconstruct a story completely around one element, because chances are someone's going to complain anyway about it. Because I mean, I myself can point out about three different interpretations of what that line up there about Melinda's Nightmares actually refer to, and one of them doesn't even include holly, wood, branches, or weapons of any sort, but a really crazy complex metaphor that if it wasn't suggested by some old literary genius would have been completely discarded as nonsense.
But I am also saying research. Even if you do research and then decide to never use any of that stuff in your story, just having done it can help lend a sense of authority to your writing, and gives you something to fall back on and fill in any gaps. Like how sometimes emotions bleed through in writing, you can get a sense of just how much someone actually knows what they're talking about as well, usually hidden in the more-subtle details... although of course, yes, if you went and made Melinda's Nightmares into say... Hellhounds, you better have a damn good reason to and a way to pull it off.
So uh... research. Even if you aren't going to use any of it, get into the habit of researching. And remember that research is a tool to help you, not constrain you or force you to follow this specific, exact premise. It's a tool to help improve the quality and the strength of your writing, but you should always bear in mind it's fine to bend and twist things to your specific needs for the story. Because ponies tend to do whatever they want anyway, and there's a hundred odd versions of every popular myth out there, too.
And one day we'll all be the crazy legends no one knows the real story behind, and ponies'll be writing all about our society and all the crazy things we've seen. That'd be funny, huh? Stories about Equestria. I wonder what they'll end up saying about Celestia and Luna.
Luna says I have to write a book now and bury it somewhere for future archaeologists to find. And it has to be full of lies and stupidity. This is a great example of why I say research is great and should be done but also handled with caution. After all, you never know: we might all be the victims of some grand literary prank. Who knows, maybe in the future they'll think we all solve our problems by singing and dancing around together and that we were always happy all the time.
~Scrivener Blooms
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