3. Research! And beware of cardboard boxes.

IMPORTANT!  Be dead accurate when you write about real people and events. Don't make stuff up! If you invent facts or copy things that other people have made up, teachers will give you bad marks and critics will sneer at you. 

For my 3 non fiction books :

• Hidden Treasure  
• Hidden Depths    
• Spy, Spy Again   

I carefully researched primary sources and books written by respected experts and historians. (A primary source is a document or an account written during the time that you are studying. Pictures and photographs of that time are also primary sources.) Then I photocopied all the research and slotted them into files in a cardboard box, which I stored under my art desk. 

WARNING! If you have a rotten cat like I do, beware! My cat shredded chapter three's research for Spy, Spy Again. (He does a similar trick with rolls of toilet paper.) But it could have been much worse. A former cat (he'd dead now- no I didn't kill him, he died of old age) thought that a box of my beautiful watercolour art was a kitty toilet.