How long would it take for a typical college student to collect enough research on a specific topic to become suspicious of someone, something or a group of people?
I don't know if it would be the amount specifically as having the one piece of evidence given at the right time that would trigger suspicion in someone. Plus, it depends on the character if they're quick to jump to conclusions, or they want to believe somethings wrong it would be different for someone that's more levelheaded, hard to convince or they want to believe everything is okay with said group. The right contacts would also help speed things up.
The character that i'm working on has suspicions of the group of people already which sparked the reason for her to research into it. So far i have gotten to where she is looking through the family history and things and I don't know if i should carry on with the research part or if she should come to a conclusion that there is something wrong with the group or not, especially as she has only just started researching about them. Also she is a rather level headed character who prefers not to jump to conclusions.
Well part of your answer is also going to depend on how easily convinced your character is. That's going to determine exactly how much evidence they are going to need to know for sure if they have a warranted suspicion or not.
In that case I wouldn't think that's enough to make your character have suspicions, unless she has a very good reason to believe something's wrong with those people in the first place. As for how long it has to take then: depending on how good your character is at researching someone/something it could be days, weeks or months, but I'd say social network sites nowadays make it easy to find out (almost) everything about someone in a relatively short time.
Thanks to everyone for helping me with this issue. I think im going to have her attempts at finding something to back up her current suspicions fail however something happens that increases her suspicions making her research into the group again this time more thorough and precise. I might include the fact that through a social network site (Facebook or Twitter or something). She finds that her suspicions were true or something along the lines of that. Once again, thanks so much for the help with this it really did help.
anything cam make your mc suspicious - she already is if she's investigating her family so any little thing could have triggered that in a nano second. So what was your question?
You character can have a hypotheses immediately, which is an assumption that you mentioned. Then she needs to prove it or disprove it, which can take a long time, or not, depending on the availability of evidence and whether the results can be reproduced.
I think it's much more important for the reader to be suspicious. In this case there is no absolute answer, and the MC can develop her suspicions at the same rate as the reader. However you develop the pacing in other words.
Depends on the topic, and even more so on the character herself. Some people become suspicious very easily, and for some it takes a lot of evidence to generate that kind of suspicion. I think you can approach it in any way that makes sense, so long as it seems consistent with the character (or is explained, if it is inconsistent).
Some people are suspicious without any information at all. Some others will believe anything they feel comfortable with, and reject any information that would disturb their complacence. That defines the lower and upper range of your answer, and probably doesn't offer any useful bounds.
I suppose we have to ask, "is the character a suspicious person?" Then figure out how long a suspicious person would take to get suspicious. I think historically the truther movement rose up within the first year after 9/11, and that was while the reports were being written. What we can take from that is that suspicion isn't necessarily tied to evidence.
there are way too many variables for there to be a logical single answer to your question... you can make it take as long as you want it to, in order to fit your story/plot, simply by having your character do whatever you want her to do in order to take the amount of time to come to her conclusion that will work best...
It's far more productive for the author to ask himself what specific facts in the research raised yhe character's suspicions, and in conjunction with what personal observations.
You'd need to ask yourself questions like how clever / suspicious is the MC what have they seen / heard that's made them suspicious and want to carry out the reaseach what information do they have access to in order to carry out their research are there other things in their life that's going to distract the MC and keep them from the research This isn't an exhaustive list, just prompts to get you thinking. And there aren't any right or wrong answers, it's entirely what you want it to be
Perhaps the question is: What might your MC find while researching that would give them a reason to be suspicious? Generally I'd answer that inconsistent data would do that. How long it would take to find inconsistent data really depends on how vigilant the MC is at researching. The fact that they are a typical college student seems to be superfluous to the question.
Are you looking at the idea of arousing suspicion or confirming it? Both can happen in an instant, if the 'right' piece of information emerges. It doesn't have to be a long, slow process. A person can be happily researching some ordinary subject, when a single piece of information appears that makes the researcher go 'whoa...what's this?' I take it, because this is a writers' forum, you're wondering how long you should draw this process out for the reader? I'd say don't draw it out at all, unless you want to deliberately lead the reader into a sense of false security (which also has its uses.) Instead, as a writer, I would come up with a single 'fact' that doesn't fit, and go from there.
