Triaxiansilk.com

Okay, as background -- stuff you're figuring out for yourself -- I'm fine with it. But surely we've all read (or tried to read) fic that bogs down in the minutia of technology, or author's notes that go on for pages. And I'd say it's all valid research and good for you, but that should be almost invisible to the reader (as I know yours usually is). And likewise, if you're stalling writing an interesting story simply because you don't have the info or that the info is contradictory or possibly even forbids what you want to do with the plot, I'd tend to follow the same pattern the actual writers of ST did, and risk annoying geeks to get a reasonably entertaining story written.

Believe me, I've pored over all sorts of crap trying to figure out the timeline in Enterprise or various canon technologies. I've made charts and taken notes and researched everything from materials that can handle extreme cold and military provisioning scandals to the treatment of hypothermia or the biology of lactation or how to safely support a roof. But I hope I don't let it creep into the writing much. Quite often I've started out writing from Trip's point of view as an engineer and done all sorts of research to try to carry that off only to -- days later -- realize that even if it sounded plausible I really had to throw out all those pages because they were just plain bogging down the story.

Anyway, SF is a real place a number of your readers have been to, but I might not have even mentioned it if I wasn't beta'ing. I'll forgive a lot for a compelling story -- even a barber or a steward who shouldn't be there.

I agree that if you're really doing the "science" right it's effortless for the reader. Heinlein was a master of that. He had a knack for inserting little touches that seemed to be the tip of really big icebergs - and it's hard to know if there was really an iceberg below or if he was just BS'ing. Supposedly, for Rocket Ship Galileo, he did pages and pages of calculations that wound up just being one line in the book, like how long it would take to get from the Earth to the Moon. On the other hand, Charlie Stross has a bad habit of letting too much of the iceberg show, to the point where it's like you're getting beaten over the head with "look at how smart I am".

Maybe that's why I've read a lot of Heinlein and I have no idea who Charlie Stross is.

Stross makes me crosseyed. I'll take a good space opera any day over pages and pages and pages of overly detailed extrapolation about artificial intelligence and theoretical physics. I want stories about feeling individuals who interact believably with each other. IMO, the gadgets and esoteric theories should provide an interesting background to the real story, but they're not the story.

So Putaro, Alelou and Heinlein are corroborating what I have long believed (and attempt to practice myself), which is that there is value in fleshing out your story's characters and settings with lots of detail (such as ship's crew, work schedules, weapons capabilities, technological capabilities and limitations, star names and locations, political and strategic considerations, etc, etc...)

For me, the interesting thing is that even though you will only use 99.9 percent of that detail in the actual story, it tends to make the story feel more 'real.' It also makes the story, for me anyway, easier to write. (In so far as *any* writing I do can be called easy!)

I suppose the trap for the inexperienced writer is to use ALL the details in their story. ("I spent all that time fleshing this out, so I'm gonna use it, dammit!")

For me, a story has to be beautiful.

Transwarp wrote:I suppose the trap for the inexperienced writer is to use ALL the details in their story. ("I spent all that time fleshing this out, so I'm gonna use it, dammit!")

It's such a gut instinct. I have to spend the first fourth of my comp classes just trying to get students to let go of those precious first drafts. "Good" students can have the hardest time with that idea. Oddly enough it's often the students who hated writing who take off like rockets once they realize they can keep working on stuff to make it better.