From Research to Story

Question: How do you approach scientific concepts without allowing technical details to overwhelm the narrative?

 It's very difficult. You want to put enough detail in that it interests the reader but not so much that it overwhelms said reader. To put it another way, too much detail is a story killer!

 After all, we writers sometimes spend hours and hours researching information and we want to share it with our readers. But most of the time it only takes a sentence or two to enlighten the reader. And somes, just a few short words. And sometimes just a single word.

 A famous and very popular 20th Century writer once said: "You don't have to spend sentences and paragraphs describing a tree, because even a blind person knows what a tree is."

 Look at some of our favorite movies. We don't need to know how an energy cannon aboard the Death Star in Star Wars blows up a whole planet. We don't need to know how a photon torpedo or a bit of antimatter kills monsters and Klingons.

  Yes, I know the difference between videos and books. But the important thing is leaving room for the human imagination to work. If we explain everything, what is there left for the redear to do?

  We do need to be careful to give the reader enough information to excite their imagination, but not too much to bore him. Or her.

  There are ways to inform readers without overwhelming them. For instance, they could be arguing about a situation, or frightened about it. "Are you sure that bomb's going to kill Godzilla?" "It should, it's big enough to blow up half of Asia!"

  Personally, right now I'm writing a novel with a lot of science information, struggling it into where it needs to go. I'm 80,000 words behind, essinsually nine months late. Getting the story in the right place is not always easy. 

Question: Have you ever found a scientific theory that changes the direction of a story?

  NO. The important word to know about Science Fiction is the word FICTION. It's not a reality, but an adventure.

  Decades before humanity thought about landing on the moon, H. G. Wells wrote a novel about it.

  Nobody seriously thought about going to the moon until after World War Two. 

  Five hundred years after Buck Rogers fell into suspended  animation in a cave in 1929, he walked out of a cave into the future.

  IN 1944, the writer and creator of Buck Rogers in the 25ty Century comic strip was approached by the FBI for writing about Atomic Warfare. 

Science Fiction is great entertainment, probably the best of all. Certainly, to me, the best fun.

In 1962, when I was seven years old, I dreamt about thousands and thousands of flying saucers coming over the mountains far to the west. They were coming down and harvesting people in their metallic bellies.

  I dreamt that I ran outside, grabbed a house, twisted the faucet on and began housing them down (yes, just like the movie SIGNS decades later, until one alien refused to die. He said I was going to die and I told him that he didn't die, I'd wake. He laughed even harder, And I woke up.

So much for evil aliens in my dreams.