Comments on: Don’t Bury Your Story in Science and Realism

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 23:29:37 +0000

Due to having a very keen interest in science, I fall prey to this a lot. It’s a real struggle telling myself to follow the MST3K Mantra ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MST3KMantra ), even when I’m writing MY OWN SHOW. I’m really tempted a lot of the time to put a justification in as to why xyz odd phenomenon is happening, when really about 70% of what’s said should really say ‘just try not to think about it too much’, hence the MST3K Mantra link.

Though having said that, as much as possible there should be an adequate explanation for what’s going on, even if the explanating is ‘a wizard did it’. It doesn’t matter if the reason is never explained in the work, just make sure you store the information in the back of your mind. This will be especially useful if you gather a cult following and need to answer the pedantic questions of irritating fans.

By: Marissa

Marissa — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:20:45 +0000

Well, in a fantasy world, if you have a certain kind of magic and have to go about explaining every little fact about that magic, that would be like the ’science of realism’ of that world. The same applies with telling all the mythology about that world’s gods, for example.

By: David

David — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:05:58 +0000

going on the title of this threid Don’t Bury Your Story in Science and Realism is the oppistot dont true as well? dont bury your story in fantasy and folklore?

or is that ok?

By: David

David — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:47:29 +0000

i see lol

By: B. Mac

B. Mac — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:09:24 +0000

Perfect after I edited it! Haha.

By: David

David — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:03:28 +0000

Be honest. The perfect grammar should have been a dead giveaway that it wasn’t me.

By: B. Mac

B. Mac — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:32:34 +0000

Ah, ok. I’ve changed his name to David 2 to prevent confusion.

By: David

David — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:16:24 +0000

Hey, B. Mac. That cell thing wasn’t me. This is my first post on the site today… there’s an impostor out there.

By: Joel Wyatt

Joel Wyatt — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:32:28 +0000

B. – mine’s sort of like that, but it involves an expirement that threw the entire UNIVERSE off it’s cosmic axis, making the very laws of physics maleable, kicking off the “golden age”.

Or something.

And – uh – “spoiler alert!”, I guess, for anyone who happens to find their way there…

By: The ReTARDISed Whovian

The ReTARDISed Whovian — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:21:25 +0000

“If cells can only function at full size, how are midgets and dwarves still alive….yeah, explain that”.

The size of the person doesn’t really affect the cells. If someone was conceived by two regular sized humans, they have the same sized cells as their parents. Even if they had really short parents, they themselves would have gained their cells from their parents and so would have normal sized cells, which they would then pass to their offspring. However, with a dwarf or regular sized human, putting them in a shrinking machine would reduce their overall size by a tenth or whatever, also reducing the size of their cells and effectively destroying their body.

…If I thought like that all the time, maybe I wouldn’t fail biology. Haha.

By: B. Mac

B. Mac — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:53:06 +0000

“If cells can only function at full size, how are midgets and dwarves still alive? yeah, explain that.”

Umm, maybe they have fewer cells?

By: B. Mac

B. Mac — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:52:03 +0000

Hmm. I once collaborated on a superhero project that deliberately made the world's science a bit wacky. Back when the US was conducting the Manhattan Project, one of my scientifically-minded colleagues mentioned that there was some concern that the first nuclear test would ruin the ozone layer. So we did a world where solar radiation was much more likely to cause mutations because the ozone layer had been badly compromised by the atomic test at Los Alamos.

By: David 2

David 2 — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:49:26 +0000

If cells can only function at full size, how are midgets and dwarves still alive? Yeah, explain that.

By: Joel Wyatt

Joel Wyatt — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:42:32 +0000

HA!

- I like that; playing with the fact that probably ALL of your readers are going to come to your story with an understanding of what a superhero origin is, and just tossing the explaination out there. (I can imagine a golden / silver-age “fabulous first ish” for each of those characters, myself!)

I do a lot of that, too. In my story, there are arbitrary “classic” type origins for the various heroes, mentioned in off-hand remarks (radiation, magic, cybernetics, etc.) but there’s an over-arching, completely deus ex machina explaination as to why those things “work” at all. (i.e. why exposure to radiation doesn’t just give some people cancer). I’m playing with the criticism about how the physics in superhero universes are so unrealistic…

By: B. Mac

B. Mac — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:03:53 +0000

It's important to tailor it to your audience. For example, if you're doing hard science fiction, your readers will want a lot of scientific explanation. Mainstream superhero readers, not so much. Something like "genetic engineering did it" or "cybernetics did it" is often sufficient, like "radioactivity did it" was sufficient in the 1960s.
It's particularly important to cut back on scientific background when you have a lot of characters. For example, in the scene where our main character is introduced to a team of superheroes, we condensed the origin stories into single sentences.