What do You Know: Researching Your Science Fiction Story
This is part 2 of a two part article.
Hopefully, you have had a chance to research your science fiction story. If so, you probably found that the task was time consuming. You might be wondering if it's really worth it to spend all this time researching your story. Learn why research is necessary and how you can make the most of it.
Why Research?
Why spend all this time reseraching minor details? Because readers will be upset with any inaccuracies. With science fiction, it's important to make sure that your story is credible. The science fiction community can be unforgiving towards writers who blatantly ignore scientific facts. Research will not only make your story credible, it will make it powerful.
In science fiction, of course, stories depart from known facts. Without a writer's imaginative additions a science fiction story would simply be realistic fiction. However, it's important to keep in mind that science fiction stories must have some basis in fact. The imagined futures in these stories should be rooted in known science. That isn't to say, that you can't write a story that is completely the product of your imagination, but in this case what you have written would most likely be a fantasy story, not science fiction.
As you are probably aware, science fiction comes in different varieties. Hard SF is more concerned with the science behind the story. Soft SF places more of an emphasis on the sociological ramifications of scientific developments. No matter what sort of story you write you want to do your research. Naturally, if the story is centrally based on science, research is key.
Writer's Block Remedies
Research has an added side product that makes its time consuming nature not so bad. Research almost inevitably leads to new story ideas.
It's difficult to browse through one of those scientific websites without becoming side-tracked on another story. Browsing through websites like Nature and Discover are a great way to pick up ideas for future stories. You will be surprised how many ideas you can find in a single visit to one of these websites.
The question of originality comes up when one considers using such websites for gathering ideas. After all, these websites receive many visitors each day including quite a few writers, but keep in mind, that we all see the world in different ways. The article that inspires you to write one story will inspire another writer to write a completely different story.
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