Wayward Writer

When you are writing anything, if you want to include a nifty sounding plot device (like a Black Hole for example), please for the love of God, don’t just slap it in there and do with it what you will. It will detract from your story if you haven’t done at least a small amount of research on the subject. The smallest bit of research you can get away with in my opinion is Googling the subject. How hard is that to to do these days? The answer is, it’s not, but some people don’t even want to do that much. It’s called being lazy.

Why should you do this research? Because people who pick up your book and know anything about Black Holes will get distracted by the lack of research unless you’ve already provided a halfway plausible explanation for why it’s working like that (alternate reality or something). If you just plop it in there with no explanation as to why this is different or why it works this way in this particular world, then you’re going to lose readers, because as much as they may have enjoyed the book up to now, the fact that there’s this Black Hole that’s not operating like a Black Hole should with no explanation as to why, will sort of kill the story for them. They may or may not finish the book and if they do decide to finish it, part of the joy will have been taken out of it. If you are going to break the laws of physics or science in general, do the due diligence beforehand so that you know exactly what you’re breaking and why.

This doesn’t just apply to science either, it applies to all aspects of your writing. Research is critical to your story, you need to know the rules before you can break them. This is true for the writing craft itself, for characterization, for plot, for dialogue, for every bit of your story.

For example, a novel I just finished reading, Irish Linen by Andrew Greeley had a sentence at the beginning of the novel about the Queen of Sheba meeting King David. First, King David did not meet with the Queen of Sheba, it was his son, Solomon who met with her. Now, this was just used a quick example and it wasn’t critical for the plot, but it did slightly detract from the joy I got out of reading the novel.

But this is exactly what I mean, this was an easily verifiable fact, it would taken almost no time at all to be able to google this and make sure that this fact was correct. Now this was only a sentence and not really vital to the plot, but what if it had been?

So do a little bit of research for your story, take that extra bit of time, it’ll be worth it in the end.