Rewriting a scifi story to fit with actual science, should I do it as I go?

Whose laws of physics...?

You're writing this world. If you can make it internally consistent, that's what matters. It doesn't have to follow our physics, so long as everything hangs together.

If the plot needs a certain thing to happen, then a certain thing happens. The rest of the world just has to catch up behind it, and you backfill to keep consistency. That's it. If later in the book you find the physics needs to work a certain way for a plot event to happen, then you may need to go back and rewrite earlier parts to prepare for that. So long as you haven't contradicted yourself, it doesn't really matter when you do it. If you do find you've contradicted yourself, you've either got to change something, or you've got to figure out how both cases are possible.

Consider The Martian as a prime example. Andy Weir took extraordinary steps to make sure everything about Mark Watney's survival was physically possible, and Watney takes us through his reasoning for how he's going to make things work. (And several times, working out how he managed to screw up and nearly kill himself, so he doesn't make the same mistake twice.) It demonstrated genuine seat-of-the-pants engineering and positive thinking, not just some A-Team/MacGuyver "we just happen to have all this stuff to hand" nonsense. He's also careful to contrast Watney's own opinion of himself (the least intelligent, least useful member of the crew) with Mission Control's assessment of him (a brilliant generalist and an absolute master of lateral thinking), which is a great bit of character writing. As a book, it works on the hard-sci-fi level, on the "thriller" level, and on the characterisation level. It even translated fairly well into a film.

However the event which traps Watney on Mars (a monster windstorm) is utterly impossible in the thin atmosphere of Mars. Winds can be fast, but there simply aren't enough molecules to apply any real force to anything. Weir was completely aware of that fact, but he needed it for the plot, so it happened. And having created a Mars with wind and dust storms, Weir ensures Watney is constantly tackling wind-blown dust, and has to deal with a second dust storm later in the book. So the book is completely internally consistent, and there is no suspension of disbelief required (unless you're a real hardcore Mars fan, of course!) because everything hangs together within the "Watneyverse".

posted about 7 years ago

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Graham‭

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Fix it now vs fix it later is a perennial question in writing. Often the answers given are absolutist one way or the other, or come down to "whatever works for you". But I would suggest a different approach, one which divides changes into structural and cosmetic.

If you were building a house and you discovered a crack in the foundation or a flaw in the wiring or the plumbing or a mistake in the interpretation of the blueprints, you would not go ahead with the drywall and plan to fix those faults later. They are all structural faults and to carry on without fixing them will be to make the cost of fixing them later much much greater.

On the other hand, if you find a crack in a pane of glass, or one of the appliances is delivered in the wrong colour, or one of the painters missed a spot, you would not call a halt to all construction activity while you waited for those issued to be fixed. They are cosmetic changes and a delay in fixing them will not affect the structure of the house overall, nor will fixing them later be significantly more expensive than fixing them now.

For a story to work, you have to get the structure right. If you realize that the structure is wrong, there is no point in continuing to build. You should fix the structure first before you continue.

If you are a beginning writer it is certain, and if you are experienced, still likely, that the cosmetic features of your story will not be great at the end of the first draft. You will have a lot of work to do to get the cosmetic aspects of your story right. But you probably should not stop to fix the cosmetic issues in chapter 1 before you move on to chapter 2. This is for two main reasons:

1. You don't yet know if the structure of your story is sound. Until you are sure of that, you may just be taping and mudding walls that you are going to have to tear down anyway.

2. Getting the structure right is probably served by working steadily through the arc of your story. That does not necessarily mean outlining the plot. Sometimes the arc is not in the plot but in the emotional or moral progress of the character which can only be worked out with significant narrative detail. But it does mean that you can press on with the main arc and leave any caulking and touch-up painting until later.

To apply these principles to your situation, you should ask yourself, is getting the science right a structural or cosmetic issue? If the story arc turns on some scientific detail that you decide you need to change, that might derail the plot going forward, requiring a complete rewrite. In that case, you would be well advised to fix it now. If the details are cosmetic, though, a kind of aesthetic treat or a form of reassurance or tribal signalling to your intended readership, you can safely leave them to afterwards and might be better off to continue with the development of the main story arc.

posted about 7 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

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