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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8026
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

If you're not knowledgeable in the field, then it is unlikely that anything you write will be convincing to someone who is. But as several have said, if you're writing a novel, then by definition it's a made up story and not real life. If you're writing a science fiction novel, then there is going to be made up science.

I'm a computer guy by profession. I routinely get a laugh out of depictions of computers in fiction. From small details to basic concepts, they often get it completely wrong. Like I saw a cop show once where the police are tracking down the computer used to commit the crime, and so they're all standing around watching a computer monitor, and then it finds the criminal's computer, and it flashes up an IP address of "510.1.698.42". Well, that's impossible, because each of the pieces of an IP address is a number between 0 and 255 -- you can't have "510" or "698". I found it quite funny, and apparently I wasn't the only one to think so, because the way I can tell you the exact number is because some other computer geek thought it was funny too and got a screen shot of that scene and circulated it around the Internet. But I'm guessing that if you're not a computer geek and I tell you this, your reaction is, "So what?" I'm sure most non-geeks didn't notice anything wrong, and even if it's explained to them why it's impossible, they shrug it off as trivial.

Or on a totally different note, have you ever seen the movie "Twelve Angry Men"? It's a classic movie about a jury deciding a murder case. Except if a jury really did what the jurors in that movie did and the judge found out about it, the judge would declare a mistrial. Like, a key point in the prosecution case that the knife used to commit the murder was very unusual, and witnesses saw the defendant with such a knife, and it was just about impossible for the defendant to just by chance have a knife so similar to the murder weapon. And so in the jury room one of the jurors produces an almost identical knife and dramatically stabs it into the table, explaining that he bought it at a pawn shop that day. His point being that he was easily able to find a similar knife on a day's notice. Well that's great, except ... jurors are not allowed to introduce their own evidence. They're supposed to only consider the evidence presented during the trial. The reasoning for this is that if evidence is presented in the jury room, the other side in the case has no opportunity to respond to it and perhaps present a rebuttal.

My point with these examples is: Someone who spends every day working in some field will likely find many errors in a work of fiction. If they're small details, he'll probably laugh it off and move on with the story. Even if they're big, he might just accept it for the sake of the story. I've enjoyed stories that prominently feature computers that are totally absurd from any serious technical point of view. But I generally enjoy stories more that sound at least moderately plausible.

So my point -- and I do have a point -- is: Don't agonize over details. It is unlikely that you will ever get them all exactly right. Try to get the general tone right. If it's a science fiction reader, any fair reader is going to accept some made-up science as the basic premise of the story. There are plenty of good scientific reasons to doubt that faster-than-light travel or time travel are possible, but plenty of very serious scientists enjoy such stories anyway. It's routinely accepted that if you just throw in some pseudo-scientific jargon that the readers will buy the premise. But keep the tone as close to reality as possible. Like -- to take a deliberately extreme example -- I'd guess most dream research is done at universities. At least, that would be a plausible setting. If you say that your dream researchers work in the back of a candy store, that would be so far out that it would be jarring. Less absurd, if you said that your dream researchers work at MIT, and in fact there has never been any dream research done at MIT (I have no idea if there has or not, I'm just making this up for an example), most readers would have no idea and think nothing of it, but an expert in the field might say, "What? They don't do dream research! What are you talking about?"

Getting a few details right can add color. If you do even a little research you should be able to pick up some tidbits that you can throw in, like a casual reference to some experiment considered famous and important in the field, the right names for some of the equipment used, etc. Again, tone is most important. If in a doctor story the diagnostician mentions testing the patient with "an EKG and a BRM", even though I just made up the acronym "BRM", I think it would go past most readers as sounding plausible, and most real doctors would probably brush it off as "okay, he's making up some new machine because he needs it for his story". But if the diagnostician said the patient should be tested with "an EKG and that big blue machine with the wire thingees", well that's just not how doctors talk. Maybe if you had presented the doctor as routinely using flippant language you could get away with this, but it would be tough to pull off: real doctors would say, Yes, very amusing, but really now, isn't such language likely to result in the tech using the WRONG "big blue machine with wire thingees", and then what's he going to say? Sorry, I was just kidding around?

Sorry for the long answer. I know I rambled.

Original score: 3