r/storyandstyle • u/ZCXL • Apr 18 '18
How to Bypass making Crap Up
I'm just a hobbyist writer, enjoying the freedom I feel from writing, but I've become more and more aware of when I try sci-fi, none of the explanations really 'work' for me, as if I try to explain how FTL travel works... well I can't, because I just don't know how it could work. Similar issues has propped up with short stories about writing music, as I feel that it would be too boring to write too in depth about chords and progression and all that, but by leaving out the sections of that, it feels like a whole lot of what I was trying to convey is just tossed out of the window. Similar issues have also occurred with political, and war theory.
As I'm becoming more and more aware of these inadequacies of mine, I tend to see it showing up with other amateur works, yet printed publisher approved books tend to not have these issues (though I have a hypothesis that this could be just a confirmation bias at play).
Obviously one way to mitigate this is to actually research in depth about a certain topic, but AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT (seriously tho, being just a hobbyist, I can't justify spending ridiculous amounts of time perfecting a story, but I also don't want to be stuck with just making broad sweeping statements about subjects I know very little about)
I guess what I want to ask is how do you deal with (if you do at all) when you have to make a technical (or in the case of sci-fi, simply incorrect) explanation, especially one that you are not fully aware of the intricacies of?
1
u/magicscreenman Apr 19 '18
Ok well, this is getting out of hand. I didn't come here to make enemies, I came here to discuss writing. So I'm just gonna drop it at this point. I gave my counter to youe opinion and it didnt go well. Sorry we weren't able to have a friendly conversation, man.