{"id":678,"date":"2008-10-29T22:47:33","date_gmt":"2008-10-29T22:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2008\/10\/29\/in_which_fact_infiltrates_fiction\/"},"modified":"2008-10-29T22:47:33","modified_gmt":"2008-10-29T22:47:33","slug":"in_which_fact_infiltrates_fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2008\/10\/29\/in_which_fact_infiltrates_fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"In which fact infiltrates fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a scientist, I am always thinking about the best way to discuss my work with the wider community. And as a novelist, I’ve experimented a lot with a related problem: how to transmit scientific ideas or atmosphere in a work of fiction without scaring or boring the audience. I was charged with discussing this very topic in a workshop<\/a> with my friend and fellow author Ann Lingard at the Manchester Literature Festival last Saturday. In the third of this series of blogs<\/a> during the run up to the publication of my first novel Experimental Heart<\/em>, I’d like to highlight some of the strategies we discussed for succeeding in this delicate balancing act.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"
\nTalking fiction<\/strong> The lablit session at the Manchester Lit Fest was good fun [photo credit: Jon Atkin\/MLF]<\/p>\n

\nFirst and foremost, it’s important to keep technical details as simple and as spare as possible. I talked last time<\/a> about “the Scotty effect”, and how jargon can enrich the atmosphere without impinging on pace, provided the author gives appropriate cues that it’s not meant to be comprehensible. What I’m talking about cutting down on now is necessary<\/em> information \u2013 things that the reader does<\/em> have to take on board. Many authors who know a lot about a topic \u2013 or have done hours of painstaking research \u2013 will be desperate to share it all with the reader. But they must resist. Counter-intuitively, it’s really hard to explain something simply until you thoroughly understand it. So you have to do your research, but then you must somehow distil it into simplicity. Or in other words, dumb it down.<\/p>\n

\nDetails can actually be glossed over quite easily in fiction. In Experimental Heart, my narrator often does this during the ‘beats’ between dialogue. This darkroom scene features a good example:<\/p>\n

\nSo while I extricated the first film and fed it to the machine, I gave her the abridged version of my major findings.<\/span>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n‘That’s quite good, isn’t it?’ she said, after digesting my explanation for a few moments. ‘I’m impressed. But how do you know that your protein is directly responsible? Maybe \u2013’ and here she unleashed a pointed, intricate salvo along the same uncompromising lines as her seminar question. Although I had done a large number of experiments, it was still formally possible that my hypothesis could be explained by a much less intriguing possibility. The only way to answer this criticism was with the experimental result that was about to come out of the developing machine \u2013 and I was amazed by her insightfulness all over again.<\/span>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nHere, all the boring stuff is off-camera, and the readers get the gist without needing to be told anything about signal transduction. Instead, they learn a little bit about the scientific method, and get an insight into the personality of the narrator’s love interest. At the same time, it will not alienate scientist readers, who will be able to work out exactly what the narrator is talking about from previous and subsequent context.<\/p>\n

\nI do think, by the way, that it’s important not to irritate readers who might know something about science. A good lab lit novel should take lessons from The Simpsons<\/em>, which does an amazing job of appealing both to children and adults simultaneously. The kids love the slapstick humor and mad capers, while the adults get a secret kick out of all the sexual innuendo and obscure pop culture references. Do you remember the episode in which Homer finds himself in a windswept row of aircraft hangers? Inserted into the plot is a two-second mini-scene that you might easily look away and miss. Homer passes a hangar door marked ’18’. When the door is opened, we see an alien pursuing a crazed-looking official who blurts out, Look out, he’s got his probe!<\/em> I am sure most children wouldn’t know what to make of it, or understand why their parents were collapsing in hilarity, but it’s so quick and zany that they take it in stride. The story is enriched without impinging on the basic plot. In a similar way, lab lit authors who play to both laypeople and specialists can create a two-level experience that will expand a work of fiction’s appeal.<\/p>\n

\nNext time, I’ll talk a bit about the beauty of scientific metaphor and simile, the loathsomeness of informative dialogue and excessive exposition, and some other handy strategies to get around them. In the meantime, don’t forget that you can pre-order my novel now!<\/p>\n

\nFrom the publisher<\/a><\/p>\n

\nAmazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\nAmazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a scientist, I am always thinking about the best way to discuss my work with the wider community. And as a novelist, I’ve experimented a lot with a related problem: how to transmit scientific ideas or atmosphere in a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}