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 with my friend and fellow author Ann Lingard at the Manchester Literature Festival last Saturday. In the third of this series of blogs during the run up to the publication of my first novel Experimental Heart, I’d like to highlight some of the strategies we discussed for succeeding in this delicate balancing act.
Talking fiction The lablit session at the Manchester Lit Fest was good fun [photo credit: Jon Atkin/MLF]
First and foremost, it’s important to keep technical details as simple and as spare as possible. I talked last time 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 information – things that the reader does have to take on board. Many authors who know a lot about a topic – or have done hours of painstaking research – 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.
Details 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:
So while I extricated the first film and fed it to the machine, I gave her the abridged version of my major findings.
‘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 –’ 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 – and I was amazed by her insightfulness all over again.
Here, 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.
I 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, 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! 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.
Next 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!
takes notes
I’m sure you’ve got a thing or two to teach me.
A writer’s conference among cheerful people and not embittered wannabes? And no fistfights (at least on camera)? How refreshing.
I think you’re burrowing down to the key lab lit challenges nicely. And your sample paragraph made me wonder what happens next – a nice trick for a scene out of context.
this is related to the ‘info-dump’ trap that it looks like you’re going to talk about next time (and I am very looking forward to that). It’s a trap I have to work hard to avoid; but I keep muttering ‘show not tell’ to myself and that seems to help.
If I were smarter/at home now, I’d have written this comment as an example of what I mean.
Yeah, so anyway—I’m a great fan of drip-feeding details in passing. It’s a good trick if you can pull it off.
p{font-size:70%}. I don’t have much to say, really.
p{font-size:90%; color:rgb(158,1,28)}. (sorry, I was being asked about Textile formatting)
heh, you too, Bob?
Bob, Richard helped me with the block quote in the end, but my undying gratitude goes to whichever swain can teach me how to achieve the same effect with smaller between-line spaces, and fully justified on both sides!
(I was thinking that Nature Network needs to expand it’s very limited format instruction page – muster pester someone about that.)
Yes, James, it was a very good-natured group with few preconceived notions, which was refreshing. Although I think that was snapped just after I’d entertained them with a physical pantomime of the Drosophila male courtship dance, complete with wing vibration.
And it still needs to allow comment editing, so I can remove unwanted apostrophes before the jackals arrive to feed on my carcass.
HAHAHAH.
Ahem.
The sooner NN moves over to REAL HTML the sooner we can usher in a new world order of peace and harmony.
You listening, M@??
Whereas I agree with every point, Jenny, your novel does turn on a scientific puzzle that the reader should really be able to follow to get the full wide-screen experience (I can say that because I’ve read it … but hey, I’m telling you the plot).
In the meantime I offer this useful resource which lists many potential traps that lie just beneath the fallen leaves [canny seasonal reference – ed] to snare the writer. It’s designed with SF readers in mind but can apply almost as well to any writer who needs to convey eldritchly occult arcana without scaring the reader.
Haha. We (don’t) do it just to spite you.
That last comment was a reply to Richard, BTW. (Damn, I wish I could edit comments.)
snerk
Whereas I agree with every point, Jenny, your novel does turn on a scientific puzzle that the reader should really be able to follow to get the full wide-screen experience
I agree, Henry. So my challenge with Ex Heart, which really does contain a rather complicated scientific story, was to bring the readers along without losing them. Earlier versions were much more complicated, so I worked with my readers to slough away as much as I could. You are right that what remains is still pretty scientific. My book is definitely what I call ‘hard-core’ lab lit, as opposed to ‘lab lit lite’. (My second novel is slightly less hard-core, but still contains a scientific plot complication that needs to be explicable.)
In your second novel, the kit is a character herself. I was quite upset when [SPOILER REDACTED].
I always wonder if other scientists anthropomorphicize their equipment — I know I do. I wanted to write a story that encapsulated how it was to feel like your machine is actually an ally in your research.
as opposed to an enemy, as most of mine seem to be?
bastards.
They can smell fear.
‘Fear’?
Mwah hah hah.
I’m the one with the opposable thumb.
And an axe.
Henry, I’ve just taken a look at the handy guide you linked to, above. Brilliant! My favorite:
#
Roget’s Disease
The ludicrous overuse of far-fetched adjectives, piled into a festering, fungal, tenebrous, troglodytic, ichorous, leprous, synonymic heap. (Attr. John W. Campbell)
Reminds me of a certain person’s tags…
Oooh, this one is something for n00bs to remember too:
_*Tom Swifty*
An unseemly compulsion to follow the word “said” with a colorful adverb, as in “’We’d better hurry,’ Tom said swiftly.” This was a standard mannerism of the old Tom Swift adventure dime-novels. Good dialogue can stand on its own without a clutter of adverbial props._
…wish I could edit comments…
Jenny has spoiled us with the Lablit fora, Ian.
Adverbs are evil! Seriously, heinously, sinisterly evil.
Another noob error is to use verbs other than ‘said’ in dialogue. It is amazing how invisible ‘said’ is, and how conspicuous anything else, unless used sparingly. Dan Brown always violates that one.
And yet that’s what children get taught to use (along with adjectives) at school. I never heard the concept of SNT named until I was 19.
Do you think it’s a plot to stifle budding authors?
OK, adverbs are not that bad. But they need to be used sparingly, and preferably not in dialogue beats. Have your character bang his fist on the table or raise his voice or go slightly red in the face instead of saying something ‘angrily’.
But you know all this.
I do, but Rachel doesn’t, which is a shame. They get told to use adverbs and adjectives, and get into trouble when they don’t (at school).
I must ask her how her novel is coming on.
Is she really?
Apparently so. I keep seeing her tapping away at something.
Marvellous(ly)! Of course, the other side to this lexicographical coin is that folks don;t use adverbs at all. Next time I hear “Do it quick,” (or any other adjective-where-adverb-should-be) I shall scream a little bit…and like(ly) stamp my foot
Yes, that’s a Southern thing, isn’t it? I like that accent and dialect in some ways, but I find it disconcerting when it (for example) comes out of the mouth of a President.
Yes, that’s a Southern thing
I read that and thought ‘Blot?’
“I read that and thought ‘Blot?’”
So did I.
Hopeless geeks. Really, I despair sometimes.
shuffles feet
Sorry Jenny
Excuse me madam, but does this bus go to the station?
I have seen fact meeting fiction in a lot of books lately. Take for example RESONANCE by A.J. Scudiere.
This work of fiction blends scientific fact with a lot of hypothesis in a slightly long, but riveting plot which provides a lot of food for thought. A geologist discovers that there are places on earth where the shift is already occurring. At the same time, two doctors find themselves in the middle of a deadly epidemic, and another discovers mutated frogs and other animals behaving badly. The story involves their interaction when their areas of research converge, and the surprising way that the shift affects each one, and also the rest of the population.
So much of this book was factual, that I didn’t know where the reality ended and the fiction began.