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Rule 1 to avoid bad storywriting11/28/2023 ![]() ![]() Would you include this information if it wasn’t true? The golden rule for including technical details is best put in the form of a question: What’s needed is a golden rule for when to include these kinds of details and when to leave them out. This said, not every real-world fact is detrimental to a work – in fact a few resonant examples can really emphasize the realism of a story. This knowledge helps to combat an author’s desire to paper over cracks in the story with facts. Technical details work when they feel true within the world of the story – it is their resonance within the created world that makes them effective, not their connection to the world the reader inhabits. Starkly put, if you feel real-world details are vital to making your plot believable then that plot needs further work. As I’ve written before, ‘realism’ in fiction is actually just consistency within the world of the story. The act of justifying a risky plot-point by cramming in real-world technical writing is therefore not just unhelpful but useless. Even if the story is based on real events, even if it’s nearly word for word something that happened, there’s no guarantee that readers will buy it. The offshoot of this logic is that real details, no matter how numerous they are, can never really save a story element which doesn’t ‘feel’ real. Many an author will have answered the criticism ‘Nobody talks like this’ with ‘ I talk like this!’ and the same point is raised in technical writing: in a work of fiction, the reader cares more about their perception of realism than actual reality. The key truth of technical writing is that what feels real differs vastly from what is real. This mindset can only be combatted by accepting a key truth of technical writing. Even when this is less pronounced, the suggestion still seems to be that they remove realistic details for no good reason. ![]() The suggestion that they pare down these technical details thus becomes the suggestion that they return to a state of anxiety and open up their plot to unfair criticism. After all, how can anyone call their fictional bank robbery ridiculous when a far more outlandish one really occurred? Sometimes writers who are worried about the realism of their plots feel they have found the answer in real-world minutiae. The details of this model wouldn’t just strike them as good background information, but as content which is both fascinating and backs their choices to the hilt.Ĭircumstances such as the one above occur much more frequently than many people realize, and so it’s common for authors to be protective over technical details in a way others can’t quite understand. Their decision to have a car backfire, for instance, may have been one of the more troubling parts of their narrative until they discovered a particular model notorious for such a problem. Why would they ever leave out something which is both interesting and relevant?įrom the outside, it can be easy to point at certain facts and figures as adding little to the story, but to authors these are often prized jewels. Having chosen to write about a subject, and having then discovered a bunch of fascinating facts that justify that choice, the writer is in a situation where they see themselves as simply writing interesting content. The pitfalls of technical writing are often right in an author’s blind spot. This is because this information is perceived as not ‘belonging’ to the author and so – fairly or not – it ends up feeling like a huge section of text has been copied and pasted into the story. Worse than this, many readers will feel irritated by the inclusion of conspicuous tracts of real-world information. Readers can identify real-world information faster than authors would like, and will quickly get the feeling that they’ve stumbled into a textbook. While all of these facts may be legitimately interesting, including too many of them means that a supporting detail starts to colonize the plot. A description of how a gun works could segue into a comparison to other weapons, the history of the gun manufacturer, or conflicts in which the gun has been used. The problem is that real-world information is functionally infinite. These details are the lifeblood of a believable world, but like any good thing they can cause trouble in excess. As an Amazon Affiliate we earn from qualifying purchases.Įvery good writer knows the pain of research, investing hour after hour in the search for relevant facts and figures that will give their story the heft of realism. This article may contain affiliate links and we may earn a small commission when you click on the links at no additional cost to you.
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