how do you manage research for your science fiction novel?

March 27, 2022 8:49 AM

I'm looking for advice, tips, and warnings on how to gather research for writing science fiction without getting overwhelmed: How do you organize your information? How do you know when to stop researching? And when to start writing?

I'm burning out on writing my current genre, and want to return to my old favorite, science fiction. But in the past, when I've tried to write anything science-related, I've gone through a packrat phase where I buy a bunch of books and download a bunch of articles, so much that I end up feeling completely overwhelmed and unable to move further. World-building turns into an absolute chore as I plague myself with questions that require even more research, out of fear that if I get something wrong, leave something out, the story will fail.

How does a working science-fiction writer handle all that, and manage to be productive? How do you know when you've researched enough? How do you know when you've researched too little? (Is that even the right set of questions? Is research something you do a lot of before writing your books? Do you care about getting everything horribly wrong?)

posted by mittens to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

This is going to be very different for different writers. I write science fiction, but not hard science fiction, so I'm not sure whether my approach will be helpful.

Basically, my approach to world building is that it's always better to suggest and evoke, than to describe.
I do a lot of research that doesn't end up in the book, but that's inevitable. It's very like knowing things about a character that never gets referred to directly, but still influences their decisions.

I spend a lot of time researching things that interest me (alternate number systems! Can sea spunges be used to manufacture rocket fuel? Family structure of wasps. Inuit folk tales.)
Each of these tend to send me on a journey of loosely connected facts. I enjoy the process because I don't feel like I have to master every subject in order to allude to it. And I always have the human story percolating in the background, reminding myself why I care a this particular set of facts.

I always keep the human, character driven story as my through line, check back to it every now and then to see how a random fact I'm excited about, could be built into the story, or maybe change it, inspire new ideas.

While I'm working out the basic story line,
I have a separate document called "questions" on which I jot down any things I can't solve with more than a moment's thought.
That way I don't get derailed by the sudden realisation that I don't know how x works, or whether y is possible.
I just write down "why doesn't he noticed there is a leak in the suit" or "would someone exposed to vacuum feel cold?" and move on to the next point in the story, instead of letting the question derail or discourage me.

I only research things for as long as they interest me and keep sparking story ideas. I don't need to master the facts. I also don't really care that much about strict accuracy.
In reality it takes a very long time to put on a space suit, and that can be a great story point to build tension and frustration. But it might constrain my story so much that it becomes tedious. I write to tell a story, not to create an instruction manual.

Once I've got a feel for what's going to happen in the story, and I've got most of the story beats worked out, I start writing it.

The bottom line is for me to stay excited and interested in the story. I allow myself quite a lot of latitude to research stuff that's not directly related to the story, as long as it's feeding my enthusiasm.
I hope that helps. If you feel discouraged, it's because it's bad advice *for you*. Trust yourself. Have fun. Good luck!
posted by Zumbador at 10:15 AM on March 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

As a science-fiction reader, I hope you have fun creating these spaces. I figure that a setting too alien (or technical or futuristic) can get in the way of the characters and drama.

Serve the story with enough of the setting that allows me to escape and return changed by the experience -- but not too much that makes it hard to put myself in the shoes of your characters.

I call this tension 'the Terry problem' where Terry Pratchett's Discworld was so effused with magic that so many things could happen, while the city books have to reinvent contemporary technologies and level up the medieval+magic setting in order to carry on the parody of our world today.

Maybe you need a deep cosmos in your head for the arc of the story, but you can fill in any lack of clarity with a macguffin. Remember to set up expectations, subvert those expectations and suprise your readers.
posted by k3ninho at 10:34 AM on March 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

I know (and love) that phase, in which you can go down a rabbit hole of studying a new topic and call it "research," but I think you're right to recognize that you can over-indulge to the point where you lose touch with the joy of telling a story.

No one would ever call one of my stories "hard SF," in part because I tend to fuzz out all but essential world details that directly impact the story. We spend our lives surrounded by (and utilizing) systems we don't fully understand, from your phone in your hand to your country's system of government. You don't need exhaustive knowledge of something to make it feel authentic in fiction. Often, it's a single, inconspicuous detail that sells it to a reader.

My other approach is to make certain that my worldbuilding serves the purpose of the story, and not the other way around. I've written a couple time travel stories that explore themes of grief. Each had a different mechanism of how time works (i.e. alterable vs immutable) that allowed me to explore a theme. The nature of time itself varied between these stories because each variant suggested a world in which the events would allow me to tell a certain kind of story. Build your world around your story.
posted by itstheclamsname at 6:13 PM on March 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

I don’t generally write science fiction, but the last novel I wrote had some knotty science at its core, and so I had to read a lot about the science and history of time to get it right. One thing that took me a long time to figure out was that I didn’t need to be systematic in my reading, that it was better if I just followed my interests and notions within the bounds of my topic, and let the story be shaped by what I learned, rather than trying to learn according to what I thought were the needs of my narrative.
posted by Kattullus at 3:53 AM on June 14, 2022