Thread: Sci-fi writers. How much explaination do you give?

Do your events, occurances, causes, etc, just happen or do you give some plausible explaination?

I'm researching for a book that incorporates some rather fantasy stuff even though it's more of a psychologocal and social look, but I'd like to not incorporate too much "magic."

As a reader, I find myself wanting to know every possible detail about the universe the story is set in. I love it when the author answers every one of my questions at the right times. If you're doing magic, you might be tempted to go "A Wizard Did It" and not explain a thing, but at a minimum there must be some logic behind the mechanism, even if not directly explained.

That said, if you begin explaining, and explaining, and explaining how your system works, you might fall into the "Info Dump" side. I don't think anyone likes to sit through pages of pointless explanations to every little thing. I think the key is finding a balance between how much the reader needs to know and how much you want to add to enrich your story.

Since it's magic, everyone already has the assumption that there is some kind of elemental source of energy which mages exploit to make their tricks, but you should try to remain consistent with the limitations you set in your universe. If someone pulls a huge firestorm out of their wand when you said that was nigh-impossible, you have to give some reason as to why that happened.

I have events happen, explain some of it right away, and get into the details over time. As elite said, it's usually wise to avoid an info dump.

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This is a tough question. I guess it all depends. Some sci-fi leaves you the mystery like War of the Worlds and is reluctant to give information to you, while some sci-fi worlds (Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.) are filled to the brim with details.

Use your gut. If you're trying to create a whole new world, you might have to incorporate that extra info where you can, and if it's just a story that happens to have sci-fi things happening in it, don't worry about giving too much or else you might bog down the story.

Sci-fi fans can also be the toughest critics - many of them are scientists, and well-practiced at ripping apart poorly constructed hypotheses. If you want to write the story as science fiction, then to make it work, you will need to have constructed a self-consistent and logical universe. How much of that must be incorporated into the story depends in part on how far you've deviated from our current understanding of our universe, and in part on how many stories you intend to set in the constructed universe.

Or, you can avoid the whole issue and write the story as science fantasy ...