I should add that I have not done the research I might have on either of my completed stories to date. One involves time travel, matter-anti matter physics, and chaotic dynamics in multibody gravitational problems. The other is about identity and teleportation. In both cases, if I had done some research, I could have easily turned up resources that would at least have shown me what others have already thought about these subjects.

How serious a lapse is this? How much better is a story that has research to back it up? How many of you other aspirants put in a research effort for background, and what sorts of methods do you use?

One thing I do enjoy when reading sci fi books, even older ones, is that there are many ideas used to make the story work. Now some are obviously outdated and now not real accurate, but some were enjoyable mainly because of thier unique concept.

I think that as a writer it is our responsiblity to know and understand enough about a subject to be able to write it accuratly. If you want to write a story about a sailing ship, you have to know something about sailing. You may not have to understand everything, but enough to keep anyone that does know sailing believing you have a clue. When it comes to things that have yet to be discovered, or created, you have more freedom to do it the way you want. If you are using teleportation and you want the person to loose their soul when it happens...what is wrong with that? Even if the rest of the science world says there is no soul, or it would never happen. Why do you care? If you have enough information on why it happens in your story, and the story is a good one, only the hard core people might be upset.

Overall, reasearch is good, but I can't see how some people can write enough to pay the bills if they spend more time researching than writing. I'm sure there can be found a balance somewhere.

Once I have an idea, and some notes mapped out, I head on-line, either to find sites to bookmark (then put in a folder), or to check the library's catalogue. Sometimes I'll buy books. I will often create a WP doc and copy and paste bits of research into it. I love the learning process, and need to watch out - focused research can go off on tangents, and before long I'm mired in learning, but haven't written a thing. My tendency is to do a lot of research and cross-referencing, to make sure the info I get is accurate - just because someone posted it doesn't make it so.

Sometimes research just helps the juices flow - I might not use what I found, but it gets my mind headed in interesting directions.

The problem with the relativity discussion was that we started getting into the math...which didn't turn out to be helpful. Conceptually, there wasn't a huge problem (I could be wrong about that).

If someone was able to gig Niven on his neutron star flyby, then that can only mean one thing...he made the mistake of putting hard numbers into the text. Ah ah ah, as we say in crit land Readers that like hard numbers can tell if they're wrong. I've read some Crighton (sp?), and while I respect his storytelling abilities and invention, he invariably fouls the hard numbers, particularly the most important ones.

Whenever you put down a hard number, it has to be dead on. Research it. Whenever you deal with experiential knowledge that a significant number of your readers will have, get that experience. Whenever you deal with current science, get it from a journal.

When writing something toward the harder edge of SF, you definitely need to do your research. It also helps to run it by knowledgeable readers, who can catch any major flaws. (For example, Survivor caught a major engineering mistake in a story I wrote about space elevators. Thanks, Survivor!)

If you do know it, you don't.

If you write stories only about things you do know then I guess you don't need to research, but I'ma fraid the limits of my brain are going to turn out to be too restrictive before long.

In fact, I am now in the 11th month of writing. (In other words, I came upw tih a schedule and started putting my behind in the chair every day since last April, with only a few exceptions.) I have recently decided to implement a few changes to the hours I spend writing each week. It goes as follows: 1 hour each day devoted to reading the newspaper and current events; 1 hour each day devoted to reading a scifi/fantasy novel or short story; 1 hour each day devoted to learning something I had not known before in whatever area piques my interest (could just be watching the discovery or history channels); and finally, 2 hours each day writing. I did spend 5 hours a day writing, and this will cut into that schedule significantly, but I think in the long run I will be better for it. To be honest, 5 hours a day is a little much to have flying fingers straight through. And when I get published and don't have to spend another 4 hours a day doing computer work I'll be in really good shape.

Yes, the best writers to research. OSC mentioned something about him at his boot camp that has stuck with me ever since, though as I said I only recently decided to take him seriously enough to rearrange my schedule. The old addage you should write what you know is fine, but if all you do and all you know is sitting in a chair and typ ing, your stories will be boring. Instead, you have to know what you write. Go learn it.

Now I admit, I don't put hard core physics in my stories because as of this moment I haven't decided I want to learn it. If I use hard scifi concepts in my stories then I do it retrospectively, using other's work as a basis for how the technology actually works (without doing or understanding the numbers myself) and I put a human spin on it. My tech stories are always about how humans react to technological change. This is my choice, and it is a limitation I am willing to accept. If you are not, then you had better become an expert in the realm of physics.

That said, you at the very least need to know what other authors have written about matter/anti-matter, time travel, and teleporation.

I am a thousand times more interested in a book for which the author has done his/her research than a poorly researched book. Clancy, Crichton, Follett, Michner, and Stephenson are my favorites.

I've read Auel, and I suspect that her research was not deep enough. While her portrayal of a Neanderthal POV does take into account some neurological and brain structure differences with modern man, I don't think it goes far enough. Perhaps this is more a criticism of her writing than her research, but these scenes felt fake and candy-coated to me.

edit- spelling

I'd never heard it as a fishing term, myself.

Auel was guilty of having an agenda that biased her research...which isn't quite the same as not doing the work. Crichton (thanks for the help) also lets his agenda dictate his science rather than the other way round. I've read stories in which the author lets an agenda manufacture the science out of whole cloth...these stories are always unintentionally comical.

I read Airframe last summer, and I though his only agenda was to sell books. Perhaps there was a bit of sarcasm about news reporters who themselves have an agenda, reporting their own opinions rather than facts, but that plotline seemed realistic enough that I interpreted it as ordinary conflict development in storytelling.

Does anyone here seriously claim not to have noticed that Crichton is a Rifkinite?

I'm sure that some people take the Rifkinites pretty seriously, I mean, there are people that actually join the Church of Scientology too.

As someone that doesn't throw my critial mind out the window when it comes to assessing threats to survival, I find Crichton to be way off on everything he's written on the subject...and yet....

He's a really good writer. It doesn't have a thing to do with the quality of his science, or his agreement (or lack thereof) with me on technical aspects of writing. He's a good writer, and he deserves to be popular, even if he preaches a kind of silly sermon with each story.

To be fair (since I kicked this off by using the term 'Rifkinite'), here is a pro-Rifkin site.

Anyway, I've found other writers whose research I admire, while their actual mechanics are, shall we say, not as advanced. One example is Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, whose series on the Vampire Saint-Germain are chock full of in-depth historical research, but also contain extensive POV violations. So what carries more weight to readers...pinpoint accuracy in research or flawless technique?

They're just beliefs, for crying out loud.

Jeremy Rifkin is a pretty good writer, too. I've read The End of Work. It's well written and interesting. In fact, I recommend that all prospective science fiction writers should be familiar with it. It doesn't matter if you agree with Rifkin. When it comes to designing societies and economic systems, End of Work is right up there with Future Shock (Toffler), The Republic (Plato), 1984 (Orwell), Brave New World (Huxley), Atlas Shrugged (Rand), and Lost Horizon (Hilton). Some of these books are fiction, some are speculation and editorial, but all full of useful ideas for the writer designing societies for their heroes and villains.

I've heard that The Dispossessed (LeGuin) also has some useful socio-political thought, but I haven't read it yet. It's next on my list.

I'm not a fan of Full Omniscient, because only a handful of writers do it well, and it is very popular with naive amateurs that don't realize their writing is just plain bad.

The only way to violate Full Omniscient is by withholding critical story information from the reader. Admittedly, Clancy hasn't been as worthwhile to my taste in recent years...I think that he's gotten sloppy. But he was truly a master of Full Omniscient, and that's a rare thing.

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The only way to violate Full Omniscient is by withholding critical story information from the reader.

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He did that very noticeably in, Red Rabbit, which I feel was his least exciting novel ever. He completely witheld any information about the plan a character had come up with, even as the character told other characters.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by bias, though. I mean, obviously I rarely post except when I have an opinion. And...well, obviously that's a form of bias. But that would be true of everything everyone on this forum (and any other forum) posts (or writes, says, implies, etc).

And how is it showing a radical political bias to identify Rifkinites as Rifkinites? I mean, I would tend to think the very opposite, I've always thought of Rifkinites as being kinda fringe types.

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Even though I find the agenda merely laughable, I really like his writing.

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Of course I am biased, too. I like automobiles, and would gladly mention my opionions of people's cars in every conversation if I thought it was appropriate. In that case, you'd find me writing messages like this:

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Clive Cussler's plots are so childish they read like episodes of the old Superfriends show, but I really like his Duesenberg J. The flaired maroon fenders affirm my beliefs in goodness, motherhood, and America.

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Or maybe:

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Neil Gaiman's writing has a wonderful narrative voice. However, I find his Mini Cooper to be laughable. I can get past it if I must, but his Mini Cooper reflects life choices that I have rejected.

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"Auel was guilty of having an agenda that biased her research...which isn't quite the same as not doing the work. Crichton (thanks for the help) also lets his agenda dictate his science . . ."

It sure felt like you were baiting your readers to ask "what agenda?" so you could explain. Obviously feelings are subjective, and I realize it's possible that you thought these agendas were so obvious no one would ask.

When you mentioned these agendas, I considered past discussions with you and guessed they would be political. It seemed unlikely, though possible, that these agendas involved writing or the publishing business. Either way I was too curious to let such tempting bait go to waste.

Is it bad practice for fiction writers to have bias in their research? Is it even possible for a fiction writers to avoid bias?

I think perhaps it is not possible for fiction writers to be unbiased, but I'm willing to entertain other points of view. Here is my case:

The very definition of fiction is that it is not truthful. Suppose I am writing a fictious story about romance in Victorian England, and my research tells me something about agricultural practices and something about interior decorating in that era. If I were writing a history text I would probably care about the agriculture. But since I am writing a romance I have an agenda that steers me toward interior decorating. I owe it to my readers to use the details I've discovered wisely, even that means exaggerating and extrapolating to make the story more romantic than real life.

You can let your biases affect what you decide to write about, that's everyday pursuit of interests. So what if 99% of all Victorian Romance novels concern themselves with the lives of about 2% of the population of Victorian England? Victorian England is an even smaller percentage of the world population at large and a frankly insignificant percentage of the population of the world over its entire history.

The best Victorian Romances (okay, I don't actually know this, I'm extrapolating from other forms of fiction) get the basic facts about Victorian England right. So first off the writer is aware that the upper crust of the society is all that is really shown, and the alert reader notices (without being slapped over the head with the fact) as well. The concerns of marriage and inheritance in a society with strict rules about such things (and several other even stricter but unspoken rules about such things) serve the purposes of creating an interesting story, quite possibly one that actually played out (with different names, of course) during that period.

The illusion (and sometimes it is not merely illusion) that you are getting the inside scoop on what really might have gone on in Victorian upper class society is part of the thrill of such stories. Where the writer betrays either ignorance of the actual material or a willingness to deliberately distort that material to make the story 'better', the devoted reader of Victorian Romance is quite properly disgusted.

So no, I don't feel that the story is made more emotionally compelling or more thematically powerful by stepping away from the source material. Now it may be that for some readers, it is better to create a sort of child's play where the intensity and struggle of life in such a class conscious society on the edge of major upheavals is subverted so that you reduce the dramatic qualities of the source material by "exaggerating and extrapolating", but I would contend that this is to make the material less, rather than more, romantic.

I think that the real value of fiction is that it allows us to tell and receive stories that would otherwise be lost. The best fiction is that which comes nearest to the truth, allowing us to see it without even our own biases interfering.

If agriculture is relevant to the story you are telling, then you include the relevant information you found in your research. If interior decorating is relevant, then you include those parts of what you found in your research.

If it doesn't have a really good reason for being in the story, don't use it.

I don't consider that bias, nor do I consider it cognitive dissonance, though those things could certainly affect what you pick up in your research.

An author who uses fiction for propaganda or even one who is just trying to manipulate the readers will only find readers who like that kind of fiction.

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If agriculture is relevant to the story you are telling, then you include the relevant information you found in your research. <snip>

If it doesn't have a really good reason for being in the story, don't use it.

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(Emphasis added by Doc.)

It seems to me that the moment you decide what story you are telling you've already started to use your own personal bias, at least when you are writing fiction. You and I could both set out to write Victorian romances, and mine might include agriculture while yours would include architecture. We would make those decisions based on the stories we wanted to tell. It seems to me that choosing the storise we want to tell must be biased decisions.

How can a fiction writer make an unbiased decision about what is or is not relevant to the story, when the very decision to tell the story was biased?

All due respect to Crichton as a successful author of cheesy, made-for-movie first drafts, but a month exploring the jungles of Tahiti ain't gonna teach me anything about life that I can't learn just from babysitting the nephews for a day (the little monsters - God bless 'em).

Anyway, Doc, don't be obtuse. There is a difference between picking a story where the facts about agriculture are only implicitly evident (in the ratio of agricultural laborers to gentry and their relative status, for instance, something that no well written Victorian Romance ever hides) rather than one where the whole story is about agricultural problems (whether from a landowners or tenants POV), and choosing to obfuscate or change those facts for the purposes of altering the possibility or morality of this or that course of action by the characters in your story.

When you alter the facts about Victorian society to make something possible in your story that wouldn't be possible in Victorian society, your Victorian Romance isn't going to be a good Victorian Romance (the same applies to things that existed in Victorian society to make some element of your story impossible which you therefore ignore). Just like when we alter known science to writer our little stories, they are no longer contemporary fiction but are science fiction. But for it to remain science fiction, we have to clearly mark out what we've changed and show how it is affecting the story.

If I want to say that I have an interstellar Empire with fast communication and tranport, I must mention that I have FTL communication and travel. If I have guys in rockets running to the nearest stars and back in days and don't mention any form of FTL, then my story is bad science fiction. These are the rules of writing speculative fiction...you have to mention which rules you've changed for the purposes of the story.

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Anyway, Doc, don't be obtuse.

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If you think that the difference between deciding which stories to tell and which set of "facts" to use in telling whichever story you decide to tell isn't something that should be obvious to a person of some intelligence, then just say so.

When I say that someone is being deliberately obtuse, I mean just that and nothing more. If you saw a guy stumbling around with his eyes shut complaining that the lights had gone out, you would (laugh and hit him with a stick...but then you would) tell him to open his eyes.

What I said was How can a fiction writer make an unbiased decision about what is or is not relevant to the story, when the very decision to tell the story was biased?

There are two distinct actions here. And it doesn't matter how biased you are, you can choose to tell your story using the facts as they exist or clearly mark where you depart from the facts.

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Auel was guilty of having an agenda that biased her research...which isn't quite the same as not doing the work. Crichton (thanks for the help) also lets his agenda dictate his science . . .

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Is it bad practice for fiction writers to have bias in their research? Is it even possible for a fiction writers to avoid bias?

I think perhaps it is not possible for fiction writers to be unbiased, but I'm willing to entertain other points of view.

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Doc, you were deliberately confusing the issue, which was that some writers allow their personal biases to alter the 'facts' they 'research'...hence my charge that you were 'being obtuse' by pretending not to see the difference.

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I did not write about, nor do I care about, the changing facts topic.

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And yet you were the one that jumped all over my assertion that some writers do let their personal biases lead them to fudge their 'research' into the facts underlying their stories.

Look at the title of the thread here for a moment. This topic is all about research, how to do it right and how to do it wrong. I was pointing out something directly on the topic, that letting your biases dictate the 'facts' you 'research' is not the right way to do your research...or rather, that it is one way to screw up your research no matter how much time you spent in the library.

I answered your off topic question directly by pointing out that avoiding bias in your storytelling is impossible, but that is not the same thing as avoiding bias in your research. Working from the exact same historical facts, there is plenty of room for me to think Victorian plumbers far more interesting and noble than Victorian gentry. But that is not the same thing as changing the 'facts' I present in my story so that everyone will agree that Victorian plumbers/gardeners/millers were the epitome of everything good and the gentry were all evil overlords bent on despoiling the Earth for all time.

"What we got here...is a failure...to communicate!"

Doc - I have an easy answer for you: no. Bias is a great issue in non-fiction writing, whether from the research standpoint or that of storytelling. But in fiction, I ask why wouldn't you want it? How could you be objective in a fiction story that you wrote? In fiction, it is your story, you tell it however you want, with whatever information you feel is necessary. In fact, I think we expect to see your bias - what you like/want to tell us (the readers) about - what you don't include tells us sometimes more than what you include. That helps make YOUR Victorian Romance different from MY Victorian Romance.

Now, combined together, I can see where a bias in telling your story can lead to a bias in what you choose to research, so maybe your story doesn't make sense or there are obvious holes because you missed something major. But then it probably won't be purchased (either to be published or read). I should think this would be an issue especially for hard sf - "But he couldn't possibly be that kind of fullerene, a 'solution looking for a problem' - does he look like a closed spheroidal structure to you? Though he does have some carbon elements..."