SLPAD 23 - ignorance

[Michael Bailey]

Not only is it a good idea to look up words before using them in a story,
it’s also wise to use real facts even when they require research.

The great amount of real facts in GR make the story much better. More
interesting. Easier to suspend disbelief. They make the effort to visualize
more worthwhile and compelling.


I like this long quote, which takes in most of the next page as well:

Everybody gets
               told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of
us is that at the earlier
               stages of life we think we know everything—or to put it more
usefully, we are often
               unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.
Ignorance is not just a blank
               space on a person’s mental map. It has contours and
coherence, and for all I know
               rules of operation as well. So as a corollary to writing
about what we know, maybe
               we should add getting familiar with our ignorance, and the
possibilities therein for
               ruining a good story. Opera librettos, movies and television
drama are allowed to
               get away with all kinds of errors in detail. Too much time
in front of the Tube and
               a writer can get to believing the same thing about fiction.
Not so. Though it may
               not be wrong absolutely to make up, as I still do, what I
don’t know or am too lazy
               to find out, phony data are more often than not deployed in
places sensitive enough
               to make a difference, thereby losing what marginal charm
they may have possessed outside
               of the story’s context. Witness an example from “Entropy.”
In the character of Callisto
               I was trying for a sort of world-weary Middle-European
effect, and put in the phrase
               grippe espagnole, which I had seen on some liner notes to a
recording of Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat. I must have thought this
was some kind of post–World War I spiritual malaise or
               something. Come to find out it means what it says, Spanish
influenza, and the reference
               I lifted was really to the worldwide flu epidemic that
followed the war.


            The lesson here, obvious but now and then overlooked, is just
to corroborate one’s
               data, in particular those acquired casually, such as through
hearsay or off the backs
               of record albums.