It also depends on what the subject is... a scientist in the real world is hard to write unless you know a decent amount about their science (such as, you've taken a college course in it at least.) One of my pet peeves with books in the real world is people who write "experts" in a subject that get things you learn in a high school class on the subject wrong. (For example, nuclear radiation is not an infectious disease and is not transmittable by blood... yes, there is a published book where they make that mistake. They also use bio hazard suits. The main character is supposedly a world-renowned expert in nuclear radiation. And the book is a New York Times bestseller, but that's a rant for another time.)

On the other hand, if you want to write a teenager who has astrophysics as their main hobby, you can get away with them getting things wrong, because they aren't expected to be experts by the audience. (Especially if they've been researching online.)

If you have it set in a world that isn't supposed to represent the "real world," you get a lot more leeway to make things up. Don't know much about psychology? A fantasy mind healer doesn't necessarily have to. Results may vary, but psychology at least is something where proof is hard to come by. Physics is not.

Long story short, if doing a science, please at least find some recent basic textbooks on it at the library. On the other hand, you can have a person who is a particle physicist and hardly ever mention any specifics of their job if the plot doesn't require you to do so. I know they make and look at graphs a lot and collide particles comparatively little.

Tangentially, I went on a field trip to Fermilab last month and realized that my grasp of particle physics is significantly less than the square root of my reach.

We were lucky enough to get a visit from sci-fi novelist Kim Stanley Robinson, so we all grilled him for advice on writing.

One of the subjects we broached was that of research. Being a science fiction writer, of course he had a lot to say about it. One of the things he said stuck with me: he would apparently spend hours researching a certain topic if it was relevant to his story, and more often than not the results of said tireless research would be a few sentences, or a paragraph smaller than the width of three of his fingers. But it was still necessary, because sometimes it's those few sentences or that small paragraph that enriches the story and makes it more real for the reader.

So, sometimes it'll take a lot of research to write only a small part of the story or the setting, but I guess what one must take from this is to be patient, and to give the story the love, care, and effort it deserves, even if it seems like the end result is a lot smaller than you would have liked.

I know what you're going through, though. I like to have diversity in my characters, particularly when I write urban fantasy. Lately I've been interested in having a main character who is devoutly religious, or a supporting character who is a priest or a minister. I am agnostic. I have no idea how being religious works, or what priests do, beyond what I've seen them do on Supernatural (which I'm fairly sure is not a reliable source).

How interested are you? If we were limited to writing what we already know... well, fanfiction would be a good deal less shiny.

Go ahead and write particle physicists. Just be aware that when you plug it to the PPC, we're going to expect that you've done research to support your character's view on antiprotons or goodness I don't even know. What is an antiproton. So.

How much?

...if you want a character to pick a lock, you might get away with them just carrying a set of lock picks.

If you want a character to perform surgery, then head off to the library and get a book on the thoracic cavity.

I guess it depends on how much you need to move plot & dialogue forward.

Hmm.

I'm sorry if that wasn't as helpful as you'd like. I just can't think of a concrete answer, like, "Always do three hours of research", because circumstances vary so much.

Keep 'em coming if you still would like to chime in. Some great angles on the issue so far! For the record, the particle physicist was just a hypothetical character.

Research is absolutely key, admittedly, but it can be done. For example, one of my many, many agents is a British soldier from the Special Air Service, something I have no personal experience of. However, I've done a hell of a lot of research into the SAS, requested advice from people who know more, etc. and come out with what seems to be a fairly believable mostly-finished product. :P

So yeah - research and then have a go. Worst comes to worst, you make mistakes and can then go fix them.

If you don't know something, you've got the entire internet to do research on. Or, at least, that's how I work. I have relatives who've lived on every continent (except Antarctica), I've got a genealogist in my family, computer programmers, mechanics, three members of the military, and access to research sites and forums if I don't know something.

I don't know diddly about particle physics, but I know where to look to find the basic information that'll make my character appear to know what they're talking about.

I personally think that, as long as you do basic research--which will, theoretically, lead to a lot more in-depth research--then you can write just about anything. As much secondhand knowledge as your brain or harddrive can hold would be my recommendation, though.

There's a quote by Thoreau that I think illustrates my point: "Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." Our theoretical particle physicist character is the castle in the air; the research you need to do is the foundation you should put under it. (Which is pretty much my approach to writing. London sewers are a fascinating subject, by the way.)

But that's just me, and I need to stop rambling and start doing college stuff like I should be.

-Dragormir

There are characters who are into stuff I don't know much about, but if I need details, I go and look them up. Even though I write an awful lot of computer science people... yeah, I feel most comfortable with stuff I know.

For stuff I only know superficially, I ask Wikipedia and go on from there, depending on what details I need. Also, I have an uncanny ability to interpolate things.

... who's in a field I don't actually know (Philosophy)...


... is a first-year University student who ends up in a fantasy world about a week in. Saves time both ways.

There's also a physics student in there somewhere - but I know enough physics to fake it.

Actually my character who most knows things I don't is (occasionally Agent) Lou: depending on when you ask her, she either did English or Biology, neither of which are my Thing. I don't have a problem with writing about her, because, generally, Peoples Is Peoples. If she absolutely has to talk about Bio, I'd look it up or ask someone who knows (see: other people on Research).

hS

I prefer to think of the adage "Write what you know" more as "Don't write what you don't know." If you have a character who's a particle physicist, but you know nothing about particle physics, you probably shouldn't write about that - or, at least, not without doing some research.

Especially for something like particle physics, reading up on it, looking through the internet, or checking out books from the library is a perfectly valid way to know something and therefore write about it.

As for how much you need to know, that depends on what you're writing and why, as well as how big of a part it will play in your story, and how much you or your audience will care if you get some details wrong.

You think, say, Tom Clancy was a spy or a government agent? No, but he clearly did a ton of research to the point that the government was, according to rumor, worried that he actually was a spy because his books were chillingly accurate. And Michael Crichton was no mathematician, paleontologist, or biotechnician - he was a doctor - but Jurassic Park was a brilliant piece of work that got very in-depth in... well, what was cutting-edge science at the time, viewed as a bit dated now, but it's still so good because it's clear that a lot of effort went into the research.

You probably don't need to go to the same lengths as those guys, who are known for showing every single detail of their work. But a working knowledge of whatever you're writing about is important. And if you're not a particle physicist, and never will be a particle physicist, as a writer you should still know what you're talking about. (If you're actually looking for information about particle physics, I'd recommend Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time - it's from the 80s, but I think it all still holds.)

When I was working on my NaNoWriMo a few years ago, for example, I came to a part where I needed to write about black holes. I had very little idea of how black holes actually worked, so I spent several hours of valuable writing time researching. In just a couple hours I was by absolutely no means an expert, but I'd learned enough to be able to finish my story.

As a closing note, I'd just like to say that if everyone wrote from their direct life experiences only, fiction would be a much, much more boring place.


... wow that went longer than I meant it to.

I dislike writing stuff set in the real world for exactly this reason. There is too much stuff to know.
However, I always create a world before deciding what I want to write. The more I know about a world, the easier it is to find something to write about. The only downside is that a lot of the stuff I think up doesn't get used. For example in a story I'm failing to write due to loosing a load of work, I created this huge complex society, based in a swamp and in the 'finished' plan the characters don't even go there. One has a father who came from there, but that's it.