The Writer's E-Zine Home

Writers' Village University - F2K: Free Fiction Writing Course - ePress-online
Writers' Village University Membership Information

Fiction Corner

Alison Hawke

Pass That Encyclopedia

When I was a child, I used to read the junior encyclopedia on the shelves in the lounge, and the big book about ancient history next to it. One consequence of this childhood reading is that when I was watching the film "The Mummy" I knew how they did the mummification. Not much use as polite dinner conversation, but vital to the writers of the story.

I've been told that a writer should read omnivorously. Whatever you come across. Amass information, gather factoids and store them for later. I didn't realise quite how true this was until I finished reading Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold. To write this story, Bujold needed to know something about:

• Cryogenics, the science of freezing things
• Amnesia
• Multiple personality disorder
• Mercenary hostage rescue missions
• Group behaviour of children
• Politics and the nobility
• Assassination techniques

Quite a list.

The back of a Michael Crichton novel will usually have a list of sources used in his research. The list can be several pages long and cover a lot of diverse subjects. The book Timeline includes in the bibliography a three and a half page list of historical references, everything from The Medieval Cookbook by Maggie Black, Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century by Michael E. Goodrich, Gascony under English Rule by Eleanor C Lodge, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages by Michael Prestwich, to Traces of the Past: Unraveling the secrets of Archaeology through Chemistry by Joseph B. Lambert. The scientific references include Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip S. Thorne (a well known physics researcher), Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, The Feynman Processor by Gerard J. Milburn, and an article in Scientific American by David Deutsch and Michael Lockwood called "The Quantum Physics of Time Travel."

One reason I read New Scientist magazine is that it covers all sciences, plus a lot of related fields including programming, disease control, medical advances, current scientific and technological events, latest research in physics, chemistry and biology, weather and climate, and has a fun section at the back called Feedback that makes me laugh. A story I am working on contains a character with a neural/computer interface. New Scientist had, a while back, an article about a device connected to the optic nerve of a blind man, enabling him to see in a limited way. My fiction extended the fact.

There's a book on the coffee table right now called The World of Caffeine by Bennett A. Weinberg and Susan K. Bealer, that is on my "to read list" because it's got a lot about the history of a substance vital to people staying up late. I'm not that well read on history and my grasp of American geography is limited to knowing which states I've visited and which have released their quarter, I have a lot to learn.

Someday, some of this stuff I've read will come in handy for a writing project. Trouble is, I don't know which stuff I'll be needing, I have to read it all. A lot of my reading is scratching an itch, to find out how exactly did they solve Fermat's last theorem, what electroconvulsive therapy feels like, what really happens in a software development team, how you build a dam, how you make a better light bulb, what the most poisonous jellyfish in the world looks like, and how can I avoid it.

We need to have a child like curiosity about our world. Part of what makes our writing unique is that no-one else shares the exact same knowledge and experience we have. You know details about subjects I haven't even started on yet, you can use that. Amaze your readers.