Bending Science to my Will… or Not
I hit a roadblock this week. No, not Writer’s Block. That’s an entirely different creature; one that I haven’t had to battle yet (thank goodness!). I’m talking about a sudden obstruction in my novel’s writing. In my mind it’s literally a brick wall standing in the way of my plot.
This roadblock is Science. Yes, science. Usually my friend and supporting character in my novels, Science is currently sitting on the “road” of my plot with his arms crossed, shaking his head “no” at me. I can even hear it saying, “tsk, tsk, tsk” under his breath. I metaphorically stomp my foot and whine but he just raises an eyebrow as if saying, “You little woman… your frustration means nothing to me.”
Science is right. The bugger.
Here’s my dilemma: my story is going great! I’ve figured out things that I’ve been pondering for months, and I’m totally ready to write the scene of Reus coming to Earth. Ok… crashing to Earth to more honest. (I’m not giving anything away- I told you all that I’m bringing this story back to our planet!)
Anyway, I have this awesome science concept that I was going to use. Seriously, it was WAY cool! It was going to include weird things in our solar system and ancient lore from Earth… exactly the kinds of things that I LOVE including in my books. BUT when I started to write the scene I needed my good friends Google and Science to help me make sure I wasn’t totally buggering the physics of what I wanted to do. Google politely gave me the resources I needed, but Science refused to cooperate. I began researching the how’s of the scene and basically Science shut me down and became my (metaphorical) immovable wall. I spent days trying to look at what I wanted to do from different angles (going around the Science-obstacle in my path, going over him, under him) but nothing worked.
I had two options at that point.
1- I can give Science the middle finger and do what I want anyway, OR
2- Give into the fact that what I want to do isn’t scientifically plausible and figure out a Plan B.
I really want to tell Science that I’m going to ignore him for this scene and write it exactly how I want, but I can’t bring myself to do that. During my 4 previous books Science has been good to me. He supports my crazy ideas and allows me to stretch theoretical concepts to compliment my advanced alien races. I can’t turn my back on him now. <sigh>
Now my task is to figure out another way to crash Reus here on Earth and have it hopefully still be as cool as my original plan… no pressure! 🙂
I hope you all liked this candid clip of what goes on inside my brain. I guess adults don’t grow out of their imaginary friends- some of us just start writing about them for a living 😉
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