Whatever you do, DON’T BREAK CANON!

I read to be entertained, so I write to entertain.

What I love most about quality fiction, and my highest aspiration as writer, is the ability to immerse the reader in a world they’ve never known, and to make it so real they feel like they’ve really been there.

This applies to science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, a detective story set in a city you’ve never visited, ...

Anything, really.

Achievement of such immersion is an art.

Failure is all too easy.

Poorly crafted writing will do it. Typos, poor grammar, repetitive words and phrasing, anything the jars the mind and thereby breaks the mood. A talented editor is your best strategy (thank you, Abigail!)

A greater challenge is credibility, which, in turn, breaks into two overlapping buckets (Venn diagrams, anyone?)

The first is accuracy.

Whatever your profession, whatever your pastimes, you have expertise.

When the story involves something that is, for your reader, an area of expertise, and you’ve failed to do your homework, you risk breaking the mood and losing your reader.

The second is canon.

As you weave your story, as you build your world, you set precedents.

And breaking those precedents also breaks the mood.

For hard science fiction, there’s a lot of overlap between these buckets. The more your world building is committed to real science, the easier it should be, at least in theory, to honoring canon.

But honoring canon is just as important regardless of genre.

If you, early in your story, introduce a notion about what’s lethal to vampires or how magic works or how, historically, elves and dwarves have gotten along, you just can’t change those rules on the fly.

I’m a particularly challenging audience in this regard for two reasons.

One is that I’m a detail oriented guy and the other is that I have a diverse resume.

My background is in evolutionary biology and theoretical ecology, but I went into the tech industry. I worked in precious metals exploration modeling ore bodies. I managed data centers and telecommunications for an aerospace company. I worked as a strategic planner and solution architect in semiconductor manufacturing and professional services. I ran R&D for a tech company developing prototypes and filing patents related to distributed computing, IoT, and AI. I’m a dive instructor (not currently active). I’m a photographer.

I could go on.

Bottom line? There are a LOT of things that come up in books, movies, TV shows, etc., that I know enough about to recognize when an author hasn’t applied due diligence and I’m sufficiently detail oriented that it kills the story for me.

The movie’s set in southeast Asia but the actors are walking past central American trees or rock formations unique to somewhere in the US?

Drives me crazy!

The hacker starts banging away at a keyboard and somehow magically breaks into an alien spacecraft’s network?

No way!

We’re on an alien moon filled with absolutely gorgeously envisioned alien lifeforms but, for some reason, despite ALL the vertebrate alien life forms having 6 limbs the intelligent life forms are humanoids with only 4 limbs? And, somehow, they’re able to mate with their hair and the same braid ‘joining’ is how they interface with whichever 6 limbed life forms they’re riding?

C’mon!

And it REALLY drives me up the wall when there’s a fundamental and unexplained capabilities of our heroes or villains. Somehow, unexplicably, an attack the monster was able to shrug off at the beginning of the story is now deadly. Or (see if you recognize the movie) the hero tells us, early on, that the surviving armed and trained space marines cannot rescue their friends but, somehow, miraculously, is able to singlehandedly rescue the little girl that’s become her substitute daughter.

I mean, I still LOVE these movies, but find these things jarring every <censored> time I watch these otherwise fantastic movies.

I could go on...

So, as a writer, what can you do?

One reason I love hard sci fi is that the story could really happen!

Another is that it should be easier to preserve canon if canon is based on facts.

But regardless of genre, being that detail oriented guy and being a hyper organized dude, I believe in documenting canon.

As I write my stories, I have a growing compilation I use as a reference.

Character backstories. Detailed designs of every vehicle, every structure. Detailed descriptions of the taxonomy, structure, and behavior of every organism described in every story. A high level future history. I’ve even modeled the populations for every colony referenced in the stories throughout our solar system and beyond. I’ve referenced typical birth and death rates under varying conditions. Space allocations on ships. Agricultural productivity per hectare.

EVERYTHING I could think of.

And a lot of it never shows up in my novels, but I record it anyway. Sometimes to help me envision things accurately for those details that DO show up in the stories, and sometimes because, well, you never know, do you? Something recorded for thoroughness might become relevant to a future story, right?

All of this said, I do recognize that it’s certainly possible that I’ve fallen short of my own ideals.

There are times I’ve done my best to be scientifically accurate, but I’m particularly concerned that I may have fallen short with respect to some aspects of physics and astrogation.

And, if I have, I apologize.

But I’ll say this.

If I have fallen short with respect to specific aspects of physics and astrogation, I have certainly remained consistent.

Because, if nothing else, whatever you do, DON’T BREAK CANON!