Being a Better Writer: Research and Ramifications · 10:38pm May 8th, 2018
Welcome, readers! Before we begin with today’s post, an obligatory plug, if you will. If you somehow missed it, Shadow of an Empire‘s cover has been revealed in all its glory!You can check it out here!And yes, that does have to do with the slight redesign of the site and its colors. Shadow of an Empireis releasing June 1st, and will be available for pre-order later this week!
Excited? Good! I know I am.
So, that out of the way, let’s talk about today’s topic: Research and the ramifications that come with it. Because, as with most things in the writing world … it’s not quite so simple when you get down to it.
Now, I’ll be clear up front: This is a request topic. Actually, it’s a pretty commonrequest topic. Which, as often as I hammer the point home of “always do the research” doesn’t exactly surprise me. I’ve made a point of it time and time again in my posts here on the site and elsewhere around the web—and even in person! If you want to be an author, and write a story about anything … Do. The. Research. Learn about that thing. And learn well.
Naturally, this second bit is the crux of the topic today. At least at the outset. Because while it’s one thing to say “do the research,” for some it’s a bit like telling someone to build a boat. I say “do the research” and there are a cluster of authors new and old who respond with the concerned question of “Okay, how?” And yes, I say old as well as new because there are plenty of authors out there I’ve read that clearly have no idea how to do even the most basic research.
Well, I don't really have much to say about this because you generally did a great job with it. I think it might be worth pointing out that author credentials, especially obvious ones like military ranks, can help some people get away with crossing the "reality is unrealistic" problem because no one is going to say that a Navy officer who has served on a ship is wrong about those kind of details, but that's really not a big deal because anyone with those kinds of credentials is going to be thinking about that when they make those decisions anyways.
That said, I do have one big thing I want to point out because I strongly suspect you have a major hole in your research for Jungle due to transitions in military technology. Specifically, you really need to do a lot of research into the F-35 because it has two technologies that are going to have a massive impact on future ships.
The first is the AN/AAQ-37 electro-optical Distributed Aperture System (DAS). DAS performs constant day/night video surveillance in a complete sphere around the aircraft and projects it onto the helmet-mounted display to let the pilot effectively look through the airplane. This technology has already been adapted for surface ships under the name Silent Watch, and while I don't know of any major applications yet, it is definitely going to be applied in the future and will absolutely change the way ships are designed and operated. I'm not going to claim to know exactly how that will play out in the tiny details, but the general gist of the change is that the actual bridge will disappear entirely, all functions currently carried out there will be moved to CIC (or whatever name your organization uses for it since that room has a lot of different names), and that room will be buried in the safest part of the ship to maximize survivability.
The second is networking and computer assistance. One of the dramatic changes over legacy equipment is that everything seen by any F-35 is effectively seen by everything on the network, and the computer does the hard work of turning that data into a single coherent picture of the battlespace and managing most of the system details so the pilot can focus on making decisions. This trend is going to continue (along with other automation technology) and generally result in massive crew reductions as the computer takes over more and more tasks. When this is combined with drones to do menial tasks, the logical end state is that the only crew left will be what we currently think of as the senior command staff to make the big decisions (e.g. kill that) while the computers manage the execution (e.g. select and fire a weapon). You might have seen some information on this since automation was an important part of the Zumwalt, but most people in the military aren't looking as far ahead as you are so you need to make sure you are extrapolating trends to their logical conclusion.
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Oh don't worry. I did some neat forward movement with regards to how well-designed a bridge is, and where AI fit into a command structure.
That said, don't forget that UNSEC, as shown in Colony (but not talked openly about too much) have not been too keen on large-scale automation, and there are laws (this was directly talked about) against AI having control of war machines.
As per the ending, however, the folks in charge of Pisces see things differently ...
If you can manage to have a character who has the same misconceptions as the general public, you can then have a more experienced character explain the actual fact of the matter to him, and that's one way of conquering the 'reality is unrealistic' problem ... in cases when it's important to keep the actual detail, of course -- important enough to spend a few lines of dialog making sure they know. The readers who already knew will be vindicated, and the ones who didn't will be educated. (Sure, a few may resist the education and quibble anyway ... but I'd rather face them than face the experts' quibbling when I've knowingly put a detail down wrong.)
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You'll still get audience members that will go 'No, that's wrong."
Unfortunately ... this doesn't always work. Don't get me wrong, it's a good approach if you're going to explain something, but ... it's not a pure fix.
It's more just an unavoidable at that point though. And it does make the world an interesting place. Different minds and all that.