Writing Science…Fiction

At the ripe old age of three, I wrote ‘The Man Who Lost His Hat,’ a deep tale of stick-figure regret and personal anguish (yes, I still have the “manuscript”), but apart from that, I didn’t do much writing in my early years. I recall a grade school sci-fi story co-written with my best friend about a world of giant arachnid monsters, a middle-school fantasy tale about a killer fog (let me tell you, I got some serious side-eye from folks at the live reading event), and a last-minute submission for my senior year story competition in high school, documenting my uncommonly frequent dental issues during adolescence. But apart from those brief forays into the written word, I focused most of my efforts on reading. A lot of reading.

It wasn’t until college that I started to write more, but it wasn’t short stories, or character studies, or deep dives into classics. No, the majority of my writing energy as an undergraduate was soaked up by the much-dreaded scientific essay. Cold, hard data. I’m sure you can imagine the riveting narratives I was putting on the page — long-winded descriptions of the abiotic factors affecting redback salamanders, bizarre sexual selection strategies, a parasitoid wasp or two. And the citations. Oh, the citations! I made it my personal goal to try and include at least one per paper that could only be found in a physical format (now, this would be much harder). As my education continued, I wrote more and more, but the variety didn’t increase. If anything, as my studies got more focused, the essays became less variable. After all, scientific literature isn’t known for prose, or lyricism, or word choice. It’s about conciseness, precision, and description. Scientists are trained to write simple, boring sentences that pack in as much information as possible. No extra commas, or short fragments. Just “X had a significant effect on Y (p-value = 0.01), and requires additional study in the next project.” Riveting stuff.

And yet, it’s a skill all its own. One I cultivated throughout my undergrad and graduate years, culminating in my dissertation, ~200 pages of writing similar to the sentence above repeated ad nauseum to lull my readers into believing my assertions. And then I decided to do a postdoc, where I wrote even more. Eventually, it felt like my paragraphs were pre-written scripts, the day’s latest analysis results my only deviation.

I joke, but there’s a reason why lay people don’t jump on Pubmed for leisure. Apart from some rare, single-author editorials that take big swings, science writing falls flat in the entertainment department. And I’m not trying to say the literature doesn’t serve a purpose; indeed, it’s critical to the scientific process. Disseminating new scientific data should be rigorous, detailed, and concise. A cohesive, well-communicated paper is like gold to a scientist, reflecting an entire year (or two…or three) of work. But the papers themselves are often a drag, and any scientist would admit to skimming the worst offenders.

But how did all that scientific writing affect my writing journey? Did all those hours of writing scientific articles help as I dipped my toes into fiction? Honestly, I’d say…kinda?

To use an analogy, fiction and science writing are like sprinting and long-distance running. Both use the same body parts, but very different muscles. So while a distance runner won’t be breaking any 100 meter dash records, their body is familiar with the idea. They know the motions, the habits, the training regimens. Writing fiction after writing scientific articles for so long felt the same. I had to retrain my writing brain to work in a different way — to flex different muscles, if I might pound my analogy into the dirt — but I already had a rhythm with writing. I was comfortable with my process and knew how to cultivate a flow state.

So sitting down to write my first serious novel while finishing a PhD dissertation might sound crazy, but it was a bit like cross-training — sorry, couldn’t resist one more — allowing my brain to jump between different methods, keeping it fresher and more ready to continue. By practicing writing in different ways, both my scientific and fiction writing got stronger, and as I finished up my postdoc, I found myself getting comments from fellow scientists about how easy to read my papers had become. And now, when I need to slip into a more formal, scientific voice in a novel, perhaps in a scene describing a genetic alteration or ecological principle, it’s a no-brainer. Those old scripts come right back, only this time I get to plug in some made-up data without worrying (too much) about the background statistics.

It turns out, sometimes the best way to write science fiction is to write both science and fiction.