Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and cohosted this month by Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Natalie Aguirre, Sarah – The Faux Fountain Pen, and Olga Godim.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, good news!  This is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Today, I’d like to tell you a story.  This story is half true, half not true, but I think it’s a good story nonetheless, and maybe some of you will find it relatable.

A long time ago, I was at a party for writers—one of those networking events they say you have to go to if you want to get published.  I ended up sitting at a table with some dude who wrote historical fiction.  He was apparently a big shot in the historical fiction genre, or at least he talked about himself as if he were a big shot in the historical fiction genre.

As the evening wore on, the conversation turned to research.  Mr. Historical Fiction knew a lot about doing research, obviously.  He and his wife had just returned from a trip to Europe, where they’d toured some castle that was going to feature prominently in his next magnum opus.  Anyway, this guy went on and on about how important research is for every writer.  Not just historical fiction writers but every writer, in ever genre.

“Unless you write science fiction,” this guy said, with a gracious nod toward me.  “Sci-Fi and fantasy writers do ‘world building’ where the rest of us do research.”

At this point, I’d run out of patience.  “Well, yeah,” I said.  “Fantasy writers have no need for research.  What would they even do research about?  Horses?  Livestock?  Agriculture?  Blacksmithing?  Swords and armor?  Military strategy?  Medieval architecture?  None of that ever comes up in fantasy.

“And as for Sci-Fi, well… my need for research is even less.  Outer space is a mysterious void that we can fill with pure imagination.  Biology?  Geology?  Chemistry?  Don’t need them.  Newton’s laws?  Not important—not when you’re writing about spaceflight.  As a Sci-Fi author, I will never need to know the difference between an asteroid and a meteor, or between dark matter and dark energy, or between special and general relativity.  It’s a good thing, too, because that relativity stuff is complicated.  Have you seen how much math Einstein put into special and general relativity?

“Nope, I have it easy.  I get to just make stuff up.  Maybe I’ll throw the word ‘quantum’ in there so that I sound smart, but don’t worry!  I don’t need to know what the word quantum actually means.  And when I get my stories published, I can rest easy in the knowledge that my audience—i.e., the nerdy people who read science fiction on a regular basis—will not notice my laziness and will not call me out for my ignorance.”

The room was dead silent now.  I carefully set down my drink.  “My point is,” I said, “we Sci-Fi and fantasy writers do world building on top of our research.  Not instead of research.”

Okay, I lied.  I didn’t say all those things.  That whole rant is the part of this story that’s not true.  But I really wanted to say that stuff.  I really, really wanted to.