Research: Superhero Style

I love research. I love diving down a rabbit hole of information in search of that one specific detail I need. I could spend an entire day doing nothing but research and go to bed happy. (Of course, the need for a roof over my head and food on my table means my attention is usually required elsewhere.)

Then I decided to write a sci-fi/fantasy book, and I had to ask the question – how does one research something that doesn’t exist? 🤷🏻‍♀️🤣 Well, you get creative.

In my case, the story is considered low-concept sci-fi/fantasy. This is not a brand new world that I created from scratch. It’s practically magic realism. The fantasy stuff I wasn’t too worried about. It was the sci-fi side of things. There are weapons and technology involved, for which I have no prior knowledge.

Once again, I’m thankful for the internet (and hope that the powers that be that see me researching all these weapons also see how much time I spend on thesaurus.com looking for just the right word). I did what research I could, basing the tech and weapons around real things. (Whyyyyy did I make my MC an inventor….? 🤦🏻‍♀️) I wanted the world to feel grounded in ours – so a lot of the laws of physics and whatnot are the same. The sci-fi aspect just takes things a step further.

One such rabbit hole of research involved me looking up how much damage five pounds of TNT can do (which is how much power the Air Force’s Shiva Star can store up – and the answer is about ten million joules of energy, or about the size of a pipe bomb). In my created world, they’ve gotten the tech scaled to something you can hold in the palm of your hand. I did my best to alter the science and hopefully explain it in a way that still made sense for both worlds.

Bu again – this is NOT my area of expertise by any means.

Enter my dear friend Cody. I sent them a message asking if they would be willing to read over the manuscript and check out to make sure the science (especially my fictionalizing of it) made sense. Thankfully, they said sure and offered some really great feedback to ensure that the story would pass muster with readers who DO know about these sorts of things. (I also accidentally outed the fact that I had named one of the characters after them in homage to our friendship – I thought I had changed all of them, but I missed a couple things – and even with my ‘clever’ misspelling, they caught on. 😐😐😐😬)

I definitely spent a lot more time down those research rabbit holes, trying to make everything fit, and I indeed loved every minute of it. It just might be a bit before I try and tackle something like this again. 😂