Novel update: Science or Fiction?

One interesting part of planning my novel is figuring out how much technical accuracy to go for, as opposed to how much to just make up. It’s a story that has a scientific and even political element, it’s about climate change having a catastrophic impact on the world. But it’s also about the characters in the book, it’s a work of fiction, and there are plot points that I want to happen regardless of how realistic they are.

So I’m spending a lot of time reading articles and scientific papers. And I’m also spending a lot of time “playing” a game called The Quiet Year, which is a world building game that I’m using to set up the back story to my actual novel. Planning out the world, and working out the backstory has been a long and exciting process, and I’m enjoying figuring out how my story gets set up, how the characters and settings get into the state they end up in. I’m surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed this as opposed to getting the main story down. (It may be a procrastination technique, who knows!)