This is a very interesting notion. Research usually helps me out, inspires cool new ideas, but usually on thigns I don't already know a great deal about. I recall somebody else came up in an early short story group I was in had come up with a great plant-based horror story that I would never in a million years have thought up because I am, actually, a plant geek. I know too much about it. I might speculate in my head wonderfully about the peculiarities of cycads (which are very strange indeed) but I'd have to *explain* why they're so weird for a long time before I could get to the horror bit, if I was even trying to take it in that direction. (They do kind of lend themselves to that.) Plus, not actually a horror person really, so I don't automatically go for the spurting gore bit. (So unsubtle.) Whereas somebody who just has the simple version just goes out and *does* it and doesn't worry about all the broken bits of Real World Information scattered willynilly in their wake. As with movie plots, it often works just fine for readers, in spite of the conversations in a hundred convention rooms across the land. For example: "But it's not *right*, you know. That's not how it really works. Now, if you *really* had the fern spores spreading in air that dry--" Sigh.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2008-02-18 06:56 am (UTC)Research usually helps me out, inspires cool new ideas, but usually on thigns I don't already know a great deal about.
I recall somebody else came up in an early short story group I was in had come up with a great plant-based horror story that I would never in a million years have thought up because I am, actually, a plant geek. I know too much about it. I might speculate in my head wonderfully about the peculiarities of cycads (which are very strange indeed) but I'd have to *explain* why they're so weird for a long time before I could get to the horror bit, if I was even trying to take it in that direction. (They do kind of lend themselves to that.) Plus, not actually a horror person really, so I don't automatically go for the spurting gore bit. (So unsubtle.)
Whereas somebody who just has the simple version just goes out and *does* it and doesn't worry about all the broken bits of Real World Information scattered willynilly in their wake. As with movie plots, it often works just fine for readers, in spite of the conversations in a hundred convention rooms across the land.
For example:
"But it's not *right*, you know. That's not how it really works. Now, if you *really* had the fern spores spreading in air that dry--"
Sigh.