FANTASY

When "20000 Leagues Under the Sea" was written, France had a treaty with the nation that Verne was condemning with his novel. His agent was cautioning Mr. Verne against threatening the international relations of France with his manuscript. Mr. Verne converted the enemy fleet into ships that did not fly a flag. This actually improved the novel. There is always evil in the world.

When you get too specific in minor details of your writing, you tie yourself down. Will your story cease to be of interest to anybody because you were too strongly tied to a historical fallacy? Letting your audience fill in a few details allows the readers to read in things that appeal to them. Many of the things that I heave read lost points over points that the writer stuck in for the wrong reason. Would you be interested in a novel built around the coming ice age that was widely predicted in the seventies?

The biggest problem that I had with some of the things that I have been required to read is that I was forced to swallow things that I knew were wrong. None of those things actually had anything to do with what I was reading. The story would have been much more workable if it had not insulted my intelligence. But I am not writing this just to complain. My point is that leaving out specifics can make a story work better.

You can be specific when you are walking about specific people of groups. That adds realism to the thinking of those characters. When you do the same thing with the whole world, you spread the unbelieveable idea that everybody thinks the same thing in the same way. That does not work. Let people fill in the details and they will credit you with their work.