{"id":1148,"date":"2007-02-21T10:52:27","date_gmt":"2007-02-21T10:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/02\/21\/comprehensible-is-the-new-blac\/"},"modified":"2007-02-21T10:52:27","modified_gmt":"2007-02-21T10:52:27","slug":"comprehensible-is-the-new-blac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/02\/21\/comprehensible-is-the-new-blac\/","title":{"rendered":"Comprehensible Is the New Black"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Scalzi is being railroaded into heading a new movement in SF: The New Comprehensible<\/a>. He disdains manifestoes (“people who issue literary manifestos should be thrown into jet engines”), but does offer a set of precepts for people seeking to write in the New Comprehensible:<\/p>\n

\n

1. Think of an actual person you know, of reasonable intelligence, who likes to read but does not read science fiction. <\/p>\n

2. Write with that person in mind.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He goes on to note that these same rules apply to other genres of fiction. He does not, however, make the point that this is also excellent advice for non<\/strong>-fiction writing. It’s a trans-genre, all-encompassing literary gestalt! Or something.<\/p>\n

Anyway, if you’d like to write non-fiction about science belonging to the New Comprehensible, a simple modification of Step 1 will do the trick:<\/p>\n

\n

1. Think of an actual person you know, of reasonable intelligence, who is curious about your area of science, but hasn’t taken a science class since high school.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Step Two is unchanged, and you’re on your way.<\/p>\n

Really, that’s all there is to it. If your explanation requires people to understand group theory, or biochemistry, you’re doing it wrong. If your explanation doesn’t use any words you wouldn’t expect the average high-school senior to know, or at least includes a definition of new words in terms that an average high-school senior would know, then you’re on your way.<\/p>\n

It’s harder than it looks, though…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Scalzi is being railroaded into heading a new movement in SF: The New Comprehensible. He disdains manifestoes (“people who issue literary manifestos should be thrown into jet engines”), but does offer a set of precepts for people seeking to write in the New Comprehensible: 1. Think of an actual person you know, of reasonable… Continue reading Comprehensible Is the New Black<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,13,37,11,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-education","category-pop_culture","category-science","category-sf","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}