Of Starfighters and fiction


One of the difficulties for a fiction writer, especially in a thriller genre, is the constant need to come up with situations that are plausible if not entirely true to life.

Like getting Starfighters to Moscow ten years after the last one has flown.

The trick is not so much being able to bend reality or even being able to fig leaf a solution; the problem is more one of generating an emotion in the reader that allows you to get away with stretching the story. Because after all, a reader who wants to see a Starfighter in Moscow won't particularly care how you accomplished it.

This is a tricky thing to try to explain, even to editors, especially ones who either don't read the genre at all - and thus don't know the readers - or are deaf to emotional tones. (And yes, there are editors like that. In fact, you tend to run into the problem more with editors than readers, since the latter often self-select out and know what to expect. They also tend to be more forgiving.)

We're all deaf to some things, and we all draw the line on believability in different places, depending on what we know, what we think we know - and most importantly, how we feel.

How much a fig leaf do those Starfighters need? Probably depends on whether you've seen one rush by you in the night . . .