That Which Befalls People

I wrote about Bad Science over at Mad Genius Club, if you're interested in researching and writing good hard science fiction you may want to wander over there. Here, I'm going to be brief.

I'm studying Epidemiology this semester, or the study of that which befalls people. And really, as an author, I do that with every story. I take a group of people, most often, it's rare to write a tale with a single character, and I make things happen to them. And then I follow them to conclusions. The difficulty is to do it in an entertaining way. A story where everyone dies, is not amusing. A story where everyone is touched by calamity and forever changed, might not amuse, but it can still entertain, with the resonance of real  life. We none of us escape our passage through life changing us. Life befalls people.

Doodling faces in my math notebook.