Write On! :: Comments :: Making Science and Technology Writing Believable

Making Science and Technology Writing Believable | 16 comments (16 topical, 0 hidden)

The audience expects it. (4.00/1) (#12)
by kitten on Mon Jan 24, 2005 at 05:22:43 PM PST

Part of the problem in screenwriting "realistic" things like computer programming, decryption, and so forth, is that Hollywood has dug itself into something of a hole. By this point, they've seen hundreds of movies where the guy says "Uh oh, these files are encrypted, this could take a few minutes!" and moments later he's unscrambled the top secret enemy plans or whatever it is.

You're dealing with the masses; these are the same people who can barely manage to open Internet Explorer half the time. They don't know how computers work, and they accept as fact what they've seen on film. If they saw the real way, they'd think it looks ridiculous and far fetched. How come our hero has to work for hours to break into a system, when everyone knows hackers can crack a supercomputer in a few seconds?
kitten .
[ Parent ]

: This is one reason... (3.00/0) (#13)
by ana on Thu Feb 03, 2005 at 04:54:21 AM PST

that when there was a technical problem, or a hint of one, in my November Novel, I spent pages watching the ship's engineer working through the possibilities, trying to figure out what was going on. In one case, when she'd had but one hour's sleep. I thought it would be useful for readers to have some inkling of how such things really work; and besides, when writing on a word budget like the NaNoWriMo thing, it was easy to write about it at some length.
Exploring dark places since last Thursday
[ Parent ]
: I don't know... (3.00/0) (#14)
by Drog on Wed Jun 22, 2005 at 06:39:44 AM PST

Somehow I think that even if I weren't computer savvy, if I saw a movie in which the hacker said something like, "This isn't the movies. This is pure number crunching. Give me a thousand PC's working non-stop for a month, and I'll unencrypt it for you," I'd love it. It would be a breath of fresh air, and would instantly give me more respect for the film as being more intelligent than all the others. But maybe most moviegoers would not feel the same way, I don't know.

The World Forum - Discuss world issues with people from all over the planet.
[ Parent ]

Making Science and Technology Writing Believable | 16 comments (16 topical, 0 hidden)

Make a new account