This delightful word was originally coined in the fifties to describe deliberately confusing bureaucratic jargon. Since then, science fiction writers have co-opted the term for the scientific background you feed your readers to explain the ways in which your world differs from reality. It’s the bafflegab that persuades your readers to suspend disbelief.
It’s most often used in science fiction, of course, but other genres use bafflegab as well. Fantasy novels require a magic that behaves according to rules – what might be called metaphysical bafflegab. Some romance novels now require an explanation of where vampires come from and how they live. Even historical novels rely on something similar. People who lived in the middle ages would probably find the world of many medieval mysteries unfamiliar, if only for the shortage of lice. But that’s not a problem as long as the world is convincing enough to satisfy modern readers. After all, in Julius Caesar, Shakespeare had Cassius say, “The clock hath stricken three,” twelve centuries before the mechanical clock was invented.
How much bafflegab you need depends on your audience. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy needed much less in the way of explanation than, say, Jennifer Wells’ Fluency. Being lighthearted lets Douglas Adams deal with alien languages by having his characters stick a small fish in their ear rather than bringing in a linguistic expert, as Wells does. If your readers are into your romance for the dark, dangerous love interests, you don’t really have to go into detail on the biology or ecology of your vampires.
Bear in mind, too, that you can often cut down on the bafflegab by using IJD technology. (How does the spaceship travel faster than light? It Just Does.) We don’t think about the details of internal combustion engines when we’re driving to work. In fact, I’m told most people never think about the details of internal combustion engines at all, though I have trouble believing that. In the same way, people in the future won’t think about how the warp drive works every time they fire it up. So a lot of your background technology can simply remain in the background.
But even where you don’t explain the mechanics of your world, you should think them through yourself. Not necessarily schematics and materials science – though if that’s your thing, go for it. But pay attention to the sociology of your technology or metaphysics, the effect it has on the people your world. If you miss things, your readers may not be consciously aware of the lack, but they’re going to feel something is subtly wrong. Remember, too, you can often create a better sense of the otherness of your world through how it affects its inhabitants than from a description of the world itself. Think of how shocked the desert people of Dune are that Paul Atraides comes from a “water fat” world, where water is so plentiful it falls from the sky.
So if you’ve given your characters instant teleportation, are there still different nations? Has the whole world finally become one big family, or do people guard cultural distinctions even more carefully because they’re under risk? If you’ve got a magic that allows adepts to create whatever they want, is there still money? Have basic crafts been lost or have handmade items actually become more valuable in a world where anyone has the ability to instantly make anything? Answering basic questions like these makes your world feel authentic, even with IJD technology.
And when you’re creating a future world, don’t forget that older technologies will always work. If you’ve wiped out all plastics on your future Earth, remember that people lived pretty comfortable lives in the nineteenth century, well before plastics were invented. I’m currently editing a story set on a moon that’s tidally locked with a gas giant planet. Most colonists live on the relatively safe near side, which is largely desert. But they have outposts on the more dangerous far side, mostly for mining. Trips to the far side are risky because extensive radiation in the upper atmosphere makes satellite or microwave communication impossible. Once you’re over there, you’re on your own.
Except . . . they strung the Transatlantic Cable when most transatlantic crossings were still done under sail. There’s no reason a future society couldn’t just run a communications cable halfway around their world and forget satellites. I pointed this out, and the two sides of my client’s world are now divided by oceans with violent and deep tidal currents.
As you create your bafflegab, resist the urge to oversimplify. Don’t fall into the Star Wars habit of creating entire planets with a single ecology (The Desert World of Tatooine, the Jungle World of Dagobah). Or if you’ve got a society divided between, say, the warrior clans and the learned mages, don’t forget that someone has to wash the clothes and cook the food. One way to avoid oversimplifying is to look at how reality does it. Learn some basic geology, so you know how the Earth reached its present shape, and your future worlds will feel more textured. If you’ve got a devastating world war in your world’s immediate past, read studies of the 1920’s to see how WWI affected Europe.
Or simply imagine yourself living for a day as an average person in the world you’ve created. How do you get to work? What do you do? How much do you get paid, relative to your neighbors? If you start stumbling over the details of everyday life, then your bafflegab probably needs some work.
The best bafflegab is inspirational. You know you’ve made it if your made-up world leads fans to explore it further – through fan fiction or role-playing games or even crunching the numbers. Perhaps the greatest example of this is Larry Niven’s 1970 Novel Ringworld, which introduced a ring-shaped artificial planet orbiting around its sun. Niven worked out his world in remarkable detail – 1000 mile high walls at the edge to hold in the atmosphere, the speed it had to move to maintain gravity, ways to deal with erosion.
It was such a detailed, interesting world that it inspired further research. One fan calculated the tensile strength of the material out of which it was built. And a year after publication, Niven attended a science fiction conference where MIT students marched through the halls chanting “Ringworld is unstable, Ringworld is unstable.” They’d calculated the giant ring’s orbital dynamics and found that, if anything nudged it out of a perfectly circular orbit, it would just keep falling until it hit its sun. The plot of the next book in the Ringworld series involved an automatic stabilization system. Since then, Niven’s written two more Ringworld books, with another on the way, continuing to explore the science and sociology of the giant structure. Essentially, Niven’s bafflegab created a world large and detailed enough that it’s still growing.
So whether you’re describing a world exactly like our own except with a new gadget, or an alien society on a methane world with slightly different rules of physics, don’t forget, your whole purpose is to fire your readers’ imaginations. Think of your alternate world as a character. Like all your other characters, your world has to be internally consistent and interesting. If your readers both believe in your world and are intrigued by it, then your bafflegab has done its job.
So what are your favorite examples of bafflegab? (As you can see, I’m a Niven fan.) Or do you have an example of a bafflegab fail?
About Dave King
Dave King is the co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a best-seller among writing books. An independent editor since 1987, he is also a former contributing editor at Writer's Digest. Many of his magazine pieces on the art of writing have been anthologized in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing and in The Writer's Digest Writing Clinic. You can check out several of his articles and get other writing tips on his website.
Bafflegab! What a great word. Jack Finney does it beautifully in his time travel books. The method (putting yourself in the proper frame both physically and mentally) is so believable, it makes you want to try it yourself.
Back in April, I wrote a column (in praise of paper books), which mentioned one volume of an eighteenth-century, eight-volume edition of The Spectator. Since then, I’ve been filling out the set with various mismatched volumes. A couple weeks ago, I scored six volumes of the eight-volume set, of which I only need three. So I thought I’d offer volume one to anyone here who was interested.
The book was printed in 1753 and has some interesting marginalia — an early nineteenth century bookplate that reads “J. Venables, e C. C. C. Oxon” and a handwritten signature, “J Farrer Coll. Reg. Cantab.” I contacted Mr. Julian Reid, archivist of Corpus Christie College, Oxford. He was kind enough to dig through the archives and found that James Venables was the son of Thomas Venables, a gentleman of Londonderry, Ireland. James matriculated at Worcester College, Oxford in 1796, then moved to Corpus Christie College, where he got his bachelors in 1801 and his masters in 1803. He served as vicar in Buckland Newton, Surrey and eventually as a canon in Salisbury Cathedral.
The archivist at King’s College, Cambridge, Dr. Patricia McGuire (archivists are great people) suggested one John Farrer of Queen’s College, Cambridge and put me in touch with the online Cambridge alumni database. According to it, John was admitted to Queens Feb 17, 1761, got his LLB (Bachelor of Letters) in 1768, and went on to be a schoolmaster and author of Greek and Latin primers. He married the daughter of a gentleman.
So you’d get to share this volume with (probably) the second or third sons of minor nobility who went into appropriate trades — education and the church. The volume also has a couple issue numbers written in the back, no doubt James’s or John’s assigned reading. So you can see what they were doing for homework 200 years ago.
The book is in pretty rough condition. Both boards are separated, as are some pages. But it’s a complete, reading edition, and great fun. If you’re interested, contact me at the e-mail address on my webpage (www.davekingedits.com).
Operators are on duty now . . .
My favorite (though Dune comes a close second): Heinlein’s Moon is Harsh Mistress. It feels as if it could work. Every time I read it.
It was Heinlein’s children’s books (Have Spacesuit, Will Travel) that got me hooked on science fiction. He got a little preachy with his adult books, but his world creation was wonderful.
You make an excellent point about paying attention to the sociological aspects of the world in which the characters reside. I’m currently at work on a novel in which a 19th-century English gentlewoman is stranded via shipwreck with a company of sailors, and I wondered, at first, how technical I wanted to get when it came to details regarding the ship and the wreck. But then I realized that the main character wouldn’t know any of those details – in fact, it wouldn’t make sense to include them (except, perhaps, as background noise in the mouths of the sailors), because she wouldn’t comprehend the situation that way. It wouldn’t make sense to identify every plant they find on the island because, in the story, it would seem contrived – how would any of them know what to call this or that particular foreign fruit? On the other hand, the main character would be acutely aware of the social differences between herself and between the various ranks of the captains and crewmen, and of the roles they might play in their new society in consequence. And that, I decided, was the background information I really needed to bring into the forefront of the story.
An excellent example, Lori, and thank you.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt if you know the details of a shipwreck, even if your main character doesn’t. If the confusion that she sees happening around her actually has a basis in fact, it will give the story more verisimilitude.
Great topic, Dave. Both you and Lori make good points in this exchange. As Lori demonstrates, though bafflegab may have roots in sci-fi, it applies to any genre. Examples could include a writer capturing how a police department functions in a detective story or weaving in the workings of a large hospital if the MC is a doctor (or falls ill).
I see developing bafflegab as part of the layering of a story, avoiding the syndrome in which no character ever appears to work, or pick up laundry, or get the sniffles. Done well, one can deepen the sense of reality without distracting from the plot.
My first book, set in WWI, was a coming of age story, not a war novel. My mantra during the writing was that the war should feel plausible and palpable, but not overwhelm the rather intimate tale. So while I did a great deal of research, the war was revealed solely through the eyes of my MC, offering a relatively narrow perspective … similar to Lori’s protagonist.
The new manuscript is contemporary, set during an election campaign. Yet I find the mantra still applies. I want to get the political aspect right – the pacing, terminology, personalities, etc – since the story unfolds within that environment. So again my research will feed into the building the bafflegab, crafting a plausible world for my characters and their story.
You know, John, I hadn’t thought of how bafflegab might even apply to mainstream fiction — capturing the worlds of politics or medicine in a way that’s plausible without being overburdened with detail. Very nice point, and thanks.
I write genre fiction and mainstream, and agree with both Lori and John–the main character in my current novel is a chef, and I needed to do some research to know enough about working in a pro kitchen to make the dialogue in a few scenes ring true. Several acquaintances/writers with restaurant experience have read these scenes and found them so authentic, they assumed I’ve worked in a pro kitchen myself! Now that I’ve established the MC’s expertise in the professional arena, I can move on with the rest of the story (personal relationships, desires, motivations, conflict, etc.).
Dave–Thanks for a fine article. The word “bafflegab” is now a part of the world in which I live, not one off the intergalactic beaten path. So is IJD technology.
I think Lori Schafer’s comment is very relevant to your topic: after being shipwrecked, neither her 19th-century English gentlewoman nor anyone with her would know about the flora/fauna on a desert island.
I write about our world in the here-and-now. I do my best to not violate the known laws of physics, and I don’t provide supernatural elements to generate or solve plot problems. But I do save myself the trouble of researching certain areas. I do this by developing characters that readers wouldn’t expect to know certain information.
When you advise writers to “simply imagine yourself living for a day as an average person in the world you’ve created,” that can’t be improved on (except maybe to quibble about “simply”). The trick is to be in characters’ heads, in the world the writer imagines for them.
Get that right, and “they will come.”
“Bafflegab” is a marvelous word, isn’t it?
Good points, Barry, and thanks.
Wow! This post was so helpful. I’m a beginning novelist working on my first novel, which is a science fiction MG book. When I started writing the first draft, I didn’t do too much world building, but before I start the second draft, I need to do some more in-depth world building. I’ll try out the technique of looking to the real world for inspiration so that I can avoid oversimplifying the world. Since it’s for kids, I’ll probably have more leeway, but at the same time, I don’t want to dumb the book down.
Hey, Ana.
I’m hoping you’ll find that, as you begin to imagine your world in more detail, you’ll begin to fall in love with it. I suspect that’s how the best worlds are built. They reach a tipping point in the writer’s imagination where you begin to explore it further simply because it’s fun.
Again, you don’t need to put all the detail in your book — in fact, that would probably be a mistake. But if you work out the detail, your world will take on a sense of reality that readers will feel.
What a great article! I’ve never heard this word before, but it’s got an adorable absurdity that I love. I will be using it in future! Thank you for the mention. As a new author, I’m just honored beyond words.
Well, hey, Jennifer. I didn’t realize you were on WU. I was just looking for a hard sci-fi book that involved translation, to balance the babelfish.
Happy to see you here.
Dave-
Over-simplification is one of my pet peeves about imaginary worlds.
For example, in fantasy there almost always are good guys and bad guys, one religion, one hegemonic government. Where, I ask, are the shades-of-gray guys, the religious schisms, the party factions? How does the middle class struggle against the King? Is there even a middle class? Not often.
In spec fiction you can count on philosophy being simplistic and free of ambiguity. Economics are ignored. Who pays for the quest? Don’t asteroid miners go bankrupt?
Paranormal romance and urban fantasy frequently present similar lapses. If there are demons, why are they only in Indianapolis and why only now?
I agree that on the page world-building demands a delicate balance between explanation and assumption. Use sparingly. That said, ask me imaginary worlds could be more real. When they are they are memorable.
I know, Donald. Though I can understand the temptation to oversimplification. You need to put a lot of thought into your world to get it plausible to a reasonable level of detail. Yet you can’t work all the details of your world — its governance, its economic structure, its legal system — into your story because you’d bore your readers to death. So all the background detail you work out never actually adds to your word count.
You gotta do it anyway. The best worlds are the ones with that level of background detail. Tolkien worked on the history of Middle Earth for literally decades before The Lord of the Rings was published. He invented at least two complete languages. But this made Middle Earth feel so real that, as one reviewer put it, if it didn’t exist, it ought to.
By the way, the demons in Indianapolis undoubtedly came from Cleveland, where there’s a Hellmouth. (Sorry, big Buffy fan.)
Just finished Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age, an amazingly detailed book with rich passages of bafflegab to explain a world in which nanotechnology had infiltrated the lives of even the lowliest of citizens. I admit I had to force myself through some early paragraphs, where details about nanostats and aerostats and matter compilers etc. etc. etc. pushed the limits of my scientific understanding and curiosity, but once I got into the swing of it I was off with the Neo-Victorian protagonist gallumphing around on his mechanical chevalline in search of the “ractive” book he created and which has fallen into the worthy hands of little Nell, of the lowly Leased Territories. Astonishing world-building. Astonishing bafflegab.
I’ve never read Stephenson, but I do have a soft spot in my heart for both Victoriana and steampunk. I’ll have to give him a try.
Did you know, by the way, that G. E. L. (“It was a dark and stormy night”) Bulwer-Lytton wrote a sci-fi novel? I’ve got it on my Nook. Just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
I did not know that about Bulwer Lytton and the sci fi novel. How very interesting. Must check it out. Love Victoriana too and doing a study of the Steam Punk genre. Stephenson takes the whole Victorian thing to a new level…a brilliant extrapolation on how elites could recreate that most popular of eras. Enjoyed the chat Dave.
Overall, a fine article, gives me plenty to contemplate.
On a more technical note; tidal currents on a phase locked world seem to me to be unlikely.
Something to consider is that extremely long cables do act as antenna, which is why for example our power grid is subject to outages caused by EMP. The cables themselves usually go undammaged, but the equipment attached to it is frequently destroyed.
If the environment is such that radiation and electromagnetic interference prevent the use of satellites, it may very well make usage of a long cable difficult as well.
Thanks, Rick. I’ll pass that on to my client. She may even like it better than the tidal currents.
The inhabited moon and the gas giant aren’t the only bodies in the system, so I suspect the complex, multi-body dynamics would allow for tides.
Great post. I love IJD. For my book series I have a timeline that spans over 300 years, so I have to pay very close attention to dates and years and when people enter and exit the story. It’s very helpful and keeps me honest and accountable.
I’ve seen “bafflegab” used in the comment section of political articles–seems like a natural application.
The novel I’m writing is speculative fiction, and while I should be drafting it faster than my usual plodding speed, because I have an unusual-to-me grasp of the story, it’s the world-building which slows my progress. Details about clothing fibers, food storage, and bathing have to make sense. Since I don’t read much speculative fiction, it’s been interesting, to say the least.
Until this experience, I hadn’t considered how a novel world would shape the use of imagery. For instance, I might have wanted to refer to an object as being cornflower-blue, but how can I do so when the natural world doesn’t contain one? It’s been a fascinating, and IMHO a neat experience in understanding the mechanics of deep POV. Hopefully that knowledge will enrich my contemporary work.
This is a problem that affects historical writers as well — describing things in terms the people of that era would use. And, you’re right, it’s tough. But if you can get it right, it’s also the most effective way for your readers to really enter into a different world. It can make for some powerful storytelling.
Actually, entering into the minds of people of other eras can help you enter the minds of characters on other worlds. If you read enough history — especially ephemera, like diaries or daily papers — you can get a feel for what is universally human and what is shaped by the culture we happen to live in.
Which, actually, brings me back to the offer I made at the head of the comments. That 1753 volume of The Spectator is still available.
Well, Dave, you pointing out the “IDJ” rule today has been a lifesaver as I could feel myself tipping into the abyss of too much bafflegab. Thank you!
Happy to be of service, Kathleen.
I’ve been given an editor’s permission to work on my bafflegab. Even though the fantasy world I write in is twenty years old, I only started formalizing it in the last few years when I started writing stories. Up until that point I had a disjointed collection of language notes, maps, family trees, descriptions of economies and governments, you name it. I have a hopelessly busy imagination, so over the years (often during walks) I’d write them down and you can bet that made for a baffling pile.
When finally I built up the endurance to see a novel-length manuscript through I drew on this world but stayed grounded in the story, resisting the temptation to stop and build the world but instead keeping track of what I mentioned as I went along. Soon I had files for nations, organizations, families, cultures, and the bare bones of a magic system, but something still wasn’t working. The problem was that, despite drawing on a familiar world, there were many details that didn’t fit the story, and there were many surprises I found in the story that added new aspects to the world.
I’d initially stepped back from my novel to move onto another one, but after a recent reader assessment by an editor I’ve been encouraged to instead spend time, however long it takes, completing my magic system and world notes. Then and only then go back to the story and work that in via some extra chapters at the beginning (which will allow me to delete much from the end where last-minute exposition eclipses some critical character development). I feel I’m ready for that too. Before I was building a world and that world called to write its stories. Now I’ve done that and those stories are callings to go back and build the world. It’s seems like a conundrum. Bafflegab…good word!