323. Making Science Accessible in Fiction with Sara Winokur

Author and geneticist Sara Winokur explains how to write science in a way that is digestible for readers while maintaining its integrity in your story.

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Check out Sara's website:
https://www.sarawinokur.com/about-sara-winokur/

Grab some of her books:
https://www.sarawinokur.com/books-by-sara-winokur/

Follow Sara on her Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/sara_winokur/

Transcript

Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the author-focused podcast that takes a whole-person approach to everything related to both writing and editing. Real-life science can sometimes play a pivotal part in our fiction. But how do we explain the theories, principles, and other necessary information in a way that won't make readers feel like they just sat down with a textbook? The key is to make the science accessible, but without boring or losing your readers. Geneticist turned author Sara Winokur is here to explain how she does this with her own writing.

Jennia: Well, first, thank you so much for being here today!

Sara Winokur: Well, thank you for inviting me!

Jennia: Mhm! You have a fascinating background and I'd love to start there and have you tell us a little bit about that and then also how it influenced what you write about.

Sara Winokur: Sure. So for 25 years I worked at the University of California, Irvine, working in human genetic diseases as a researcher. So we were looking at gene mutations that cause certain human genetic diseases such as Huntington's disease and muscular dystrophy and so forth. And then it sort of moved on to once we knew what the genetic changes were, how does that affect the cell and the tissue in the organ and then what can we do about it? So I worked there for 25 years and loved it. Love science. I love a puzzle, a mystery (both laugh), which is I guess why I ultimately decided to write mysteries—

Jennia: Yes! It's, like, a different type of mystery!

Sara Winokur: It is! So I—I'm fortunately—I'm 100 percent healthy now, but about 14 years ago I had ovarian cancer.

Jennia: Ohh.

Sara Winokur: But I'm 100 percent fine now. They caught it in time. But at the time I took a step back and I thought, whoa, I better take care of my health. And—

Jennia: Yeah.

Sara Winokur: —then after I was healthy I thought, well, you know, what else can I do in my life? Should I go back into doing research or should I try something totally different? And I decided that I would try something totally different and become an author of historical mysteries—

Jennia: Ahh.

Sara Winokur: —I've always loved a mystery, as I mentioned.

Jennia: Mhm.

Sara Winokur: And I think that's what drove me to science. And that's when I decided to write these books. I knew that in Iceland there was a DNA database of most of its citizens. And it's not, like, just to track down criminals. It's not a criminal database. It's a database that they're actually using to identify genes that cause common diseases like heart disease and cancer and diabetes. So they're doing some really good research. And I was invited to take a tour there in Reykjavik—

Jennia: Wow! Neat.

Sara Winokur: —Yeah! So I went to Reykjavik just thinking, well, I'd like to incorporate a little bit of genetics into my mystery, and let's just see where this goes. That sounds like that could be an interesting start. I toured this company and afterward I toured the country itself and I just was outstanded, overwhelmed by how beautiful it was and how kind the people were and how quirky their culture is.

Jennia: Yes! We just went last spring and we had the same experience (laughs).

Sara Winokur: Yeah, yeah. And I also thought it was just a perfect place to set a mystery—

Jennia: Ah yes! (laughs)

Sara Winokur: First of all they have this genetic database and it's a bit controversial. And so I decided to incorporate that in the mystery. And then you have all these, like, very remote, isolated farmsteads that are, like, 10 kilometers away from the next one. And I just thought, oh, this is an excellent place to set a mystery. That was my first book, which was called Double Blind. And this book that just came out called Ivory Bones: the Lewis Chessmen Murders—

Jennia: Oh, yes!

Sara Winokur: —That is also primarily set in Iceland, but it's also . . . It's a dual-timeline story—

Jennia: Which is also fun and has its own challenges. Could have just—

Sara Winokur: Right! Definitely (laughs). So it's not time travel, but it's, like, dual timeline in that the protagonist, who happens to be a forensic geneticist, receives this diary, the 400-year-old diary with the clues to finding these medieval artifacts. And so . . .

Jennia: So did you have some of the science from the 400-year-ago time? And then were you able to show a little bit maybe how beliefs and things had changed?

Sara Winokur: Actually, no, I didn't. But I used the present-day genetic technology to track down the descendants of that woman that was taken captive by the Barbary Pirates—

Jennia: Ohh!

Sara Winokur: —in the 1600s. So I used this genetic technology, it's called mitochondrial genetics. So I incorporated that in the book to find this family, this present-day family in Iceland that owned these really valuable medieval artifacts. I don't know that much was known—Certainly I don't think anything was known about genetics at that point in the 1600s. I think Mendel was, like, not till the 1800s or something like that, so.

Jennia: Yeah, I was even thinking just the way, for instance, that we see how popular diseases—well, not popular, but common diseases were thought of hundreds of years ago or what they attributed the cause to—

Sara Winokur: Yes!

Jennia: —and if that may be something that was incorporated at all?

Sara Winokur: Well, that is a good point. You know, Iceland—not so much these days, but Icelanders up until, say, 50 years ago believed in these creatures called the huldufólk, which are the Hidden People. And whenever somebody would disappear or something, like, bad happened to an individual, they would often sort of lay the responsibility or the blame on these Hidden People.

Jennia: Mmm.

Sara Winokur: So that was just part of their belief system at the time. And people say, "Oh, Icelanders believe in elves!" Well, they don't really anymore (Jennia laughs). Maybe some of them do, but they did up until quite recently because they had to sort of make sense of what was happening in their world and—

Jennia: Yeah! Exactly. Which is what we see happen around the world as we look into—

Sara Winokur: Yeah!

Jennia: —and history and anthropology and, right.

Sara Winokur: That's exactly right.

Jennia: Well, did you have to do any additional research for this book apart from what you already knew or maybe what you had discovered on your travels to Iceland?

Sara Winokur: So I knew of this pirate raid on Iceland, which was a real historical event in 1627, where pirates from North Africa, they were actually originally of Dutch or German origin. I won't go into the whole history there, but they started operating out of North Africa—

Jennia: Mhm!

Sara Winokur: —and they would ply the seas up near Iceland, and Ireland, and England, and raid these villages and take, like, hundreds and thousands of these villagers back to North Africa and sell them as slaves. I did not know the full extent of that bit of history.

Jennia: Mhm.

Sara Winokur: And so I did do a lot of research on that. I also did a lot of research on these Lewis Chessmen, which are 12th century, like, medieval artifacts that are extremely valuable. Most of them are in the British Museum and they're worth, like, one- or two-million dollars for each piece.

Jennia: Oh my goodness!

Sara Winokur: (laughs) And there are still, to this day, three or four pieces that are still missing. And so that was like the crux of the mystery here, because in the diary there's sort of clues as to where they might be.

Jennia: Mhm.

Sara Winokur: And so you have people looking for them, some of which are, you know, very reputable and want to put them in the museum.

Jennia: Right.

Sara Winokur: And other people that are not quite so reputable. Their—

Jennia: And probably just want that one- to two-million dollars (laughs).

Sara Winokur: Exactly! Exactly. And they're in my book, willing to kill for them. Literally (laughs).

Jennia: Well, that's how you get a murder mystery. Yep! (laughs)

Sara Winokur: Yep! Yeah, so I just sort of tied all that together. I didn't need to do a lot of research on what happened during that raid and on the Lewis Chessmen themselves.

Jennia: So when you were adding in, especially the science components, what are some of the ways you worked in this information without just writing massive blocks of exposition?

Sara Winokur: Yeah, right. I (laughs) really tried describing the technique in very layperson terms so that it wasn't, like, this huge info dump. So I just described what it is in fairly accessible terms. And it doesn't play a huge role. Like, it's not scattered throughout the book or you have to, like—

Jennia: Oh!

Sara Winokur: —learn more about genetics. She's a forensic geneticist, so she basically uses this DNA database to solve crimes. So I describe sometimes how she's solved one crime or another, but in a very brief way. So there's not a lot of genetics in the book. But, I mean, I always, when—I like reading historical fiction, because I always learned something that I didn't know anything about. And so I try to do the same thing.

Jennia: Mmm! I can see that, yeah. Especially because I think that there are so many parts of science where you might have misinformation or there might be these really popular theories that have no basis in reality. And then we read something that's written by someone who is informed and it helps us see, okay, maybe I need to think about this differently. Maybe what I believed until now isn't true. And so I think it gives it that extra air of authenticity when it comes from someone who does have a background like you do.

Sara Winokur: Yeah. And, I mean, I didn't feel a responsibility to do that, but I felt I wanted to do that because—

Jennia: Mhm.

Sara Winokur: —a lot of scientists don't always explain what they do in very straightforward terms.

Jennia: Right—

Sara Winokur: And so, yeah, so I wanted to make the science kind of fun, actually (laughs). I don't know, it sounds like an oxymoron (both laugh).

Jennia: No! I think anything can be fun if you figure out a way to do it (laughs).

Sara Winokur: Yeah. So I incorporated the genetics into the mystery so the reader could follow along.

Jennia: Yeah, I can see that being more exciting, too, because it's not just, here's this information that you absolutely must know. And then it's like when you're in high school and someone hands you a worksheet to fill out in your textbook to find the answers in. But, yeah, you're given a reason to care about it because you want to help solve this murder, too, you want to see how it happened and why.

Sara Winokur: Exactly, exactly. So that's why . . . I mean, I call it Genetics Lite (Jennia laughs). So I just sprinkle it throughout the book. But it's primarily like a historical mystery. Well, a dual-timeline mystery. So it takes historical events like that pirate raid on Iceland and these Lewis Chessmen—which are real pieces, most of which are, as I said, in the British and Scottish museums, but there are some pieces missing. So there's a lot of historical aspects of the book, but they play into the present-day mystery.

Jennia: Did it always start out with Genetics Lite or maybe in an earlier draft, did you have more information included that you went back and removed?

Sara Winokur: No, it always was Genetics Lite, because many people sort of get scared away from, "Oh, genetics. Oh, yeah, I didn't understand that," or, "I didn't want to take that," or. So I just wanted the reader, who had really no exposure, to—even any aspect of science or genetics, to really understand how it played a part in the mystery.

Jennia: Mhm. Was it difficult at all to get into that mindset of the general audience and to sort of figure out, is this something that they would already know? Is it something they would need more background information on? That sort of thing?

Sara Winokur: Well, you know, when I was working as a genetic researcher, I had been to many conferences that were attended—

Jennia: Mhm.

Sara Winokur: —by people that were afflicted by the various diseases that we were studying. And so many of these patients and families also did not have a background in genetics, of course. And so I was already familiar with how to convey some of these terms and techniques in a way that people could understand. It wasn't really that hard to do, honestly.

Jennia: Yeah, I can see where those prior conversations would really be beneficial for writing something like this. Because I think, too, there's that capacity for us to already go into a conversation, "I know all of this." And so it's harder to figure out what would maybe be better in layman's terms? Or what is the baseline that my audience is approaching this with? And then how do you figure that out? So do you have any tips for someone who maybe is heavily into the sciences and is looking into writing fiction and how they can weigh their own choices with what they include or don't include, or how they explain it?

Sara Winokur: Well, I would say not to shy away from trying to explain somewhat intricate concepts. Don't shy away from it. Because, just speaking for myself, as I mentioned, I always like to learn something. You know, I may read a book that has to do with geopolitics or some aspect of our world that I know very little about, and I appreciate it. So I would say don't shy away from explaining—in palatable terms or easily digestible terms—

Jennia: Mhm.

Sara Winokur: —fairly complicated topics, but also don't dwell on them. Because then you will lose your reader and you've got to keep the pace up. Well, I'm speaking of a murder mystery (both laugh). It has to read at a clip. You know, it's got to have a pace to it, and you don't want to get bogged down in all the details of the science. So I just sort of mention it, explain it. I mostly explain it in dialogue—

Jennia: Ahh yeah.

Sara Winokur: —to someone that wouldn't have had a background. So it's almost like I'm explaining it to the reader, but I'm explaining it to another character.

Jennia: No, that's a good technique. Yeah.

Sara Winokur: Yeah.

Jennia: I've seen that used really effectively in other work too. Not just from other people who've been on the podcast and have been on talking about a different subject, but even in books I've read where maybe they have an intern coming in and they have to explain, "Oh, this is how we use the lab. We don't do that even though you might have done that in your graduate studies"—

Sara Winokur: Right.

Jennia: —It all feels very, very natural. It doesn't feel as if they're there as a placeholder for the reader, even though in some ways they are,  as in you don't notice that as you're reading it. It's only maybe once you go back and are analyzing it and thinking about it, you think, "Aha!" (laughs)

Sara Winokur: Yes! Then it makes sense. Yeah. So, you know, I introduce the concept and maybe I'll allude to it one more time during the book. But I don't overexplain.

Jennia: And the characters aren't likely to overexplain it anyway, especially if it's something that they're incredibly knowledgeable about. You know, for instance, with us, let's say, like with editing, I don't explain to myself what I'm doing. And I would think the same would be for anyone in whatever field or career they're in. They just go about and do these things without really a lot of thought into what they're doing or why.

Sara Winokur: Yeah, that's true. It came very naturally to me. But, as I said, I didn't really feel an obligation to include it. But when I decided, way back then—not way back then, but back then (Jennia laughs)—to reinvent myself and become an author, I decided, well—people say, "Right, well, you know . . ." And I just thought, well, I know genetics. And sometimes science can either be a mystery in itself or it can be used to solve some sort of mystery—

Jennia: Mmm.

Sara Winokur: —in terms of real-life genetics. The mystery might be how a disease comes about or how people are affected by DNA mutations and so forth.

Jennia: Right. Or even why one person in a family might end up being diagnosed with it and not another and then exploring that area also and what other factors come into play. Yeah, I can just see that it's one of those things where you have, like, almost that Post It note board up on your wall and you start here at the center Post It note, before you know [it], it's branching off everywhere as more mysteries unfold from that central mystery.

Sara Winokur: Exactly! So I really had a good time writing it for this book because of that. I did write an outline prior to diving in and actually writing the story. Because, especially in a mystery, you've got to fit all the pieces together so that not only do they flow, but they make sense with what happened earlier. And you've got to put in some hints along the way so that when the reader gets to the end of the book, they go, "Oh yeah, now that makes sense that that person did this," you know, "and that person was the culprit." It's very disappointing to get to the end of the book and just presented with all this new information and, oh, the reader never had a chance to figure it out.

Jennia: Yeah, I agree. That usually is really disappointing because you want to feel like you have a basic understanding of what's going on. You want to be able to look back and see where those pieces presented themselves to point to whatever conclusion it came to. Not that they just arrived in this very timely manner, but that it also denied you from being able to do that.

Sara Winokur: Exactly.

Jennia: So for when there is science in a book, how accurate do you think that the science needs to be?

Sara Winokur: If we're talking about science fiction? No, you could write whatever you want.

Jennia: Right.

Sara Winokur: But if you're alluding to real science, whether it's present day or past, I feel it's extremely important. Because there's so much misinformation out there that I feel it's extremely important that it be accurate. And the same goes for the historical aspects of the book. I feel you're drawing the reader into this story, into this mystery. And, you know, I've heard it said that fiction has to be truer than nonfiction (laughs)—

Jennia: Ohh.

Sara Winokur: —because you're expecting your reader to enter this world, and immerse themselves in this world, and believe what's going on. Personally, I feel that it's very important to be accurate. There's enough misinformation out there (laughs).

Jennia: Yes. Do you think it might also destroy the reader's trust in the author if they find out something that's been presented as science and then they find out it's mostly falsified information?

Sara Winokur: Yeah, I think that that would be really discouraging. I mean, if that were the case when I read a novel, I'm not sure I would continue to read that author.

Jennia: Mhm. Do you think there are ever times when you could justify being creative with the science besides science fiction?

Sara Winokur: I think that it would be okay as long as the reader realizes that—like, in magical realism, something like that. As long as the reader understands that it's a stretch of the truth, I think that's fine.

Jennia: Mhm.

Sara Winokur: But I wouldn't want to lead the reader down this path where they're believing something that is not accurate unless they already know that, "Suspend your belief at this point, and we're gonna hop off onto this tangent." I think that's 100 percent fine.

Jennia: Right. What if it's a part of science that is still new and somewhat unexplored, and maybe it's used as speculation, but let's say that it's more literary fiction and not science fiction?

Sara Winokur: Right. Yeah. And there ar—even just speaking of genetics, there are many genetic techniques and technologies today like CRISPR, and cloning, and stem cells, and the science is still relatively in its infancy in terms of our understanding of it. Again, I think the same rules, or whatever you want to call them, apply where the reader has to understand that this is not established scientific fact, but it's definitely coming and there are these potential uses and misuses of this technology and so forth.

Jennia: Do you have any ideas on how authors can do that and can make it apparent without it derailing from the story and pulling them to the side, "Oh, by the way"?

Sara Winokur: Yeah. Maybe to set the story somewhat in the future—

Jennia: Mmm.

Sara Winokur: —so that we know that we're not sitting here in 2025 and that these various aspects of science are accurate or verified.

Jennia: Mhm.

Sara Winokur: Maybe to set the novel a bit in the future, where it's very likely that many of these technologies will be probably commonplace (laughs).

Jennia: No, it makes sense. Yeah.

Sara Winokur: Yeah.

Jennia: Do you have any parting advice you'd like to leave listeners with that we haven't already covered?

Sara Winokur: Well, I hope that they will enjoy the book, that they learn something from the book. If there are listeners out there that are not writers or authors but interested in writing, I would say not necessarily to write what you know, but write what you're interested in. Because that really comes across in whatever you're writing. Your enthusiasm will come across. Sometimes people write what they know. And maybe it's—

Jennia: Right! Which we do hear to do that all the time.

Sara Winokur: —can be little—can be a little dry. So just bring your enthusiasm for the story and the research and pour that into your book. And also, don't be afraid—

Jennia: Ah yes.

Sara Winokur: —to start. Don't be afraid because . . . it's a new challenge. And when I wrote my first book, people asked me, "How will you measure the success of this book?"

Jennia: Mmm.

Sara Winokur: And it really was my satisfaction knowing that I actually plowed through—

Jennia: Mhm.

Sara Winokur: —and wrote an entire novel. And it's very important to reach out to friends, and family, and critique groups, and get input. And some of it you could consider criticism, but one always learns from that as well.

Jennia: Yeah, that's really great advice! Thank you so much for sharing that.

Sara Winokur: Oh, thank you so much! That was really interesting and fun.

Jennia: Yes, I agree! I loved it.

Jennia: And thank you for listening, and be sure to check out the show notes for additional information, including all of Sara's links and where you can buy a copy of her most recent book. And then please join me next week when Angela Brown will explain how she combined empty nest syndrome and magical realism in her book, Some Other Time. Thanks again!