The 20/80 Rule

Yesterday, I was discussing the 80/20 rule. I referenced the normal distribution or Gaussian distribution or you may know it as the Bell Curve. But that just says that 20% of your resources handles 80% of the cases. However, as a science fiction writer, I am actually more interested in the 20/80 rule, that is, things outside the norm. I am talking about the space beyond the red portion:


When I first started writing the Rome's Revolution series, I spent an incredible amount of time making sure that everything I wrote was totally realistic and totally believable, sometimes to the detriment of the plot. In other words, it fit within the norm. However, many of the wilder things that I put in there, things that I thought people would balk at, didn't even register a blip on people's radar. I guess that's a good thing. However, it did embolden me to take things farther out from the center of the bell-shaped curve the next time.

When I decided to write The Ark Lords, I started putting in stuff that was patently absurd, like placing a space beacon on the far side of the Moon or having Rei captured to be a sex slave. But once again, nobody balked at that. They just let it slide in the context of the story. So when I wrote Rome's Evolution, I had no fear. I turned Rome into a telepath. I made MINIMCOM the world's greatest surgeon. I had a man stab Rei right in the chest and have it pass through, cutting off his hand. I made Rome a far off descendant of Jack Henry. I even have Rome spent time chatting with the Overmind of Earth. Nobody raised a stink.

When the time came to write The Milk Run, I went all in. I wrote about Heaven and God and the soul and the meaning of life. I even turned Rome and Rei into immortal beings so I could continue on with their story forever, so should I choose. People seemed to like this. Nobody said, hey, that's stupid and beyond the boundaries of the norm.

So I'll keep pushing the limits of the Gaussian curve, going farther and farther out until somebody, anybody tells me I went too far. In the immortal words of OMCOM, to six deltas and beyond!