Your Imagination Is The Limit

The beauty of writing is that you can do anything.  The only limit is your imagination.  That is a real limit, though.  If you can't imagine something, you have no way to write about it.

I often wonder what the world would be like if humans had 12 fingers instead of 10.  If they did, our counting system would be base 12 instead of base ten, which means we could very easily divide things by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12.  With our numbers, we only have 1, 2, 5, and 10.  Maybe humanity as a whole would be incredibly smarter because math would be so exceptionally easier.  Maybe we would have all kinds technology and scientific advances hundreds of years before they happened on our 10-fingered world.  But I have no idea.

I can't imagine how different the world would be with such a seemingly significant change.  And for that very reason, I could never write a story about 12-fingered people.

"But Kevin," I hear you saying, "couldn't you just make it up as you go?  Isn't that what your imagination is for?"

Well, you're right, [your name].  But there is a catch to that.  If you only consider skin-deep differences, you have a skin-deep world.  Think about science fiction where an alternate planet or universe has one simple change, yet the only difference between the to world as somebody's facial hair and their favorite sandwich meat.  It's garbage storytelling, for one thing.  For another, it's unrealistic as to how different a world would be with even the smallest difference present.  Presenting it as identical to our with only a cosmetic difference is so cheap, but there is no way you could calculate all the things, big and small, that would have occurred since the dawn of man.

If I try to imagine something that cannot be imagined, I will make terrible writing.  And that is something that should be avoided at all costs.