What is Science Consulting?
When introducing scientific procedures or phenomena into your manuscript, a few scenarios can play out. These events can be as small as one thing that happens in a single scene in an overall non-sciency story, or you can have critical elements of your plot—or, indeed, the entire plot—depend on sound science. You might want to iron out the details in the planning stage, before you actually write anything, or while you’re outlining your plot; or you might want to wait until you’ve written the whole thing out to check if it works well. Either way, you want to make sure the science aspects you’ve planned your scene/ plot around are correct and come across as realistic rather than trope-y and farfetched. The problem is, you’re not a scientist, so these things do not come easily to you, and a cursory Google search might not cut it.
That’s where my science consulting comes in: I will guide you through the science required to get through your scene or overall plotline the way you want it to go, in accordance with what your intended audience is going to need and expect. I will not write your scenes for you, but I will advise you on how to best present the science so that your audience understands it and can follow it without it seeming incongruent with the rest of your narrative. I will make recommendations as to how you can rearrange or change things as necessary if your original plan does not work for any reason. I can also do the necessary research for you if you do not know or do not have the time or patience to do such specific research yourself. If I believe I am not knowledgeable enough about a certain area of science to give you the guidance you need, I will advise you to look for a specialist or offer suggestions as to how to achieve the same result via a more general path.
How It Works
One-on-one voice-only meetings over Skype, Zoom, or the teleconferencing software of your choice up to twice per week, 1 to 2 hours per meeting. Additional meetings can be arranged if you have any questions or require any clarification, as long as my schedule allows and I have enough time to prepare and research if needed.
There is no fixed number of meetings by design; how many meetings we have will depend on the size and scope of your project. You may request more meetings as long as you feel your project still requires my help, although if the problem to be fixed is too small for an hour-long meeting, I might suggest we hash them out via email rather than by teleconference.
If you’d like me to consult on a scene or full manuscript that has already been written, there will be an added fee for my first read-through of it, to identify and familiarize myself with any science elements that will be included in the consult; this read-through has a word-count-based fee similar to that of a science review. Time spent in preparation for these consultation meetings, following up via email, or researching for your project will be billed hourly on top of the fixed cost of the meetings.
Pricing
Consulting meetings via teleconference will cost you $25 USD per hour per session, with sessions taking up 1 or 2 hours at a time. An initial read-through of your manuscript or scene to identify and familiarize myself with any science elements that will be included in the consult will cost you $0.002 USD (0.2 cents) per word, or a base fee of $20 USD if it’s under 10,000 words; this fee will be will be added to and charged with the cost of our first meeting. Additional time spent preparing for meetings, following up via email, or researching for your project will cost you $15 per hour rounded up to the nearest hour, and it will be billed biweekly or when your consult is complete, whichever happens first.
Please note that I will only do science consulting on narrative fiction works; I will not work on journalistic, academic, or workplace articles and reports, schoolwork of any kind, or other similar non-narrative, nonfiction manuscripts.
Work Termination, Returns, and Refunds
Freaking Narnia does not sell or offer material goods; only editorial and consulting services are provided. As such, we do not conduct any business through physical mail. All exchange of data, including manuscripts and any documents generated as a product of science consulting, proofreading, and beta reading, is done electronically, in most cases via email. As such, Freaking Narnia does not offer returns of material goods of any kind, including items physically mailed to us.
Completion dates and deadlines for all projects will be agreed upon with the client before the start of work, also via email. For any email inquiries, we will try our hardest to get back to you within 24 hours, but please afford a maximum of 72 hours for a response. If you have not heard back from us in over 72 hours, feel free to reach out again.
Any payments received are non-refundable. A project may be terminated at any time, and payment will only be required for work already completed up to the date of termination. All work completed prior to termination of service must be paid at the agreed-upon rate. Any completed work shall be delivered upon payment. Deposits are non-refundable.
