I’ve had an ongoing conversation with a friend of mine about inaccuracies in novels. She was pointing out little things that she knows about because of her past career. I, like the author, did not know about this particular inaccuracy. While she enjoyed the book in question, the error took her out of the story.
Another book she was reading was riddled with mistakes. The kind where a reasonable person would know that wouldn’t/couldn’t happen in real life. I’ve heard authors use the excuse “It’s fiction!” Regrettably, I’ve used that one, too.
The question becomes, just because it’s “fiction,” does that give authors free rein to create the world we need in order for our story to work?
I would say, no. Yes, it’s fiction. Yes, we make sh… stuff up. But, to quote Lee Lofland, we’re creating believable make-believe. We need to do the homework and research the key topics we include in our stories.
I have a support team that I reach out to when I have questions. Experts in various fields love to talk about their work (for the most part.) There are webinars and YouTube videos on virtually every topic under the sun.
However…
We still don’t know what we don’t know. I’ve been guilty of writing scenes, which felt relatively minor, without diving into the research rabbit hole.
If you don’t know what that is, it’s when you start Googling a topic and spend the next eight hours reading up on something that will result in one sentence in your story.
Anyway, in this particular book, I thought I knew enough about a topic, inserted the information into the story, and then had a beta reader point out that what I’d written was wrong. It couldn’t happen.
The book was on the verge of being in print. Fixing it to meet reality would’ve meant coming up with a completely different method of murder. After gnashing my teeth for the next week, I finally came up with a believable workaround. I acknowledged the problem and gave a rational explanation for why things happened this way.
No one else has ever called me out on that error.
Readers need to trust that the author knows what they’re talking about. We have to sound authentic. That doesn’t mean writing 25 pages of detailed explanation on a topic. (We aren’t writing a term paper, after all.) The tidbit to give the reader faith in our knowledge is likely to be one sentence here, another sentence there.
When I started the Zoe Chambers series, Zoe was a paramedic. I had worked as an EMT for several years, so I had a solid background to draw from. Pete, however, was a cop. I have never been in law enforcement. Granted, all these years later, I’ve done a ton of research into police procedure and psychology. But I know I get stuff wrong.
Because I don’t know what I don’t know. If I did, I would ask!
The point I’m trying to make is this: as a writer, do your homework. Don’t guess on the stuff that you know you don’t know. ASK. As long as you can draw your reader into your world with some level of authority and believability, they are more likely to give you a pass for those little mistakes that slip by.
At least, I hope so.
Fellow Writers Who Kill, how much research do you put into your characters? Or do you rely on your own know-how? Write what you know, etc. And readers, how much leeway do you tend to give to authors when you find a mistake in a story?
