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?
I tend to do a lot of research. I bothers me a bit when there is something glaring in the story that doesn't seem plausible.
ReplyDeletePlausible is a good word for this topic, Heather.
DeleteWhen it comes to police procedures, one thing that saves me is that procedures can vary from place to place. If someone were to question a procedure that I have in a book, I can safely say that it may not be done in your district like this, but it is in another.
ReplyDeleteExactly! And I have fallen back on this one, especially in the early days of the Zoe Chambers series. It also helped to have a fictional location, making it all the easier to rightfully claim, "That's how it's done in Monongahela County."
DeleteSometimes I know what really happens, but writing the truth would bore the sh ... er stuffing ... out of readers. For example, I don't write legal thrillers, but my characters do spend time in courts. My solution is to compress time - hearings happen quicker -- but I fess up to those sins in my Author's notes.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, I used real places--except when I need to make something up. I tell readers about those sins, as well.
You are absolutely correct, Jim. The reality of most professions would bore a reader to tears. Hours of paperwork. Hours of staring at a computer screen. Hours of... NOTHING. The writer's #1 rule should always be LEAVE OUT THE BORING STUFF.
DeleteI guess to get myself started. I research later. Otherwise, as you said, I lost way to much time down the research rabbit hole. Eight hours on washing machines in 1942. Finding out that the number on a Pitney Bowes postmark has nothing to do with the post office and everything to do with registering the machine so if there is a problem, it can be tracked down. Little things.
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me, I need to arrange a call with my new P.I. expert before I start my next book!
It's good to know we have critique partners who will catch most of our errors, Liz.
DeletePerhaps even worse than not knowing what you don't know is "knowing" something & discovering (after it's in print, of course) that you were totally wrong.
ReplyDeleteYes! Which is what I meant when I titled this When You Don't Know What You Don't Know. Sometimes we THINK we know, but we don't . Then we can only hope that we aren't judged too harshly.
DeleteAs a reader, I love learning new things while reading fiction, so I appreciate authors' efforts at getting things right. I will forgive some errors, because we are only human, but overall it has to make sense. <3
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mary. I agree.
DeleteI think readers are willing to suspend their disbelief some of the time — if the point in question makes sense. For example, I write a cozy series. It does not seem "realistic" that someone gets murdered in my small town every six months, but so be it....lol!
ReplyDeleteIt may not be realistic, Lori, but otherwise the genre wouldn't exist!
DeleteIt could happen...but how realistic is the author's assumption? I'm constantly questioning the credibility of my plots. During one of my many revisions, I double-check everything: facts, spelling, place names, purple Corvetts...
ReplyDeleteMaybe these little unintentional errors are in the same category as typos. No matter how many times we re-read our pages, one always slips through.
DeleteThis is a subject that I have written about before and it has affected whether I continue with the story or even the author’s future work
ReplyDeleteI have read historical books in which an event may have actually occurred but not necessarily at the time in the book. There may be a reference to an invention that didn’t exist when it appears in the story.
In notes at the end the author will acknowledge the discrepancy and explain that they did adjust the time because they wanted to use the event or item in the story.
I am willing to go along with these explanations since they have been minor issues and the authors made these changes knowing that the timeline was changed to fit the story.
What I cannot accept is one that changes something about a real person who is very different from what they were in real life.
I think I mentioned this in a previous post.
I read a book in which George Gershwin appears in a club where he is playing the piano. The problem is his appearance occurs five years after his actual death. I don’t think his being there was really relevant to the story and the fact that he was so well known meant that either the author or someone else should have done a better job in their
research or proofreading. I never finished the book because I could no longer trust the accuracy of the story or the author. It also meant that I won’t read her future books for the same reason.
Thanks for the feedback. You remind me why I don't ever want to write historical fiction.
DeleteOh, the fear no not knowing what I don’t know! I tend to over-research for authenticity, and yet, sometimes I miss the obvious. Like you, I have a posse of experts, and I’m eternally grateful for all the raw egg facials they have spared me. Errors are, of course, solely the responsibility of the author, sometimes due to an excess of hubris!
ReplyDeleteWell put, Kait!
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