Accuracy

See the BBC story here here

Do you care to get all the details right? Every one of them?

Having just read a book where a character packs several lances away into saddlebags! I know as a reader it bugs me hugely when things I know about are wrong in a book I read. Some of them like FTL you can just shrug and ignore, but the more 'real' the book is the more it matters - but if it's an area like sailing or horseriding where I don't know the details, then as long as it's consistent I probably won't notice - hence on average most errors won't be noticed?

Would you consider putting your novel out for fact checking?
Readers - would you be mroe inclined to buy a novel that was certified as 'not wrong'??

As for my own big book, I didn't hire a fact-checker, simply because I was unlikely to find anybody with the necessary breadth of experence. I DID circukate it among several dozen persons who made incidental comments, though only a few about factual material. Not-so-secretly, I was delighted that nobody found fault with any of the foreign-language, engineering, or criminal-procedUre matters. Conversely, once I'd committed myself to print, I myself found an ananchronism which nobdy else has yet caught, even people who live near the place in question. Ah me: first you commit yourself -- and then you see! Meanwhile, who is to do the certifying? One things is for certain: editlorial work, even at serious publishers, is a travesty of what it once was, or still should be. The perception seems to be that it's all throw-away stuff, so why go the expense of checking facts, or even grammar? Personally, once I find middle-school-level mistakes in na particular writet, I may finish the given book, but will probably avoid any subsequent productions. Recent case in point: Jay Parini's opusculum about the last days of Tolstoy. O yeah, if you find errors in this post -- don't blame an editor. Blame me for typing without my glasses! Peace to y'all -- Goddard

Would I? Boy howdy, yes!
A lot of what I write has exaggerations for a humorous effect, and I expect the reader is intelligent enough to get the joke. But, of the parts that are not exaggerated, they better be right.
I've also edited several novels, and called the author out on several things, like:
• a character drives nine hundred miles on back roads and through small town, in ten hours, including stops for gas, lunch, etc;
• antique motorcycle has an electric starter motor;
• two characters independently reminisce about the incredible sex they recently had with each other, but they didn't;
• brown, shoulder-length hair gets shampooed and cut; next day it's long and blonde;
• character returns home (a ranch), bull is grazing in front of the house (where it usually is); pulls around back to find the barn is all shot up, and rather than check on the animals inside, goes to check on the bull again, then goes into the house.

I've got to stop; there's too much screaming going on in my head.

I recently started to read a book in which, on one page, an event occurred shortly before the author's 11th birthday. On the very next page the same event was described as happening shortly before her 10th birthday.

It also drives me nuts when I read a book set in the city where I live (Chicago), and the geography is wrong. Like putting someone's home at the intersection of two streets that run parallel to each other. And that author was a Chicagoan!

Those kinds of errors bug me, since I want to wonder if I could have prevented them with a different outline/reference procedure.

My work doesn't tend to have too many of them, by the end. My editor is amazing, and targets a good amount of feedback towards inconsistencies or overreaches.

I'm something of a pedant, and I'm all in favour of fact-checking, but I don't think I'd necessarily be prepared to pay extra for a novel that came with a Nihil Obstat from the Washington Academy of Sciences (or the National Maritime Museum, the Good Housekeeping Institute, the Law Society or whatever). We have to keep things in proportion. Novelists are people paid to tell lies, so we expect them to make an effort to make those lies convincing, just as we expect them to deliver a product free from avoidable errors of grammar, spelling, etc. Unintentional departures from plausibility like those that WholeHouseLibrary lists are unpleasant because they spoil the illusion for all of us (except the very unobservant), but they should get eliminated during proofreading anyway.
The more technical errors are tricky. I don't think it's the end of the world if a writer gets minor details wrong that are unimportant to the plot and concern subject-matter only a tiny proportion of readers would know about. A book I read recently mentioned a character as working at a particular university in a particular year: I happened to have been at another university in the same city at about the same time, so I knew that the one mentioned in the book didn't exist under that name at that time, although it does now. Fact-checking (or simply using an invented name instead of a real one) would have fixed that, but really the error was totally unimportant to the plot, and was no more than a minor irritation even to the "informed" reader.
On the other hand, if the whole story hangs on a particular scientific principle, point of law, historical fact, or whatever, then I have a right to expect the author will get it right, and would probably toss the book aside and give it a snide review if they didn't.

I am anxiety-ridden with facts in my work. Even though I live in Berkeley, where I set my last work, I went back to old maps, photographs, walked the routes just to make sure I got it right. And I had to do a lot of reading for the information I got on other parts of the stories.

We're editing the backlist right now and Legacy is up - I did a heck of a lot of research and fact-checking for it, but guess what I'm doing now? Looks like another trip to Italy is in order!

On the other hand, because I write fiction I hope my readers will be forgiving if I miss something or take artistic license.

Thorold wrote: "I don't think it's the end of the world if a writer gets minor details wrong that are unimportant to the plot and concern subject-matter only a tiny proportion of readers would know about. A book I read recently mentioned a character as working at a particular university in a particular year: I happened to have been at another university in the same city at about the same time, so I knew that the one mentioned in the book didn't exist under that name at that time, although it does now. Fact-checking (or simply using an invented name instead of a real one) would have fixed that, but really the error was totally unimportant to the plot, and was no more than a minor irritation even to the "informed" reader."

Sounds like the university Alice worked at in my book Tallis' Third Tune. ; ) I read two sources that said the university was so named in 1963 and another in 1973 so I took a gamble.

Might not matter if facts are wrong to some readers - but a fact that is researched and correct provides the reader with pure gold - knowledge, and more, very often getting the little bits right adds true dimension to the plot. What 'can't be done' without botching the real facts becomes a healthy obstacle for the protagonists and actually increases tension in ways the reader not familiar with the scenario would Never have supposed.

In my experience the extra footwork with the research and cross checking pays off mightily.

I also appreciate "afterwords" where the author mentions "I changed the geography of ... because..." rather than just quietly moving real place a few kilometers to make the times fit

>8 EllenLEkstrom:
Sorry for bringing it up again! My point was just to demonstrate what a trivial thing might trip a reader up. I don't think books would ever get written if writers weren't prepared to take risks sometimes: it can't possibly be viable to bring in a team of experts every time you want to set a chapter in a foreign city.

Back to basics. Nobody should write about things about which they don't really know. Then too, a little authorial humility is in order. WholeHouseLibrary's clients were obviously so frenzied with desire to show-off their stuff that they didn't even proof-read it. What nonsense. There are, as thorold points-out with his characteristc suavity, different degrees of error. But writers need to cool off more than they realize. Thos Pynchon catches this point beautifully (mutatis mutandis) in THE CRYING OF LOT 49, when he refers to "the crude haste to see the finished product, which betrays the hand of the amateur pornographer. True pornography is given us by infinitely patient professionals". If the shoe fits . . .

> 10

I'm quite fond of Dorothy L. Sayers' Author's Note to Gaudy Night, in which, among other things, she apologizes to Balliol College for her "monstrous impertinence" in having situated her fictional Shrewsbury College on its cricket ground.

As a writer, I try my best to get "the facts" right as far as we know them. Because I write historical fiction, there can be a wide latitude on some facts and that's where literary license comes in. Having said that, I still do my best with the details such as food, clothing, laws, architecture, etc. and ask experts in those areas to check out portions of my books that deal with such things. I agree that if I had a character eating an orange when the fruit didn't exist in that part of the world at that time, it wouldn't be the end of the world, but I would know and it would bother me to no end!

As a reader, I'm not sure a seal of approval would sway me one way or another. If I spot an error, I'll evaluate according to impact on the plot and my enjoyment of the story. I recently watched a block buster movie where a major plot point hinged on a technical point: a hacker's computer was acquired and plugged into the company's system to see what was on it and--surprise!--the hacker's computer was filled with malware that took over the company's system. No IT security agent worth his salt (and this guy was supposed to be the best in the world!) would connect an unknown computer with the master system. Even we non-IT folks know not to click on suspicious links. Totally ruined the rest of the movie for me because the action devolved from that major overreach.

The brain is an imperfect instrument. It is easier to find the glitches in a printed copy than on the screen - I guess that's due to our eyes being familiar with the formatting, screen, etc., seeing the words and paragraphs in pretty much the same configurations. But a book is different. Those things we miss jump out and light up like Christmas trees. G, do you want to borrow my trifocals?

My dear and estimable friend, I am trinitarian in my theology, but pretty-well single-track when it comes to optics. Thanks, even so, for the offer. Were there Frequent Flyer miles for buying cheap reading glasses, I'd be a world-traveller, not so much because I need them constantly, but because I do silly things like prop them up atop my mazzard, then go work in the woods, where they fly off. Once the current two feet of snow are gone, I will doubtless find several pair. I have this phantasy however, that the forest creatures, many of whom are attracted to shiny objects, may one day find one of these pairs and set them up on a stump (as on an altar) and fall down in adoration of the gentle sun-on-glass-&-metal effulgence. There are some things you West Coasters must, sadly, not get to see: but I'll send a complete report. -- G

One of the last books I had at a publisher (and I finally pulled) was in the midst of editing. The EDITOR kept putting mistakes into the book and then telling me things like 'Oh, the reader woudln't remember that' when it was something only two pages before. She wanted every line to be a jewel, but she didn't care if the changes messed up the story.

This was one of the last things that pushed me into going independent. While I might not get everything right, I at least have enough interest to try.

You put that nicely, zette.

My first book was eviscerated by an editor who wanted to dumb-it-down, make it more commercial. My current publisher now wants to take that book and correct all of those mistakes and re-release it. It's a problem when you look at a page and say, "Hey, didn't I change that? What's THAT still doing there???"

Or when you show/give them the data and nothing is done with it.

I hear more and more editing nightmares from people. Yeah, my books aren't perfect, but I have an interest in the story, at least.

My new form of editing (which I am doing right now) is to break it down to a paragraph per page and look hard at each one. That still doesn't mean perfection, but I'm amazed at how much I catch.

Zette, I've adopted your method - and make sure it's done first thing in the morning after a few gulps of coffee. Doesn't do to try to edit after a long day at the secular job or at church.

I write a sci-fi/fantasy, but I try my best to keep consistent and accurate to the world. It's not hard most of the time because by the time I'm writing it down I usually have things set in stone (my main character's hair color wouldn't suddenly change, for example, because I have a clear image of him). I have a map that shows what the weather is like in different regions and when I make up a new city I plop it down on the map so I can keep everything consistent.

I hired editors but they sent everything back to me with tracking in Word, so I went over all the changes. I didn't have a problem with most of the changes - there were some things that were inconsistent with the world, though, and sometimes they had no way of knowing that (one editor put in paper money, for example, and they only use coins, so I had to re-make the scene and figure out how to do it with coins).
Another one I ended up changing was when an editor decided everything in a city would be beige. The city was supposed to be dull so I get what they were going for, but it made no sense to me that two races who hate each other and happened to live in one spot would all dress the same and paint every building the same. It's just not how people act.

As far as when I'm reading, I can suspend disbelief but if you're telling me your characters are starving to death you shouldn't also create a large list of things they have to eat, or ignore things that we usually wouldn't eat but it makes sense that they would, like dandelions. It has to make some sort of sense. And I prefer if I understand why different sides feel the way they do, so being evil for the sake of being evil doesn't usually work for me. People need motives.

I agree with Mary'sGirl. I write historical fiction and while the fiction part usually involves thoughts, feelings, etc. that are necessary to make characters come alive, I am fanatic about getting my historical facts correct. I think that historical fiction writers have an obligation to do that unless they state from the beginning that they have changed something.

22: Agreed. My last two books have been literary/fantasy so I wrote a stream of thoughts, images. When I return to historical fiction - my first love - that's when I spend more time researching than writing.

I have written a three fantasy book series and one hard SciFi, and I did far more research for the one SciFi than all three fantasies.

I tend to categorize the two together, and certainly they share the same shelf in book stores, but they really have different readers. Of course believability is important, but if you write SciFi the technical premises better damn well be based in sound science or those readers will quickly point out the errors.

When I wrote Genesis Logs I was living in San Diego and I spent a great deal of time meeting with science professors at the many universities. I even met with a few clergy to discuss the philosophy of the science. They were all extremely helpful, and I discovered they welcomed the opportunity to get involved. I also learned that the scientists had a hard time shifting down to a level the average person could understand. It was a saga, and I didn't want it to become a lecture. That was my job ... telling the story in such a way it could be understood without taking away from the story.

Genesis Logs should be out this month. I was fun to write and hopefully it will be fun to read.

>14 MarysGirl:, 22 for me, if you are going to weave historical facts of any kind into a work of fiction you should make every effort to make sure they are correct. Mistakes do happen and if I have the sense that a mistake is just one of those things then it doesn't bother me too much. On the other hand, numerous mistakes will leave me wondering about the skill sets of you and those who did the editing and publishing. If I review an error laden book (and I have done so a couple of times) I'll point out the mistakes and, unless there really isn't any redeeming value to the book, I'll also try to offer something positive for the simple reason that I know that the job of an author is not an easy one.

Inaccurate facts are certainly a problem, but false historical mood is an equal or greater one. Viking raiders who use modern cliches and modes of speech are jarring. Perhaps most common are Regency romances where the lovers are far more hot and sweaty than they should be. After all, Jane Austen's lovers don't even hold hands, and she should know the period.

alco261, I like the way you think.

As a reader I find that I'm more likely to get peeved over inaccuracies in a book if I'm not really enjoying the book anyway. If I'm having fun, I see an error, and I just shrug and move on.

But if I wasn't enjoying the book, anything like that is a likely "last straw", and becomes the point where I put the book down.

So I figure that as far as gaining an audience goes, accuracy is probably a lot less important than good storytelling. I know that the fans of authors who I think do a lousy job of both always seem willing to come up with all sorts of fancy excuses to explain away plot holes, worldbuilding inconsistencies and poor research.

But even if accuracy is not what gets you readers, I do lots of research anyway, because I figure I'll do a better job of writing about things I understand.

Also it's bad enough that not everyone is going to like the kind of story I've written, I don't want to give them anything else to complain about. I would rather have the people who don't like my writing saying "It wasn't my sort of book" than "The author was clearly an idiot".

I'm more likely to get peeved over inaccuracies in a book if I'm not really enjoying the book anyway.

I think that's the key. If the style is self-consistent and reasonably agreeable and the story is entertaining, then the author can get away with a lot. When we're reading for pleasure we are only going to notice things as "errors" if they strike some sort of jarring or discordant note. Viking raiders in fiction have to speak something approximating to modern English, if only because the market for books written in Old Norse is rather limited. But there shouldn't be anything in what they say that draws attention to the necessary anachronism. (I think that's one reason why a lot of people have trouble with historical fiction written in the 19th century: a Viking raider talking in a Victorian writer's idea of archaic English strikes a jarring note.)
Errors of fact are a bit trickier than errors of style: whether the reader is going to notice them depends a lot on how knowledgeable he or she happens to be. The writer probably has some sort of unwritten obligation to avoid recklessly passing on incorrect information, but no-one is ever likely to agree on precisely how much research you need to do...

>29 thorold:: I am having an interesting problem with the book I'm reading. The historical facts are excellent, the plot and characterizations are just as excellent (I never knew I would dislike Edward the Confessor!), but the editing, grammar choices, and repetitive phrases are driving me up a wall. This work comes from a reputable English publisher and I am amazed at the shoddy product I've purchased. Your comment about i-viking raiders and Victorian speech had me smiling - I think nothing could be as bad as historical dramas filmed in the 1950's/60's with 1950's/60's hair, makeup and foundations. Fortunately, not all were like that, e.g., Lion in Winter, Romeo & Juliet, Anne of the Thousand Days to name three.

Sprague de Camp refused to use archaic forms of speech in his "historical" works, utilizing modern English throughout. They were somewhat tongue-in-cheek, so it didn't much hurt already-weakened credibility.

Honestly, as a reader, I don't tend to notice errors unless they are very blatant - but I tend to read mostly fantasy fiction where "it's magic" is a valid enough explanation for me.

Beyond fantasy, I do notice when technology is not era-appropriate. Movies shouldn't be there pre-1890s, for example.

A pet peeve of mine: I don't like to see characters in historical fiction or fantasy using certain common-day curse words. This is something simple that's often overlooked.

The "Fake Nanowrimo Tips" twitter account posted a couple years ago, "Great novelists do extensive research and draw from years of life experience. But the half hour you spent on Wikipedia works too." That always gives me a smile.

Details are important because (IMO) they have a distinct, direct, unambiguous, closely related, affect on sales numbers moving one's literary masterpiece into the front windows of bookshops, eye-level shelves of grocery stores, front tables of libraries, and every other place where quality works are offered for sale to the discriminating readers of free e-books. For example, the C.S. Forrester Midshipman Hornblower series is accurate in every detail (of which I'm aware) in relation to maritime geography and sailing ships -- thereby making the books a delight to read (well for me anyhow). These works were all published prior to the emergence of the Internet, and that is a fact (IMO).

>33 belltooter:
Actually, Forester's often quoted as a classic case of a writer who gets away with murder on the technical details because he never gives the reader a chance to step back and question anything. Everything fits together nicely and builds a convincing picture: it's only when you read Patrick O'Brian (who believed in doing research in primary sources) that it really becomes obvious how Forester's characters all have 1940s haircuts under their Georgian wigs... And of course it's notorious that Forester always means Hitler when he says Napoleon.

Accurate detail (whether from research or experience) is the best food for one's imagination, but in the process of writing it needs to balance with other elements to reach its potential. Hilary Mantel (Wolf hall, Bring up the bodies) has a sense of the telling detail, and seldom drops any other sort into her narrative. Accurate trivia is still trivia.

Beyond accuracy, one needs the ability to imagine not only the shape and colour and smell of things as experienced by characters, but what the detail means to them and how they might act on it.