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This week, a pet-peeve of mine: Logistics. From small inaccurate details to giant plot holes, make sure you take the time to fix these - or better yet, avoid them altogether in the first draft.
Small details: if you aren’t sure - look it up. Even if you are sure, it’s not a bad idea to double-check. I’ve often found I had my facts wrong. (I seem to be especially fallible on vocabulary words I’m sure I know but seldom use.) Yes, you can spiral down into research rabbit holes, emerging hours later in a completely different country - we’ve all done it - so remember to exercise some restraint. However, taking the time to Google a bus route number in a city to a specific destination (and yes, I’ve done this too) could make the difference between a reader who lives in that city and commutes by bus feeling more deeply immersed in your setting, or tossing your story in the trash. Well, maybe not that radical, but at least suffering a ding in their suspension of disbelief.
For more complex issues, say a medical procedure, search what you can on your own, but if you can’t find enough specifics, don’t guess or fill in the blanks - do more extensive research or reach out to someone in the field. I worked in medicine, and patently wrong accident/injury/illness/ER/surgery/whatever scenes drive me crazy. Worse, if they’re wrong, I not only think the author uninformed and too lazy to get it right, I doubt their accuracy on everything else. Think I’m the only one who notices? According to a NPR article in 2012, “One in eight Americans work in health care... ” Medical inaccuracies in fiction are especially rampant, but this advice applies to any topic - do your research! Your audience will be made up of people from all walks of life, having diverse careers, and possessing a wide variety of experience and knowledge.
Writing outside your own culture? Fact check. Get a cultural sensitivity reader. Go to a trusted writer’s forum and *respectfully* ask if there are writers with knowledge or experience within that culture willing to make sure you’re getting your details right. I’m currently writing an entire novel outside my cultural experience and have read three textbooks and contacted a couple of different archaeologists, including an expert in the field who authored one of the texts. I still may not get it perfect, but I'm trying. Yes, it takes time and effort. Yes, it’s worth it.
These are just a few examples, but the concept applies to any fact in your story; do your best to be accurate. Readers WILL notice if you don't.
The other way logistics can trip up your story is when you write yourself into a corner in your plot and need the suddenly-discovered-miraculous-plot-device, or the impossible-solution-that-I’m-asking-you-to-believe-anyway in order to get your story from here to there. DON’T DO IT. Take the time to devise a believable and logical solution or go back and rewrite from the scene where you went wrong to make it work. For readers, often the whole point of reading fiction is to immerse themselves in a different reality that they can live in for a time - make it a convincing reality. Don’t yank the reader out of the story and make them yell at your book (I'm not the only one who's done that, right?). You may never win those readers back again.
Small details: if you aren’t sure - look it up. Even if you are sure, it’s not a bad idea to double-check. I’ve often found I had my facts wrong. (I seem to be especially fallible on vocabulary words I’m sure I know but seldom use.) Yes, you can spiral down into research rabbit holes, emerging hours later in a completely different country - we’ve all done it - so remember to exercise some restraint. However, taking the time to Google a bus route number in a city to a specific destination (and yes, I’ve done this too) could make the difference between a reader who lives in that city and commutes by bus feeling more deeply immersed in your setting, or tossing your story in the trash. Well, maybe not that radical, but at least suffering a ding in their suspension of disbelief.
For more complex issues, say a medical procedure, search what you can on your own, but if you can’t find enough specifics, don’t guess or fill in the blanks - do more extensive research or reach out to someone in the field. I worked in medicine, and patently wrong accident/injury/illness/ER/surgery/whatever scenes drive me crazy. Worse, if they’re wrong, I not only think the author uninformed and too lazy to get it right, I doubt their accuracy on everything else. Think I’m the only one who notices? According to a NPR article in 2012, “One in eight Americans work in health care... ” Medical inaccuracies in fiction are especially rampant, but this advice applies to any topic - do your research! Your audience will be made up of people from all walks of life, having diverse careers, and possessing a wide variety of experience and knowledge.
Writing outside your own culture? Fact check. Get a cultural sensitivity reader. Go to a trusted writer’s forum and *respectfully* ask if there are writers with knowledge or experience within that culture willing to make sure you’re getting your details right. I’m currently writing an entire novel outside my cultural experience and have read three textbooks and contacted a couple of different archaeologists, including an expert in the field who authored one of the texts. I still may not get it perfect, but I'm trying. Yes, it takes time and effort. Yes, it’s worth it.
These are just a few examples, but the concept applies to any fact in your story; do your best to be accurate. Readers WILL notice if you don't.
The other way logistics can trip up your story is when you write yourself into a corner in your plot and need the suddenly-discovered-miraculous-plot-device, or the impossible-solution-that-I’m-asking-you-to-believe-anyway in order to get your story from here to there. DON’T DO IT. Take the time to devise a believable and logical solution or go back and rewrite from the scene where you went wrong to make it work. For readers, often the whole point of reading fiction is to immerse themselves in a different reality that they can live in for a time - make it a convincing reality. Don’t yank the reader out of the story and make them yell at your book (I'm not the only one who's done that, right?). You may never win those readers back again.
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