Authenticity versus entertainment

Unless it's something patently absurd, most readers don't care. Athough the ones that do will be extremely vocal about it.

But the real question is this: does the author care? If it's something that can be researched and the author doesn't want to bother, that's just being lazy. And if errors in fact mount up, it affects the believability of your made up world. Even if they're small things that hardly anyone will notice, it adds up. If you don't care about authenticity, all those little things will create a subtle feeling of wrongness that will diminish the book.

You don't have to go into detail about every type of gun, or armor, or whatever. But there's an old cliche that says a writer should know far more about the world he/she creates than ever appears in the finished work, and I believe that.

Some of us plan to quietly raise the bar with respect to combat scenes...

Connie Willis once stood in front of a class I took and told us that the majority of letters she got regarding Dooms Day Book asked where the kid's parents were.

She screamed "I don't care, they could be dead but it doesn't matter to the story".

I write better when I know what I'm writing about, in detail. As rugcat says, you don't have to put all those details in, and in fact I'd say it's better not to—except that now and then, adding a single, telling detail will give a touch of authenticity that at least some readers will appreciate.

And in SF, in an invented setting, I find that if I give the "feel" of the world a lot of thought, I don't have to write down everything. If I really know the world I'm talking about, new but consistent details of history or setting just pop up as I write.

I do always roughly calculate planetary orbits, apparent size of the primary, gravity and atmosphere, and such, because the results often suggest interesting details to use in the story. My current series isn't hard SF (I've got FTL drives, for heaven's sake), but I like to minimize the preposterousness where I can.

I am of the unpublished opinion that anything that pulls the reader out of the story is bad.

Therefore, if you have wrong or not enough information, that's bad.

If you have too much information, also bad.

I am the kind of person that likes detail, so a bad detail will pull me out of the story. I feel like, as was mentioned, many sci-fi fantasy writers are also of the ilk that pride themselves on vast stores of trivial knowledge. Especially when they have little practical experience, like in weapons and combat.

You said your character put a new clip into his pistol? You just lost me. I now doubt your diligence and the effort you put into the story. I also question your editors. However, 95% of the population would not notice or care. Your bulletproof vest stopped a rifle round? Um...sorry, no. Have I ever been shot at? No. But I do know that a Kevlar vest wont stop anything more than a pistol round. And so I just got pulled out of the story.

I feel like it if it is important enough to put in the story, you can spend 30 second on Wikipedia to make sure you know what you're talking about.

No, but they're readers, and they're entitled to complain about things that pull them out of the story.

I just put enough detail in there to make it seem plausible and pull the rest of it out of my patoot Generally I have beta readers let me know if something is a little too far out there.

As a reader, I'm so clueless on future tech that I don't think I'd notice something unless it was blatantly obvious such as the character never having to reload (or recharge, as some weapons in sci fi do).

The Grift said:

You said your character put a new clip into his pistol? You just lost me. I now doubt your diligence and the effort you put into the story. I also question your editors. However, 95% of the population would not notice or care.

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As one of the unwashed 95%, what should it be? A new magazine?


And I tend to think that any time you come across some fiddly technological question (or whatever), take the time to do a quick Google/Wikipedia search at the very least. If it's obscure enough that the answer cannot be found on the intarwub in 20 minutes then maybe it's okay to let it slip, but to not put in even a token effort is, to me, not doing your job. Writing is work folks, please treat it accordingly.

TSByrne said:

As one of the unwashed 95%, what should it be? A new magazine?

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Yes sir, you are correct, and therefore not necessarily one of the unwashed masses.

And it proves my point. It's not important, but if you know the difference it will stick out.

I agree with the rest of your post as well.

On another note, I believe the author has to be careful about true but hard-to-believe things. A factually accurate but outlandish bit of information can be harder to swallow than a well-concealed or popularly believed misconception.

The Grift said:

I am of the unpublished opinion that anything that pulls the reader out of the story is bad.

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Agreed... It all depends on whether an inaccuracy or omission distracts the reader, makes him/her wonder about the mentality behind the story instead of just enjoying the story for the ride.

Example: We already know there's no FTL travel. But if we sit past the opening credits of Star Trek, we've already accepted its alternate reality and won't find the story spoiled when they shoot off to another star system for lunch. Yet an avid trekkie might be annoyed if Kirk forgets he had a brother, or phaser beams come in different cartoon effects on different episodes, or someone says there's never been a mutiny on a starship after other mutiny stories already turned up in previous years. The lapse in research is annoying based solely on who the audience is and what they've been led to expect.

If your target audience would notice and give a damn, then it's vitally important. If you're pretty sure it's subject matter normally separate from your target audience, it's risky to create a distraction for the trivia-loving few but at least they're not likely to care.

Are SCA geeks your target audience? Better google the swordplay and horseriding techniques, attend some renfairs, check a book about historical foods and culture. I wouldn't come near describing firearms in a crime thriller without research any sooner than I'd make up ingredients in a cookbook as I went along. If my private eye story mentions fresh pineapple set in jell-o, though, I don't think my target audience could care less even if they do catch the goof.

AzBobby said:

If my private eye story mentions fresh pineapple set in jell-o...

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Hey, wtf man?!?! You can't do that! The bromelain enzyme in the fresh pineapple will degrade the gelatin protein and the Jell-o won't have the jell part! It'll just be "o"! You need to use canned pineapple or your jell-o won't harden!

Come to think of it, why would you put pineapple into jell-o at all?

Edit: Must . . . learn . . . to . . . type . . . with . . . both . . . hands. . . .

You could have left it up! It added new information about how it must be CANNED pineapple.

So, apparently the pineapple jell-o thing IS actually a plot point in a sci-fi book! Kind of. Venus of the Halfshell by "Kilgore Trout" (Phillipe Jose Farmer). Can anyone confirm?

Accuracy

Other than laziness, what possible excuse is there not to get it right? Readers are entertained just as much by accuracy, more so, for most of us, as by inaccuracy, and anyone who thinks inaccuracy won't piss off a lot of readers is living in a dream world.

Stephen King does research very little, but there aren't many inaccuracies in his novels. His beta readers see to this.

If you don't want to do the research, then write around the area, as King sometimes does, or don't include technical details, as King also does, but if you just get something wrong because of research, you're going to get called on it, and you'll lose a lot of sales because of it. Rightfully so.

Connie Willis' case is not getting something wrong, it's leaving out a detail she didn't think mattered. And even then she got called on it.

There simply is no reason to get the facts wrong in fiction.

The only things a writer should make up, are things the writer made up - in Science Fiction or Fantasy. Things that don't exist.

If what you're mentioning is real, and does exist, then you'd better know what you're saying when you say it.

With that in mind, you only need as much detail as is required for the story (or sentence or paragraph). Just be sure what little you do say is correct.

I've seen writers fall in love with their research (or their worldbuilding) and load their writing down with details that don't matter to the story. I've done it myself. So, yes, get it right, but be wary of the opposite problem, too!

Are authenticity and entertainment mutually exclusive? Why?
Discuss, 500 words or less.

Sorry, but I'm in the SCA and I get so tired of the argument that getting things right somehow rules out having fun. Some of the best and laughing-till-I-fall-over times I've had have been with the 'authenticity fascists', because they have so much more knowledge with which to make jokes. (And some of the most boring and chew-my-arm-off times have been with the people who claim they're just there to have fun.)
-Barbara

Kristin Landon said:

I've seen writers fall in love with their research (or their worldbuilding) and load their writing down with details that don't matter to the story. I've done it myself. So, yes, get it right, but be wary of the opposite problem, too!

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I've seen that too, but the guy eventaully got around to writing the story and when it came out it was pretty good!

So yeah, it helps to be accurate. I'm helped by the fact that my parents are nuclear physisists and they can tell me when I do something really dumb.

Like when I misspell physicists.

On the other hand, if you're writing stuff that's meant to be unrealistic, you have to try to get people to recognize that and not think you just have no idea what you're doing. The way I usually try to do this is by overtly displaying the over-the-top-ness of the story right off the bat, so the reader can see that this is going to be a wild, crazy action tale. This is why I so often have the heroine shrug off a mortal wound in an opening scene; to establish early on that yes, she is that durable, and that other outlandish things are bound to happen in the story...

Or a chick vertically bisecting an armored man and throwing another seven-footer over her head, then stomping his skull into mush, in the opening scene...

short of writing to an obscure museum in new england, i needed to know if pistols in 1693 had serial numbers. the research i did lead me to believe it was possible if it were a certain kind of gun ordered by so-and-so (don't remember the details). so, even *if* it wasn't necessarily 100% accurate, it was possible enough for a purist to be satisfied, imo.

i won't bore anyone further with examples of times i've stretched things thin, suffice to say i've taken a liberty or two. okay, i've never made a .357 magnum a double-barrel (though that's pretty cool), but, yah, i've fudged a thing or two, mostly timeline stuff, that honestly only a purist would know about, and that's such a small percentage of the target audience that i thought it could suffer the consequences. (note that i'm not advocating playing fast and loose with the facts or get the terms wrong, etc., but sometimes you just have to push something a bit beyond in order to make it fit. not push it over the cliff, but a little nudge on very rare occasion never exactly killed even the most supposedly historically accurate story. you could argue that knowingly 'nudging' a fact along is some sort of sin, and i wouldn't debate that to the ends of the earth, but i've never thought that relying on fiction as a truly accurate source of historical facts was terribly wise.)

like it was said, i think it depends on your target audience. it's always nice to learn something while reading, though, but if you just muck the 'facts' up too often.... okay, i say that, and i know there's a popular romance author out there who does a lot of research on her facts. the problem is i think she probably uses as her research a case of oreos. in other words, she's notoriously off her nut when it comes to getting her facts straight. i've complained before, lol. anyway, she sells her share of stupid books.

generic advice is it's always better to have your character pull out walther pk113 (just making that up) than 'a pistol.'

guns are funny: there are plenty of 'experts' out there, so that's one thing you really need to look up. everyone is sherlock holmes, too, so they know modern police investigation methods (CSI: (insert name of a city here) might not be the best example of what's actually done all the time in every case, so if that's the width and breadth of your 'research,' you probably actually want to ask around).

and it was correctly pointed out that truth is stranger than fiction, sometimes so much so that the truth can't be believed. every just *knows* chocolate is pure poison to dogs, right? right? you'll probably find as many dogs that've chocked to death on a flip-flop than died of chocolate poisoning. okay, chocolate is bad for dogs, and maybe a very large portion of cheap chocolate *might* kill them, or at least make them sick (as if it wouldn't you or me), but the idea of your dog hacking up bloody chunks minutes after half a bit of quality stuff is absurd (just as absurd as the chocolate-related death (one of the best kinds, btw) resulting in your dog keeling over dead, four stiff legs up in the air, tongue hanging to the floor... might as well envision them with little 'x's over their eyes while you're at it). there are people who believe this, though. personally, i write off idiots as much as i write off purists as being such a minority they're insignificant towards standing between me and my goal.

the only time i'd ever use government statistics is to show the contrast between them and real life. statistics in general are bullshit made up to prove some crazy person's point. 49.6% of people know that.

i'd say you have a pretty good heads up on what not to show because of your journalism b/g. this being fiction *and* entertainment, with the obviously different expectations, i think you'll just have to learn through trial and error the amount of facts your audience will bear. i guess be as specific as you can without droning on if that's your audience: with hard sci-fi, that minutia is important, and the facts better be right even when i comes to the basis of your speculative inventions, if that makes any sense.

i think we let go the idea that dragons can speak better than most humans despite the implausibility of their facial muscles and mouth design being able to do that (then again, what do i know?), or the physically impossible way you can stab a sail and 'slide' to the deck because we want to believe that. i think those things have a certain, ah, 'romance' to them, just like catapulting over the city walls or pulling yourself up a rope as you're being dragged by a carriage going 80 miles per hour. as ridiculous as those things are, we give the story that berth... up to a point. i think there is a limit on how stupid we're willing to let things get most of the time.

hey, hey, i'm rambling! yay for me.