I am spending the day responding to a massive fact checking edit that a wise reader did on my manuscript over the weekend. This reader, who happens to be my sister, doesn't let ANYTHING go. If you say that the Harvard baseball team had a great season in 1956 and they didn't, in fact, win more than one game, she will call you on it. If you say that ice covered the trees in Burlington, Vermont, in December 2007, she will look up the weather report and tell you that, in fact, it was unseasonably warm that year in December.
I am tempted to say, "SO WHAT?" and ignore all these comments. But they matter. Even if you're making up a world peopled with dragons and wizards (J.K. Rowling, for example), you have to make sure that you understand how dragons bleed in your world and stick to that physical reality the whole way through, or your readers will throw up their hands in frustration. Fiction HAS to be factual. (In fact, the next time you decide to stop reading a book, note how many "errors" it had -- how many times something didn't add up before you said, "Enough." In my experience, it's two. Two strikes and that writer is done.)
But, for me, story always comes first. So I get all the narrative elements in place, and then I can figure out dates and weather and plane schedules and such, and I can hope that nothing fatal is revealed. I'm sure other writers get all their facts straight first -- and right about now, I envy them that talent.
2 comments:
Most people would probably never know if most of those facts were correct. But you can bet that the people in Vermont would. Any time I read a book that has an error like that, I do start to disengage. But you're right, the story has to come first.
this responding to the fact checking can be fun...especially in retrospect.
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