Episode 190: Factual Accuracy In Fiction

The Pulp Writer Show

In this week's episode, we take a look at techniques for ensuring accuracy and verisimilitude in your novel.

This week’s coupon is for the audiobook of GHOST IN THE SEAL as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of GHOST IN THE SEAL for 50% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code:

SPRINGSEAL

The coupon code is valid through March 19th, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to leap into spring, we’ve got one ready for you!

TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 190 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March the 1st 2024 as I'm recording this and today we are talking about how to create the feeling of accuracy in fiction. Before we get to that, we will do Coupon of the Week and give you an update on my current writing and audiobook projects.

This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Seal as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Seal for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: SPRINGSEAL and then is SPRINGSEAL and that code will also be in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through March 19th, 2024. So if you find yourself needing an audiobook to leap into spring, we've got one ready for you.

Now for an update on current writing and audiobook projects. I am as of this recording 48,000 words into Ghost in the Veils, which puts me on Chapter 10 of 22, so almost halfway there. I’m hoping to get to 50,000 words by the end of the day, but we will see what happens. I am also 33,000 words into Wizard Thief, the second book in my Half-Elven Thief epic fantasy series and that is hopefully going to come out fairly quickly after Ghost in the Veils is done. I am also 5,000 words into Cloak of Titans, which will be my next major project after Ghost in the Veils and Wizard Thief are done.

In audiobook news, Shield of Storms is now available, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills. You can get that at the moment at Audible, Amazon and Apple and it should be turning up at the other stores fairly soon once it gets through quality assurance. You can in fact get it at my Payhip store at the moment as well. I'm also pleased to report that Half-Elven Thief did well enough to merit an audiobook and recording for that will be going underway through the month of March. So hopefully if all goes well, the book will be available sometime in April.

00:01:56 Main Topic: Accuracy and Fiction

Let's get right into our main topic: the importance of accuracy and fiction. Before that, why do we want our fiction to have some degree of accuracy to it? The reason for that is fiction doesn't have to be realistic. However, it has to feel realistic. It's called verisimilitude, the sensation of something that feels real, regardless of whether it is actually real or not. This is important because it ties into a concept called suspension of disbelief. We all sit down to read a book of fiction, a novel, a fantasy novel, a science fiction novel, mystery novel, whatever. We know that the book isn't real and that nothing in it actually happened. However, what we need to do is suspend our disbelief of what's happening in the book, which is necessary in order for us to enjoy what is happening and it is much easier to keep a sense of disbelief if your book has good verisimilitude, if it feels real.

The example I always used to cite this is that if you live in the United States and probably the UK as well, you know they are constantly having problems with the phone scammers primarily targeting older people. One of the famous ones had a person saying that the person in question was late on back taxes and if they did not pay immediately, the IRS would send the sheriffs to arrest them for back taxes. This is implausible for several reasons. One, the IRS, if you owe back taxes, does not start the process by a phone call. It starts by a letter. Two in the United States, sheriff is an elected position, and so if anyone was going to be doing arresting, would that probably not be the sheriff, that would be the sheriff's deputies. And three, even though the sheriff's deputies do have arrest powers, generally, they do not make arrests for back taxes. So right away we see that this scam phone call is implausible for a number of reasons and can be immediately disbelieved by anyone with basic knowledge of either U.S. law enforcement or the way the US tax system works.

Now imagine someone did this in a thriller novel or a mystery novel. There's a scene where the IRS sent sheriffs to arrest someone for nonpayment of back taxes. That doesn't feel real if you have any knowledge of the topics, which breaks the verisimilitude, which destroys the suspension of disbelief. The reader will either give up on the novel or hate-read it to the end and leave a bad review. For fiction, you don't have to do as much research as you would for nonfiction, but it is a good idea to do enough research that you can create verisimilitude, the feeling of reality, that won't jar the reader of the book and destroy suspension of disbelief.

So why research? Research is not just for historical fiction. Any part of fiction, even a contemporary romance that touches on real life, has details that can benefit from check fact checking and areas are jarring to readers and can take them out of the story and make them give up on the story entirely in some cases, which comes from not having enough verisimilitude to maintain the suspension of disbelief. Additionally, certain genres have extremely high standards for factual accuracy, such as military fiction, historical fiction, or medical mysteries, etcetera.

The example I always use for this is Jack Carr’s The Terminal List, which, as a thriller has a lot of military oriented people using a lot of military oriented equipment. I believe Mr. Carr has said in several interviews and podcasts how he spends a lot of time researching all this because his audience tends to be people with expert knowledge of various military weapon systems or law enforcement procedures and they will immediately spot any factual errors and email him many times about this until the end of time. If you're writing in one of those genres, it really does behoove you to do a lot of research. Other genres tend to be a bit more forgiving, such as fantasy and romance, as long as the world has a strong internal consistency. Additionally this is where we get into realism versus verisimilitude.

Readers will allow a certain amount of blurring facts if it moves along the story. For example, how long a lab work can take in a police thriller. It's a common plot device where in real life, police and forensic labs typically are backed up for months but in fiction, you can have your detective or your detective’s boss pull some strings and move things along.

It's also important to note that plausibility is more important than accuracy. For example, to the best of my knowledge, there is not a Starbucks kiosk at the Milwaukee County Zoo in Milwaukee, WI. But doesn't it feel completely plausible that there would be one since many American zoos do have coffee kiosks? So if you happen to mention in passing that there's a Starbucks kiosk at the Milwaukee County Zoo, that kind of plausible, if inaccurate detail most likely would not jar your reader out of the story.

Factual error is often much worse if the plot depends on it. For example, a wrong fact in jury selection in a comment made in passing is less jarring than if it’s the main plot point or if, for example, you're a legal thriller and your protagonist wins using evidence or tactics that in real life would get them thrown out of court or cause a mistrial, or even disbarred. Televised legal dramas are occasionally quite bad at this, where the lawyers win cases using tactics and legal techniques that would get them in enormous quantities of trouble. But if you're writing a legal thriller, the audience tends to be more knowledgeable than average about that kind of thing. So it is a good idea to do research.

Some small facts that may seem insignificant can matter a lot to a reader, because they can stand out even to a non-expert. For example, in the United States, most of the states in the country are subdivided into administrative units called counties, which is why we talk about the county sheriff and how counties elect sheriffs and commissioners and so forth. However, in the state of Louisiana, they don't have counties, they have parishes. So if you're writing a book set in Louisiana, and you refer to a county in Louisiana that can jar the reader of the book if they have any knowledge of Louisiana.

Another example would be you describe the final section of the baseball game as a quarter instead of an inning. Baseball doesn't have quarters like American football or American basketball does. Baseball has innings, so it's little technical details like that can be something to watch out for because you can trip up on them pretty easily.

However, the flip side of this is you can use this as a technique where a factual error becomes an important plot point if you do it deliberately. For example, you can have in a police thriller evidence was stored outside of normal procedure in a way that would break the law in real life because it turns out someone actually was being bribed and the law actually was being broken. A more benign example, someone makes up a call number for the library book and it turns out to be gibberish because the person made it up on the spot, so you don't need the accurate number for the library book.

Deliberately working in factual errors like this, so long as you include them in a way that you know what you're doing and it is important for the plot, can be a really neat technique where the reader will feel validated if they spot this error and then it turns out to be important later on, like someone came claims to be from Louisiana and talks about growing up in New Orleans County, only for someone to realize that New Orleans and Louisiana do not have counties.

So here are some specific examples of things you may want to research in your fiction to avoid common errors. Number one: location. Distance is a major source of factual error. Movies famously ignore how long it takes to drive across Los Angeles, especially in traffic. You have movies where someone you get from one end to LA to another in like 20 minutes, which if you do it at 2:00 AM, that might be possible, but any other time during the day it's going to be traffic gridlock, and you're going to spend a lot of time in traffic. It takes much longer than 20 minutes to get from one end of LA to another.

Another thing to watch out for is languages. A prominent example is Brazil. The dominant language in most of Central America and most of South America is Spanish, so people tend to assume that the dominant language in Brazil is Spanish. It's not; it's actually Portuguese. Many people in Brazil do speak Spanish because all their neighbors speak Spanish, but the main language in Brazil is not Spanish, it is Portuguese, so it's very jarring when shows have police or military officials in Brazil speaking Spanish when they should really be speaking in Portuguese. So that is the kind of detail to watch out for.

Location details can also be jarring to people familiar with the location, but not necessarily the general audience. For example, in 2023, Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee closed. I'm pretty sure it's 2023. If you have a book set in Milwaukee in 2024, a person cannot be a student at Cardinal Stritch University because it no longer exists. And in fact, the date of that is probably something I should have researched (Transcriptionist’s note: it closed at the end of their spring semester in 2023).

Another famous example was a couple years ago, there was a Christmas holiday movie on the Roku Channel that depicted someone driving to Wisconsin from The Twin Cities and in the drive, the main character drove past a mountain range. I don't know if you've ever been to Minnesota or Wisconsin, but both of them are famously fairly flat and have no mountain ranges anywhere within the state. So that is something a little bit of research or effort would have avoided.

Another good thing to research is specific procedures for the military and law enforcement, legal and scientific procedures if you're writing that kind of book. These are often highly specific and detailed and therefore you may have to do more research as a result if you're, for example, writing a legal thriller that revolves around the specific procedures and arcana of the American legal system. People will accept a certain amount of glossing over the more technical details for dramatic tension and avoiding lulls in the plot.

Where it feels wrong, and unearned, is if procedures are ignored entirely or warped beyond recognition. Here are some examples from fiction of processes warped beyond recognition. The English department of a major university are awarding tenure based on a competition with other professors. That is not how that works. There's not a tournament of tenure that you can participate in to win tenure.

Another example would be a soldier getting out of court martial because he had a heartfelt conversation about bravery with his or her commanding officer at the bar the night before. That is not how any of that works. At that point in the process, the court martial will be well out of the commanding officer’s hands and the soldier in question’s fate would be decided by the court martial.

Another example from fiction would be a surgeon receives an award and promotion after convincing her husband to let her perform a risky new procedure on him. That, again, is not how any of that works. Surgeons are not allowed usually (save in cases of, you know, extreme emergency) to operate on family members because they can't be objective. Additionally the surgeon in question would be in all kinds of questions with the Ethical Review Board and if things go really badly, they would end up losing their license and may even face criminal liability. So obviously these are things you want to research.

A third and final thing that is sort of broader category is that you want to focus on specific details for things you are researching based on the kind of novel you're writing, like you're writing a legal thriller, you will want to spend more time researching the specific legal details of the story you're writing. If you're writing like, for example, a historical novel about the British peerage, for example in Downton Abbey, the Earl of Grantham is named Robert Crawley, but he is always referred to as Lord Grantham, not Lord Crawley, because he's the Earl of Grantham. Very commonly, historical romance novels are known for not getting this correct, and it often irritates more knowledgeable readers. If you're writing historical fiction, another thing you might want to research is hairstyles, because hairstyles vary widely across historical periods.

The final thing to keep in mind is the need to balance your research with the story. We've all read books where it was very clear that the author did a lot of research and was going to share it with us, whether we like it or not, because we'll have info dumps that go on for pages and pages.

Too many details and facts are boring to the reader and rarely makes sense in the context of the story. An example would be a character explains 6 or 7 paragraphs explaining local politics to someone who's lived in the town for 20 years. You want to avoid the cliche of “as you know, Bob” information dump.

Having someone familiar with the particular profession review your work might be helpful, but unless they're a true expert, they're not going to catch everything.

Remember that readers pick up a fiction book to be entertained and not taught. Facts when done correctly, add verisimilitude to the story, help with the suspension of disbelief, and make stories more interesting. And finally I'd say that you want to make a good faith effort of being as accurate as possible, but don't stress too much over it because I find as I'm writing my 150th novel at this point (I speak with a little bit of experience here), that no matter how much research you do, no matter how careful you are, it's just not going to work for everyone and someone is either going to point out something you got wrong or something that doesn't work for them, which is a matter of interpretation.

I'd say focus on writing the best story you can and focus on being as accurate as you can, but if you have to pick between the two, focus on writing the best story you can. Though, bear in mind that if you have to make your legal thriller revolve around something that could not possibly happen in real life, then you are not writing the best story that you can.

So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and a quick word of thanks to my transcriptionist who once again helped me pull together the research for this episode. A reminder that you that you can listen to all the back episodes of the podcast, often with transcripts at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.