Dear Authors

[ladysprite]

Please take at least a little time and energy to research the details of what you're writing about, lest you wind up looking like an idiot in the eyes of your readers. Especially if you're creating an intricately detailed world, and then wind up including completely irrelevant details that are unnecessary for plot, draw attention to themselves by being forced in out of the blue, and irk your readers to the point that they wind up getting drawn again and again into ever-worsening frustration and distraction over, say, the fact that the average sheep does NOT, in fact, weigh a quarter-ton.

I'm looking at you, Jim Butcher.

In other news, I have been informed that a "blue-faced leicester" sounds less like a kind of sheep and more like Cockney slang for a criminal act. I shudder to think of what said act might be, though.....

Comments

[catalana.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hate it when things like that happen. I read a mystery series that drives me up the wall because they keep referencing a character as an assistant professor who is still finishing her dissertation...which for the university she's purportedly at WOULDN'T HAPPEN. There's no way they would hire her for a tenure-track job without a Ph.D.; at best she'd be a (non-tenure-track) instructor. Sigh.

Or the exercise video I've been watching that has you move your hands "like you're kneading bread" and I'm going "Uh, if you need bread like that, you're an idiot." I get the sense they don't bake much.

Neither of which matters much in the grand scheme of things, but they still annoy me. :)

[citabria]

Okay, I've got to ask: how in the world does the video want you to be moving your hands?

[catalana.livejournal.com]

It wants me to be moving my hands in these strange little circles. I guess if they'd said that I was stirring or mixing something it wouldn't bother me as much (although I'd probably still grumble), but it's definitely not how you traditionally knead dough.

[citabria]

Hmm, definitely can't explain that, then. I know that there's a different way of kneading bread if you're working with large batches so thought it might be that method (pulling to almost behind you, slapping down, then throwing the ball of dough over) -- but no.