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

[visp.livejournal.com]

Oh God, S.M. Sterling needed to do so much more research on the Northwest. For one thing, he says that all of Washington state turned into the wildlands first, when there's multiple military bases up there, and a goddamn mobilization center, with about 25,000 soldiers who would have nothing better to do than restore order. I mean, yeah, they're fun books, but I just have to pretend it's elsewhere.