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

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

Putting in too many details, especially those that don't advance the plot, can be annoying or distracting. If someone picks up a pen, I don't need to know that it's a black ballpoint pen with blue ink. And if you're writing a book that is science fiction, you really don't want to describe the tech anymore than necessary, especially computers, data storage, display device, communicating devices, ... wait 10 or 20 years and some of that futuristic tech will be out of date.

On the other hand, a sheep probably will still weight the same amount now that it weighs in the future (unless you're talking about the giant, sick sheep in Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith (excellent book).

For another book involving sheep, there's "The Android's Dream" by John Scalzi, which involves the search for a breed of blue sheep called Android's Dream (this book takes place in the future, so genetically engineered electric blue sheep could be possible). These sheep don't weigh a quarter-ton.