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]

Blue-faced leicester... hm... something that involves faking your own death?

[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]

That's the same problem I had with a book I read recently, when the author (Lee Child) not only forgot what he'd written in his last book, but despite living in NYC was convinced that the officers working below ground were the "transport police."

::facepalm:: Ironically, the one bit of very detailed geography he used? That he got right. And yes, these anomalies bothered me through the whole darned book.

[bess.livejournal.com]

mmmm.... blue-faced leicester.... I know I have some bfl around here somewhere..... (rummages through fiber...)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Quarter ton sheep? Shades of Norstrilia!

[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.

[keshwyn]

Amen.

Can we add S. M. Sterling to the list? He's spent at least three books (and probably more, but I've given up in disgust) trying to convince me that the reason archers wear bracers on their forearms is because the string hits them there every time they shoot. Every. Time.

And yet he did the research on who makes really good traditional bows, and talks about bowmaking with the correct details! ARGH. Maddening.

[spiritdancer]

Another example: fantasy novel where the heroine make a deal with the fae king, involving her having twins, the one child going to the fae in exchange for "the luck" for her family for the next generation (a deal the family has had for many generations). All thru the book, you are told that the deal has to be kept. When the babies show up, the fae king takes both children. Uh, hey, you broke the bargain, king - you lose. Instead the heroine gets to be Janet to Tamlin ::arrrgh::.

Oh, and the age of the heroine and her brother at the time he was taken by the fae seems to be variable, including who was older. Makes me want to make an edit pass & send the darn thing back, as that is nonsense a beta reader should thwap the author with. Too bad, as she used to be a favorite of mine. I suppose it's related to the editors (or lack thereof) at that particular publisher.

At least I borrowed it from the library, and didn't buy my own copy, or I'd be sorely tempted to mail my copy, with pointed snarky comments added, to the author asking for a clean copy or a refund.

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

My favorite was the end of a romance novel where, just before the final clinch in front of the fireplace, the hero pauses only to throw a cord of wood on the fire. ("Hold that thought, dear, I'll be right along.")

Cockney slang is based on rhymes, so "blue-faced Leicester" suggests several unpleasant possibilities such as "child molestor" or "third trimester." Or maybe "tax protestor," with the implication of holding one's breath until one turns blue.

[pixel.livejournal.com]

To this sort of end I offered to be the technical consultant on anything vehicular or machinery related for the publishing company V works for. It is a selfish act though, I pretty much did it so there was at least one company's books I could read without running into the sort of wrong things that make me twitch most.

[whiffert.livejournal.com]

I done a blue faced leicester an' now I'm takin' it on the lam...