By
Lisabet Sarai
As
I’ve discussed in other
blog posts, I almost always set my stories in some specific, real
location. Frequently my settings strongly influence the plot and the
characters. Even when they don’t, I like to be precise. I can more
easily imagine the action as it unfolds when I know where it’s
occurring. (Indeed, I sometimes confuse
my mental images with actual memories.) I believe that anchoring
my tales in space (and time) makes them more concrete, more involving
and ultimately more believable.
However,
this tendency to be specific introduces some risks not experienced by
authors who stay vague about their settings. I need to include
convincing details—and
there’s always the chance I’ll get something wrong.
If
I’m lucky, a beta reader or editor will pick up on my mistake. My
paranormal cat shifter romance The Eyes of Bast is set
Manhattan. When my husband read the manuscript, he pointed out that
my heroine was taking the wrong subway line going uptown to her
apartment west of Central Park. I found this annoying, since I’d
actually researched this bit of information—obviously
I’d interpreted the subway map incorrectly. (DH lived in New York
City for more than a decade. I tend to believe him.)
Alas,
DH doesn’t like BDSM stories, so often I don’t get the benefit of
his sharp eyes!
Most
though not all of the places I write about are places I have at least
visited. On the other hand, there may be a significant time lag
before I use the location in a story. I wrote Raw Silk, which
was set in Bangkok, more than a decade after I’d lived there. In my
recent revision of that novel (coming out in a new, expanded version
in February 2016!), I fixed a number of geographic and cultural
errors I didn’t notice in the first three editions. (I also
provided some cues to anchor the book in an earlier time. Someone
reading it now, thinking it was contemporary, would be baffled as to
why none of the characters have mobile phones!)
One
of the worst mistakes I’ve made (that I know about!) occurred in my
second novel, Incognito, which
unfolds in a historic district of Boston called Beacon Hill. I lived
in Beacon Hill for a year and a half, but that was nearly five years
before I wrote the book. There’s a steamy exhibitionist scene that
takes place in a late night subway car. I was quite specific about
the stations where the heroine gets on and off the train. Caught up
in the action, though (at least, that’s my excuse), I completely
forgot that a transfer is required between those two stops! Anyone
familiar with the “T”, as they call it in Boston, would realize
this immediately. (I was able to fix this in a recent re-edit, too.)
You
may ask why any of this matters. It may be that most readers won’t
notice this sort of error. However, those who do are likely to form a
very negative impression of the author, as sloppy and ignorant.
People tend to feel proprietary about places they know.
These
days if one individual takes offense at your book, the rest of the
world can find out pretty quickly. I haven’t even read FSOG, for
instance, but I know from reviews and blog posts that it’s full of
geographic errors (not all that surprising since it’s set in the
U.S. state of Washington while the author is British).
So
I do careful research when I can—but
I’m not a research slut like some authors I know. I’m likely to
check the Internet or the library when I’m not sure about
something, but I don’t spend days immersed in my sources. Problems
are most likely to arise in situations where I really believe I know
some detail that’s actually wrong (or out of date).
Of
course, geographically related mistakes aren’t the only sort that
can occur in writing. Erotica authors, in particular, need to worry
about errors in describing sexual practices. It’s a bit dangerous
to write about BDSM without some serious research. I’ve read some
scenes that made me want to throw the book at the wall
(metaphorically) due to inaccuracies—especially,
the unrealistic extremes Doms were inflicting on their subs. When it
comes to sex, though, I think readers are more willing to accept
distortions of reality—first
because they’re looking for fantasy anyway, and second, because
many of them have no experience at all with the activities described.
There’s
one particularly egregious error in Raw Silk that I couldn’t
figure out how to fix. My heroine Kate is “forced” by her master
to perform nude in a live show in a Bangkok sex bar. She’s
disguised as Asian, wearing a black wig to cover her auburn curls and
make-up that hides the freckles associated with her Irish background.
Everyone agrees she looks Thai. When she sheds her G-string, though,
her masquerade should have been obvious—she
has, after all, bright red pubic hair!
I
was terribly embarrassed when my own Master pointed this out to me,
many years ago, though nobody else has ever mentioned it. (Like many
masters, mine is a stickler for detail.) In my recent round of
edits, I decided not to mess with the problem. Any mention of the
issue would distract from the intensity of the scene. And aside from
having Kate be shaved (which wouldn’t fit the time period, her
personality, or my personal preferences), I couldn’t think of a
good solution anyway.
Fiction
isn’t required to be realistic of course. Readers know this. At the
same time, concrete details can increase reader involvement. Mistakes
in those details, on the other hand, can yank the reader out of the
narrative and generate negative emotions.
Just
one more thing we authors need to worry about!
