GETTING IT RIGHT COUNTS

By John Ramsey Miller

At some point during our careers we get something wrong and editors and proofreaders miss it, but some reader somewhere will always find it and might just rub your nose in it. And there it is forever––the screwing of the pooch––immortalized, bound between covers. Some readers are so anal they’ll go through a novel with a fine tooth comb to find every misused semi-colon, every missing or extra comma throughout a novel so they can perform a “superior” jig. But for some readers there is no bigger turnoff than stumbling over an inaccuracy on a subject or a location that they know. Turning off readers is the last thing we authors can afford to do.

It has been my experience that we authors can’t depend on our editors, or copy editors, to catch inaccuracies because those professionals may assume we know more about a subject than they do, and the author should indeed be in that position.

I remember a copy editor on INSIDE OUT made a note on the manuscript informing me that New Orleans didn’t have an Italian “mafia” like the families in New York and Chicago. Sam Manelli, (my fictional Don), was therefore not plausible. I sent an e-mail to the editor explaining to her that Carlos Marcello’s organized crime organization was the single largest industry in Louisiana in the 70s and 80s, generating an estimated two billion dollars a year. Marcello’s crime organization was larger, more successful, and just as violent as any other Mafia organization. (http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/family_epics/marcello/1.html)

I’ve always been interested in guns (particularly handguns) and I have owned dozens of them and I’ve been shooting most of my life. But when I write about guns I still double-check my technical information with people who are more knowledgeable than I am with a specific gun, or other ordnance. I also own several volumes of Shooter’s Bible and Gun Digest––available in any bookstore––which offers technical information on thousands of firearms. These reference books contain critical details on thousands of guns and will tell you how many bullets (or shells) a gun holds, how to spell the name, what caliber(s) a gun is made to handle, its weight, size, barrel lengths, and other tidbits you might leave out but that should know. You can go to a gun store and ask the clerk to show you the guns you are going to write about. And shoot one. Some gun ranges rent handguns, so you can become familiar with the experience of firing a weapon.

And, outside of Hollywood (the Capital City of inaccuracy), those who are shot with guns are not propelled backwards. Due to the way muscles and tendons operate, most humans will collapse forward (even collapsing toward the weapon). Even victims of a machine-gun burst or a 12 gauge double-ought blast will not take flight because bullets and even buckshot do not transfer the energy necessary to move the weight of a human being. Don’t just take my word for it, those two goofy debunkers on TV’s Mythbusters gleefully shot a hog carcass with handguns, rifles and shotguns, and the hung-up carcass didn’t even swing from the impact. Okay, the point is, people out there know their stuff, and if a gun person reads that a revolver has a safety (or a clip) you will loose that reader forever, and he will tell his gun buddies and they will laugh at you and never again open one of your books.

When I write about professionals, I interview them. I’ve talked extensively with US Marshals, Homeland Security personnel, TSA officials, FBI agents, agents with the DEA, CIA operatives, bounty hunters, homicide detectives from several cities, beat cops, and deputy sheriffs. I will interview attorneys, coroners, physicians, judges, herpetologists, forensic experts, and any other professionals who can answer my questions on any related subject. The plain truth is: experts are delighted to help you get it right. Ninety-nine percent of the time knowledgeable individuals will be delighted to tell you more than you need to know about their area of expertise.

For my first Thriller, THE LAST FAMILY, I was imagining a character who was going to kill a child using the curare-like drug, Succinocholine, a fast-acting paralytic commonly used by anesthesiologists. (I later changed the victim to a grown woman and threw the boy off a cliff). Given in large amounts the drug stops the heart muscles cold. I called the Mississippi State Medical Examiner out of the blue, and merely said, “I’m John Miller, and I’m writing a novel. I need to know how much Succinocholine it would take to kill a 9-year-old child.” After about three beats, the doctor replied, “How much does the child weigh?”

Before we hung up, I told him I’d never witnessed an autopsy, and he told me to drive down and he’d treat me to one. Several days later, I was standing beside a stainless table in Brandon, Mississippi, watching the good doctor ply his trade. As a result I can write a believable autopsy scene because I know what the room and the action looks and sounds like, and even why the good doctor smoked cigars while deconstructing corpses.

You can set a story in a fictional place, based on a real one or plucked strictly from your imagination. If you use a real place as a setting, go there and walk it, or change the location to one you can walk. If you write about the French Quarter in New Orleans, you should know which direction the one-way streets run and what the buildings look like on those streets. Being there allows you to gather impressions. Learn what a place smells like, how the people on the street look, and the phrasing and cadence of their speech. Gather names of your local characters from people you meet, from gravestones or local phone books. It’s about the details. It is as important to write where you know, as well as what you know. Your readers––those who know––will notice the difference, and those who don’t will still appreciate your descriptions.

When I set UPSIDE DOWN in New Orleans I walked side streets and used locations around the French Quarter that tourists never see, as well as some they might. When I had a character running for her life, I walked her route, and experienced for myself what she would be seeing, hearing and smelling as she fled from professional killers. Even though I lived in New Orleans for nine years, I made a trip back to the Crescent City to see what things in the area had changed radically during my absence.

I had crucial scenes in UPSIDE DOWN that take place on the Canal Street Ferry, so I went on the Thomas Jefferson, asked for the engineer and he gave me a tour of the vessel. I asked him how my character might go about taking over the boat, and he told me. I walked the vessel with the engineer and took a lot of pictures for reference, timed the crossing, asked the crew questions and I made notes that included my impressions and the names of any items I might want to write into my story.

When I sat down to write those chapters I was able to choreograph action knowing which doors led where, how long the trip across the River took, and exactly where everybody who worked or rode on the boat might be during a run across the river. I knew how many people worked on the ferry and what job each of the crew was responsible for. I studied the passengers, and watched how the cars came on, how they were parked, and how they exited the vessel. When I wrote the action months later, I could close my eyes and be on the vessel. I could smell the river and the engine exhaust, and hear the engine, the horns of other vessels, the sound of the Thomas Jefferson’s bow pushing through the still surface, and the voices of the passengers heading home after a long day.

You can learn a great deal about a place over the internet, and by talking to people on the phone, but the important impressions you certainly can’t get that way, and the little things allow the reader to more fully experience a late-night ride across the Mississippi River. I changed some minor things on my ferry, but I was accurate where it counted. By the time I finished those chapters, I was sure that only the man who designed the vessel and the people who work on her would spot my changes, but I was confident that very few others would.

Poetic license won’t cover blatant ignorance on a subject or a real setting you are writing into your book. Research involves an investment in an author’s time, energy and (often as not) some expense, but I believe that my primary job is to entertain my readers and make sure they get the best story I can write. As an author, I believe I owe my readers as much realism and texture as I can write into a fictional story.

13 thoughts on “GETTING IT RIGHT COUNTS

  1. Great post, John. As a reader, I want to be taken to places I might never go and do things which I would rarely have the opportunity. One sloppy inaccuracy will shove me right out of the story. It seems to happens often in TV shows that are set in South Florida where I live but shot in California or somewhere else. CSI Miami is a good example. I finally drifted away from the series after seeing too many hills in the background (the only hills we have are landfills) or license plates on the front of police cars (we don’t do that in Florida). Someone in another part of the country may not spot those mistakes, but it ruins the show me.

  2. Enjoyed the post, John. Very good points. My books don’t require such wide-ranging research as yours but the concealed carry class was lots of fun. And I have my own resident gun authority to keep me from making too many dumb mistakes.

  3. Good information, John! And Joe, I’ve never felt the same about CSI Miami after I learned that the headquarters building (that cool-looking one with the angled windows) is an office building next door to my dentist in SoCal. It really loses the drama when you’re watching the 17th “take” of someone walking out of a building, while having your teeth drilled! Inhaling some nitrous helped me suspend my disbelief again, though (grin).

  4. I totally believe in what you say, John. I love reading about all those little details that enable you to visualize the scene without actually being there. And when the bad guy whips out his Colt .38 Super you think “Wow, this guy knows his stuff.” And you do…

  5. I imagine that one of the joys of your craft is doing the research. I think that a writer like John Miller , who enjoys the footwork of getting the facts straight, can take pride in telling a good story and doing it with accuracy of detail. Nice work John! I think you hit the center of this target.

  6. Great post! I totally agree that getting it right counts – a tricky propositon with historical mysteries sometimes when it’s an item so specific it’s hard to research but I too have had amazing expert advice – without it I would have written some real clangers. I wish I could be more anal about the final manuscript checks though because as you say you can’t rely on the publishers to do it all for you. I love double checking my research but the final typo checks – now that’s a pain in the bum!

  7. Well said, John. The details are so very important. In my own case, I find that my greatest liability for getting things wrong is those things which I’m certain I already know–and turn out to be mistaken. The good news is that there are countless readers out there who are more than willing to let me know when I screw up. In my own writing, for all the reasons you’ve discussed, I tend to create locations that probably look familiar to people who live near Washington, DC (my home), but because they’re not “real,” I get the freedom to change the details to suit my needs. Laziness has its advantages.

  8. Well, here are some questions about how decisions can be counter-intuitive with regard to writing.

    If one is writing a popular book, will a reader be taken out of the story more if:
    a. the factual reality is presented
    or
    b. the assumed reality as people see over and over in TV crime shows is presented in the book?

    Is the greater goal to
    a. keep a story moving, by having DNA results back in impossible time,
    or
    b. slow the story down by having the possible 2 day or more turn-around?

    Perhaps reality belongs in non-fiction and exaggeration belongs in fiction? Whose reality should we be presenting? And which audience are we aiming for? The boffins from forensics or the general public?

  9. jwhit raises an interesting point. I think the answer lies in the nature of the book you’re trying to write, who your audience is likely to be, and how critical the under-researched detail is to the plot. In the case of the DNA testing, for example, fealty to reality is less important when the plot is really about a grandmother who solves crimes with the help of her cat than it is for a story whose lead protagonist is a world-renown expert in forensics. The two books attract readers with different sensibilities. Tom Clancy, as an example, can’t afford to to have Navy SEALS performing tasks that would normally be assigned to Delta Force.

  10. Great post, John. For my first book, even though I never named the university where it took place, I mentioned it to my editor, who told the copyeditor, who looked up the academic schedule of the real school up on the internet.And the copyeditor shifted the entire story ahead a month (changed the weather put parkas on my characters), even though the very reason I’d never mentioned the school was because I needed the story to end on a specific date.
    In my most recent book, my editor tried to correct me when I said that in the US coroners aren’t required to have any medical training. She was shocked and dismayed to discover that I hadn’t made that up.

  11. Michelle,
    Did you get a chance to change things back before the book was published? It’s outrageous that a copyeditor would be so presumptuous!

  12. Michelle,
    NO editor I’ve ever had has EVER SO MUCH as changed a word of my manuscript, and the idea that a legit copy editor would do such a thing is incomprehensible. I get notes and suggestions, but no editor worth a damn would dare tinker with an author’s manuscript. It’s not kosher. I assume you never did another book with that publisher.

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