During my 35 years as a firefighter and safety engineer, I conducted a great deal of training to professionals whose products and services I did not fully understand. That lack of understanding could become a problem only if I let that happen because let’s face it: the safety and reporting requirements for a degreaser are largely the same whether you’re degreasing razor blades or gun barrels.
To streamline the teaching process, I created the generic franistans and fornasteins to serve my purposes as I needed them. The two items were always incompatible. If it was an electrical safety class, they’d be of different voltages (or different continents), if they were bits of fire apparatus, the threads wouldn’t line up. And in a hazmat class, god forbid that you store franistan chloride next fornastein sulfate, lest you create a cloud of methyl-ethyl badsh*t.
As an aside, a blithwhap is any item that is not a hammer yet is used as a hammer.
It occurs to me that franistans and fornasteins form the basis of a great deal of science fiction and fantasy. Just because a thing or a planet or a people aren’t real doesn’t mean that they can’t be assigned characteristics that make them real. That’s what this fiction gig is all about. In the case of fantasy in particular, it’s a personal bugaboo of mine that if I cannot pronounce a word in my head, I cannot read the story, and as a result, I know I’m being ejected from a lot of really good storytelling.
Want to know what you got wrong?
I was at a party the other night when the hostess told me how much her husband loves my books, but how he makes notes on details that I get wrong. “He won’t share them if you won’t ask for them, though.”
Hell shall freeze over. And here’s why: 1) her husband is a good friend and he’s got a fully functioning voice box with which he could ask me himself if he wanted to share his insights; 2) the book is already out and the damage already done; and 3) I probably won’t care.
<cue organ chord>
It’s not that I won’t care care, but that the areas of this friend’s expertise are very high-tech, and I will therefore always get things wrong, and the mistakes are of a nature that only he and a dozen other people on the planet would notice. This is the wondrous element of fiction: it’s mostly made up.
If your story needs a bajillion millimeter bombinator to launch a thousand-ton projectile to Mars from Bikini Atoll, I say go for it, but be very careful of the point of view from which you report the launch. If it’s from the POV of a kid on the playground, it’s probably just a big loud rocket ship. If it’s from the POV of launch control, well, you’ve got some serious explaining to do. Start with the chemistry and physics. At its heart, though, the bombinator is just a cousin of the franistan.
I set Burned Bridges, the first in my new Irene River thriller series, in Jenkins County, West Virginia, which might as well be Franistania, West Virginia. Set in the Eastern Panhandle, Jenkins County physically resembles the actual Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan Counties that define the Panhandle, but it’s got an entirely different political structure. It’s a fictional nonfiction place.
We all know that guns will get you in trouble when you write about them. The average mystery fan is probably fine knowing that Detective Jones is carrying a pistol. The average thriller fan will want to know that he’s carrying a Glock. My fans will know that he’s carrying a chambered Glock 19 in a Kydex holster on his right side with two spare 17-round magazines on his left.
The point here is to write for the audience you most care about, and accept that someone will always be a little disappointed.
Good reminders, with smiles, Mr. Gilstrap. I had a reader come up to me and tell me there were no towns where I’d set my fictitious Mapleton series. I smile and said, yes, there is one. Mapleton.
I try to research what I don’t know. The hard part is knowing what you don’t know, like the time I gave my character trouble because although she’d escaped her captor, she didn’t know how to drive a stick shift (and I had the vehicle parked up against a tree to further thwart her efforts). What I didn’t know, and thanks to an astute crit partner, was that my vehicle of choice for the character didn’t come with a manual transmission. I was clueless that you couldn’t get that option in any vehicle.
Ross Macdonald made up the town of Santa Teresa as a stand in for Santa Barbara, where he lived, so he could take liberties (Sue Grafton borrowed the same town, as she lived in SB, too and probably knew Macdonald, pen name of Kenneth Millar). I like doing the same for small burgs Mike Romeo visits. But my L.A. stuff is real because it’s first hand knowledge, though research these days is getting a bit perilous.
Hahaha, John! Ain’t it fun to frustrate Spell Czech?
My experts often save me from embarrassment and, as Terry says, “knowing what you don’t know.” In my sixth thriller Flight to Forever, I described a fire lookout tower in the mountains that had been destroyed by an avalanche. My 30-year Forest Service veteran expert tactfully pointed out that avalanches don’t destroy lookout towers b/c they’re built at the very top of mountains.
Well duh!
My fans will know that he’s carrying a chambered Glock 19 in a Kydex holster on his right side with two spare 17-round magazines on his left.
Yep…
BTW, John…we are picking up a new dog this afternoon from a local shelter. We met her yesterday. She’s a German Shepherd/Malinois mix, 2 years old. Why do I tell you?
Because her name is–wait for it–Kimber! 🙂
YES!!!
My Portland neighborhood of Fir Grove is a fictional version of several real-life southwest Portland neighborhoods I know well. In cozy mysteries there’s a tradition of fictionalized towns which are a stand-ins for the real thing.
As a long time reader and writer of fantasy and science fiction, coming up with lyrical and pronounceable place (and character) names is essential so that you don’t put off readers.
I’ve made enough rookie mistakes that I welcome anyone who wants to tell me what I got wrong.
I mislabeled the runway markings in one manuscript that fortunately was read by a fellow pilot before it was published. The mistake was so elementary, I could have blithwhapped myself with an airplane.
Years ago a Big Pub thriller was published with much ado. But no one (except a newspaper reviewer) caught the cop going into action wearing a Mylar vest!
Love this article! Definitely borrowing your term for “any item that is not a hammer yet is used as a hammer” because, while blithwhap might not roll easily off the tongue!, it has great punchiness!
…or is that whapiness?
Anyway, it’s accurate in my household and will amuse us all!
My parents build the oldest part of my house right after WWII in the days before things like lumber and pipes were standardized, and Dad scavenged most of it so it was even worse than most houses. Years later, my mom decided to update her bathroom and replace the tub and shower with a Jacuzzi. One day, I saw the contractor sitting on the steps with two pieces of pipe in his hand. He was close to tears as he mumbled, “None of this makes sense. None of this makes sense.”
On the other hand, accurate details can have disproportionate effect.
My younger brother felt an almost ridiculous level of validation when, in one of my stories, a couple of characters couldn’t be reached by radio. Why? Because they were in a split-screen VW microbus, and if it hasn’t blown a fuse without your noticing or otherwise exhibited am electrical failure, it wouldn’t be a split-screen VW microbus. My brother once owned one of these under the delusion that it was a form of transportation. Not with his level of mechanical expertise, it wasn’t!
So I toss in references, often in passing, that some readers will be aware of and will firm up the setting for everyone else. In a story set in 1972, it’s worth mentioning in passing that a man is wearing a “fashionable brown suit,” because the apparent contradiction is somehow convincing.
Not a leisure suit?
For my first few romantic suspense novels I was fortunate to have a retired SAPD detective/friend who graciously read my manuscripts. He was able to point out some errors that most readers probably wouldn’t have noticed, but still it was good to get it right. But the one that saved my bacon actually had nothing to do with police work. I’m not from Texas originally so I get the two big college football rival mascots mixed up. I had UT Aggies instead of Longhorns. The Aggies are A&M. Any true Texan would have stopped reading and thrown the book in the trash. One does not mess with Texans and their football. One thing Richard did say that I appreciated greatly about some minor police detail that was iffy: “After all it’s fiction.”