Do you know too much for the author's own good?

Here's an interesting thought. During the course of reading books sometimes an otherwise talented author will throw out information that you as the reader know to be false.

Often it is in the form of an area of professional or personal expertise. It will slip past some readers perhaps, but anyone actually familiar with the subject matter will be left shaking their head.

In my case as a biologist I often hear ridiculous statements or scenarios made about animals.

I personally know them to be total BS. But the average reader may skim over the info and accept it as fact.

Just as a mathematician will find the error in a false math theorum and a gun expert can explain why your post apocalyptic hero will never make the shot at that range and with that caliber of weapon, I am sure that all of us catch things from time to time that make us go... "What the...?"

I'll give you two examples from my own reading and ask you what sort of stuff do you notice as BS that perhaps detracts from an otherwise good read?

In a fictional modern spy novel a character finds himself trapped in a room full of mambas, rattlesnakes, taipans, and a pair if very large king cobras protecting a clutch of eggs go after the protagonist.

Now anyone who knows snakes knows that the only species to ever show even the slightest degree of parental care for the eggs are some species of pythons.

But more importantly, king cobras are snake eaters (ophidiophageous) and consume both venomous and non venomous species. They are resistant to a variety of toxins.

If you had large king cobras in an enclosure you would have no mambas, rattlesnakes, etc. Just two very full cobras.

Another example. An author states in a post apocalyptic story that;

"Reptiles and sharks are the only true omnivores in the animal kingdom."

Actually the author probably meant to say carnivores since omnivores eat plant and animal matter. Sharks are all predators/carnivores. Though whale and basking sharks do injest some phytoplankton (microscopic aquatic plants) when they forage.

Some reptiles are omnivores especially turtles and some kinds of lizards. But all snakes and crocodilians are carnivores.

Now I know it is not that important in the grand scheme of things to most readers but it always throws a little monkey wrench into my reading knowing what I know...

How about you? Is there an area of special knowledge that you find yourself shaking your head at when reading a book or story?

Those examples just sound like they were written by fools.

Sci fi allows us to make up the rules of the world we create, but if we are using details from the real world, there is an obligation to get it right. If not, don't go into details. "A room full of agitated snakes" does everything the erroneous description does without posing a conflict between knowledge and reality.

Okay. Immensely boring person alert. I am a high-level management consultant when I need to fund my writing (my clients are mostly all resigned to this and many are now sf non-virgins). Two things really irk me:

When a corporate structure/culture doesn't support the events. I once emailed one of my critique partners my powerpoints on culture vs structure. True, that.

When leaders don't, actually, have basic leadership traits. It's one of the reasons I struggle with non-character led sf. I'm supposed to believe in the leaders and yet they don't communicate with me, but through a distant narrator. If I can't believe and be made to follow then it's useless. Sadly, however, that led me to write a leader BEFORE they were one - which makes them hard to believe in at first. It was deliberate but as a hook is a challenge - but I'll stand over my depiction of a inherited-leader (one born to the role as birthright rather than by innate ability) any day of the week.

Honestly, no. My degree was in archaeology - if I was to get upset at every error I spotted I'd never enjoy a book.

Jo, did you post in the right thread?

Sounds like the right thread to me.

I've mentioned this one before, but speaking of animals, one of my favorite mystery writers, who is terrific (I assume) at botanical matters, had a character with a guinea pig that had a dozen hairless babies with eyes stuck shut, and that made me crazy. Guinea pigs have one or two at a time, and they come out fully-furred and eating solid food. I worked in a pet store for four years.

I also have a lot of years in the casino industry, so people sometimes irritate me there as well. Including another of my favorite mystery writers.

Generally, I'm pretty happy to suspend disbelief and just roll with it. Only time I get irked is when quantum mechanics or string theory is invoked as a catch-all handwavium for some kind of bizarre Sci-fi scenario.

I suppose the details that get to me are the ones I'm most proficient/knowledgeable about. For example, one that always gets me--and is very common--is the misuse of clip in place of magazine in reference to firearms, or a character flipping off the safety on a particular gun that doesn't have a safety. These writers, I presume, are selecting a specific model of firearms for realism and detail, yet don't really understand the thing to which they are referring. That being said, I'd be surprised if I didn't make the same mistake in my own writing. Research can only get me so far before I have to admit my own lack of true understanding. There's probably a fine line in there somewhere between my own due diligence and my faith in the reader's willingness to overlook certain details.

RX-79G said:

Jo, did you post in the right thread?

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Um... Yes. For me it was unusually on thread subject and everything

Dare I ask why it didn't sound like I did?

Jo Zebedee said:

Um... Yes. For me it was unusually on thread subject and everything

Dare I ask why it didn't sound like I did?

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I didn't understand what the powerpoint or, other parts, had to do with the OP. I re-read it several times and kind of follow what you're talking about.

For me if a writer wants to write about something that really exists then he has only to click on the Google button to avoid the kind of mistakes mentioned above. There's really no reason any more to make the obvious howlers that a reader with some knowledge of the subject matter spots right away.

Hi,

Research is so important. That's one lesson I learned thoroughly.

When I was writing The Nephilim I had a character who was a FBI agent who I wanted to accidentally shoot himself while holstering his weapon. It seemed simple enough - a gun with a broken safety and a stone in the holster. But I checked it out on line first since I'm a kiwi and we don't have handguns so I know only what I see on the idiot box. Obviously I've been watching the wrong shows! FBI agents don't use Glocks anymore. They use Sigs - forty calibre or ten mm. Glocks don't have safeties they have trigger guards. And there's a whole procedure for holstering a weapon that should make this entire scenario next to impossible. I think I got about five pages of extremely passionate responces to what I thought was a simple question. Thank the stars I actually checked it out. I can't imagine how many reviews I might have got pointing out my complete lack of knowledge about handguns.

Cheers, Greg.

RX-79G said:

I didn't understand what the powerpoint or, other parts, had to do with the OP. I re-read it several times and kind of follow what you're talking about.

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ah, the powerpoints were an anecdote (I get sidetracked). My answer was getting corporate structure and culture wrong irks me, as does unconvincing leadership traits.

Justin Swanton said:

For me if a writer wants to write about something that really exists then he has only to click on the Google button to avoid the kind of mistakes mentioned above. There's really no reason any more to make the obvious howlers that a reader with some knowledge of the subject matter spots right away.

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But you have to know you might be wrong in the first place. My corporate vs culture structure is a good example of that - how many people have heard of a spider/zeus/power culture and recognise that you can't have that in a multi-planetary corporation? * Not many, I'm guessing. How do you google what you don't know?

I think, honestly, if you're writing about something you're unfamiliar with andit's integral to the story, that's where knowledgeable experts come in. When I was writing some court stuff for Inish Carraig, I ran the outline past @The Judge. When I decided to write a military setting - with no knowledge of the military, whatsoever, esp the culture - I worked closely with a beta reader who was. He pulled me up on many, many things I would never have known to google.

* well, you could, if you had a planet doing its own thing. But then the structure would be falling into a federacy. In which case, a corporation ceases to structure as one. Which then changes the culture of the operation. Anyhow, I could go on - permetations within this are many and varied. Did I mention it was boring?

I kind of feel bad about saying this, but it is something I was going to write in your critique, but as you've made a thread... You say the planet in your story is the size of saturn, but must in turn be rocky. Saturn is over 750 times the size of earth. A rocky planet the size of saturn would have a gravity too great for the types of life you describe. I didn't post in critiques as it felt unfair to critique your post on physics and biology alone.

I don't mind people inventing technology and so on, even quite far fetched stuff. But we do need to apply physics to nature.

Just make the planet somewhat bigger than earth. You can do that, still have a big planet, and still make the local life as you describe.

Now, I will go and feel bad with a cup of coffee.

Quellist said:

I don't mind people inventing technology and so on, even quite far fetched stuff. But we do need to apply physics to nature.

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For example, dragons

Jo Zebedee said:

ah, the powerpoints were an anecdote (I get sidetracked). My answer was getting corporate structure and culture wrong irks me, as does unconvincing leadership traits.




But you have to know you might be wrong in the first place. My corporate vs culture structure is a good example of that - how many people have heard of a spider/zeus/power culture and recognise that you can't have that in a multi-planetary corporation? * Not many, I'm guessing. How do you google what you don't know?

I think, honestly, if you're writing about something you're unfamiliar with andit's integral to the story, that's where knowledgeable experts come in. When I was writing some court stuff for Inish Carraig, I ran the outline past @The Judge. When I decided to write a military setting - with no knowledge of the military, whatsoever, esp the culture - I worked closely with a beta reader who was. He pulled me up on many, many things I would never have known to google.

* well, you could, if you had a planet doing its own thing. But then the structure would be falling into a federacy. In which case, a corporation ceases to structure as one. Which then changes the culture of the operation. Anyhow, I could go on - permetations within this are many and varied. Did I mention it was boring?

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Eh, wassat? Sorry, wasn't paying attention...

VinceK said:

For example, dragons

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Unless you take the Guards! Guards! approach, and just roll with the dragons not making sense.

@ Jo.
Maybe your meaning of leader is different to mine.
A leader not having leadership qualities - from personal experience, that is real world - at least in IT and science I've worked for some. I think it to be bordering on miraculous if a group leader manages to have knowledge of the technical subjects of the people working for them, plus can talk to people, and organize and inspire their team without being annoying or sounding like they are quoting from a management text book they were forced to read. In practice what you seem to get in IT/science is either a skilled techie who can organise (and read management texts and quote from them) or a professional manager who has no technical knowledge and believes that none is needed to run a technical section - then meetings get very, very long (and sometimes Dilbertian) when you have to work out how to explain at their level the importance of the technical thing you just said wrt to deadlines for the customer.
I have met one or two very impressive people who were the exception to the above, but very thin on the ground.

AnyaKimlin said:

My degree was in archaeology

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Oh goody. Can I pick your brain sometime? My current WIP has an archaeologist as the main protagonist, but it's not a novel about archaeology. I'd love an expert opinion on how badly I've messed her up in some of my chapters. Would you consider swapping crits when the time's right?

I have a great ability to just put blinkers on to the small mistakes like super long distance shots of magic bullets (that bullet bending movie for example) but I just can't get past mistakes like sudden clues popping up just when you need them or a sudden death that clears everything up or in one case being kidnapped by the bad guy who then spills all the beans.

Actually I think those are called cliques....