You Can’t Fool Your Readers
I started serious work on my fourth book this weekend and ran into a snag almost immediately. You might remember my books are historical mysteries that are solved today by modern technology. Well, in “Pure Lies” I move back to 1692 and the Salem witch trials.
You probably think I got caught trying to figure out how my main character, who’s a digital photographer, analyzes photographs from 1692, when photography didn’t exist until the mid-1800s. She can’t. But she does examine old documents from the trials. Aha. Gotcha!
Here’s the snag I ran into. I was writing about a character putting wood in the wood stove in their house in Salem Village. Wood stoves weren’t invented until Ben Franklin, gosh durn it. So I had to change it to a fireplace. This got me to thinking how important these details are. Now the Franklin stove wouldn’t be considered “technology” today, but it certainly was a form of technology in the past.
Which brings me to my modern story. This one takes place in 2006, not 2013. There have been significant changes in technology in those intervening years. For example, in one scene, a 13-year-old boy refers to his Sony Play Station. Now, I had to think, when did those come on the market? Apparently the first were launched around 1994. For my book, it didn’t matter which one my teen had (1, 2, 3, etc.), so I just called it a Sony Play Station. Whew.
I started thinking about phones and computers and computer technology and began looking up the timelines. Check this out:
The World Wide Web was born in 1990.
The first answering machine, 1971. (See photo.)
Yahoo was founded in 1994.
First hybrid car (Toyota,) 2000.
The first Apple iPod, 2001. (See photo.)
Youtube, 2005.
The first iPhone, 2007.
The first Android Cell, 2008.
The first e-reader, Kindle, 2008.
If you look at these dates, you’ll see I couldn’t refer to iPhones, Androids or Kindles in my latest book. So, be careful how you use technology. Make sure it existed during your book’s timeline.
The witches of Salem would have been mortified.
I’m smiling 😀 Yes, lots to consider….and thank goodness for Wikipedia and the internet (used with caution, of course). Research is far easier now than when I began my first novel in 1991, when one had to still refer to books and journals – far easier to make mistakes (by the way, I didn’t finish and publish the book until 2009!). I’m writing crime mysteries set in the 25th century (as I’ve mentioned before, methinks), so even though I make up whatever technology I want, it still has to be feasible, and an advance (if relevant) on today’s, so when I went back to my first 1/2 manuscript in 2004 to revise, update and continue it, some things were still okay, surprisingly enough, but quite a bit wasn’t, so even for sci-fi writers, what you say is still very important, and it’s remarkably difficult to ‘future-proof’ a novel of this type.
Inge, you make a good point about writing about the future. Seems to me that would be much harder. I’ll stick to the past! Thanks for reading. Lynne
Oh yes. It’s those little details the get us stuck. It isn’t a new problem. In one book I’ve read about the Revolutionary War in the south he a perplexed protagonist saying, “A fine pickle of beets. And to screw the lid on the jar…” Canning in jars wasn’t invented until the 1820’s. Had he said, “put the lid on the crock,” he would have been fine. But then he had the same protagonist wearing boots in the first chapter and in subsequent chapters wearing moccasins when he hadn’t been anywhere to change. Gotta watch out for such things.
Excellent examples, Ruth. Thank you!
I couldn’t agree more. It bugs me as a reader when otherwise competent authors fail to do their homework and insert obvious blunders into their manuscripts, such as removing a pickup truck steering wheel with a belt-mounted Leatherman mult-tool. After 30 years in the automotive service field I know that “there ain’t no way!” Reading that gross error, approached so nonchalantly by a successful author publishing through a major publishing house, stopped me cold. I seriously considered closing the book and starting a different novel…written by a different author.
As a writer I appreciate your tech savvy approach toward getting it right the first time. One of my protagonists is a 50s private eye. Thankfully I grew up in that era and feel comfortable writing about it. But there are moments when I have to pause and research to verify dates, events, people and technology of the time to ensure that the facts I insert into my fiction (to keep it real) actually occurred in my story’s timeline.
Hi Gary,
Thanks for reading. I know what you mean about closing the book. With the Internet it doesn’t take long to research. . . just make sure you research through trustworthy sites! Lynne