May 15, 2008
Psssss! Hey writer, are you cheating?
I admit it. I’m lazy. I hate doing setting research. I’m just interested in getting sentences on the screen before the story thief steals my words. Digging up facts and figures? Who has time for that crap?
It hasn’t always been this way. The first book I wrote (as an
adult) took place in a real town. I was meticulous to the
point of dragging DH on a field trip. I fell in love with the area. It was by the water. All the residents owned boats and it was a private community. To this day, I still bug DH about moving there.
Five books later, I’ve taken to creating whole towns. Maybe next I’ll even create a fictional state. Hell, I might go all out and do an entire country! Still, I often wonder how writers feel about making this stuff up. Is it cheating? And what about readers? When you open a book and find a fictional town, do you connect with the story less? Does a real place add authenticity? Or do fictional cities make the suspension of disbelief that much harder to achieve?
Don’t think I have a problem with either.
If it’s a real setting, I’ve got a free trip there from the comfort of my couch.
If it’s fictional, I’ve got a trip through the writer’s imagination.
Both work.
I don’t think it’s cheating… I make up towns/cities now. I have heard too many stories of readers saying the store isn’t on Blah… or you have the lake on the wrong side of blah… hell I have even read books set where I live that are soooo very wrong–like a tumbleweed rolling by someone at the D/FW airport
As to relating…I’ve never been to many places I’ve read and factual or ficional I don’t know that it makes much difference–to me.
okay that was dumb… OBVIOUSLY I have never been to the fictional places
LOL @ Dennie. lol.
I’m with Raine, either/or works.
It doesn’t bother me if the town is real or fictional.
And if it’s cheating then I do it all the time.
What Raine said…as long as it’s well done, that’s all that really matters.
>>wrong–like a tumbleweed rolling by someone at the D/FW airport
Denise I actually read that in an unpublished contest entry. I was like WTF YAHOO, never heard of GOOGLE!!!!!!! OMG
Raine,
I like that trip through the writer’s brain. I never really thought about it like that. Makes sense.
Dennie,
Sometimes though, readers are just too damned anal. I read some of the reviews on amazon, and some people gleefully go through books LOOKING for this stuff. Makes me wonder if they have nothing better to do with their time. One reader had the nerve to circle all the supposed factual inaccuracies, then she sent the book back to the author. How rude.
Cece,
Agreed. The tumbleweed thingie is a glaring example, but most of this stuff is minor and people get all up in arms about it. Especially when it comes to historical romance writers. I remember one author who mentioned steel, which hadn’t been in use at the time of her book. All the readers piled on, damning the author for her “horrendous” error.
And Tanya the minor stuff like that I’d probably never notice. I actually prefer making up my own towns–then no one knows when i screw up LOL
Makes me wonder if they have nothing better to do with their time.
Exactly, Tanya.
That’s what makes historicals such a bitch to write. It’s A LOT of Fact checking etymology and … well I’m turning one of my first historicals (which sucks beans) into a fantasy (since it has swords and elves) into a Fantasy. No fact checking on this one. LOL!
Cece,
Like I said, I prefer making the stuff up because I just don’t feel like doing a bunch of research. It’s too time consuming and I’m unashamedly lazy.
Raine & Cece,
That’s why I don’t write historicals. I’d spend half my time with my nose hidden in research books. I’m anal, so I doubt I’d get anything done for checking and rechecking facts. That would take the joy out of writing for me. I’d start to feel like a text book writer. I don’t know how historical writers do it. I have a lot of respect for them.