Inaccuracies in fiction

[HoppyHat]

Do they bother you? I realise I am annoyed/disappointed by simple "mistakes" which surely a decent editor should notice?

A couple of examples

A very very popular novel. Set in modern day London. Character regularly gets the bus from A to B along a named road all of which exist in real life. But they don't use the correct bus number! Nothing bad happens on the bus, the driver isn't awful, nothing libellous. So why not use the correct bus number?

I've just finished a book which I really liked. The author is American. But part of the book is set in a posh English school in the 1950s. The headteacher calls the season following summer "Fall". And says (more than once) "you need to write your sister" (or similar) not write TO.

To me these things are so obvious and quite jarring. Anyone else?

The Crimson Petal and The White, a character in 1875/6 has potato waffles with his pigeon pie.

In Gone Girl Amy becomes pregnant after claiming her husband's semen sample from the fertility clinic. They only had it from the testing stages and had never had any treatment cycles, so it seemed incredibly unlikely it would have been (a) retained and (b) preserved in a condition suitable for fertilisation.

I've mentioned this to a few people and no one seems to think it's a problem. But from my own experience of the fertility clinic testing samples aren't retained at all once the necessary results are gathered. Does anyone know if this is different in the US?

I know what you mean. I recently read Weyward, which I thought was fab and really enjoyed. However at a couple of points a modern-day character goes to get her pregnancy ultrasound scans at her local GP with her normal family doctor. It really irritated me -- even if the author hasn't been pregnant you'd think one of the editors might have realised that that doesn't happen!

One of the opposite: I read a book set in Manchester which had a chase sequence in it, perfectly plotted - and it ended up in my living room!! Totally weird to read though 😂

As another poster has mentioned Cindy from Eastenders I have noticed two more continuity inaccuracies about that character (must get out more!)

Cindy's birthday was 10th May - I only noticed in particular because its very close to my birthday. After she "died" there were two years running where Ian was moping around on 10th May "because it was Cindy's birthday" and everyone had to tiptoe around him. Then on a subsequent year he remarried to Laura on ... 10th May!

Cindy's mum was originally called Lucy (and Cindy named her daughter after her) but in later years she is called Bev.

I read a novel where the main character wore “Dr Martin” boots.

No, no he didn’t. Possibly Dr Marten’s though.

A novel set in England in the 1970s where much of the language was out of period - 'let's just chill' etc. The period detailing seemed to consist solely of making all the decor orange.

I don't think
Many publishers use proof readers, if they do they should be fired.

Wrote a scathing review about a recent book set in Cornwall, written by an American, there was a car trunk, sidewalk, they drank soda... I could go on but you get the gist.

Painful!

I was given a couple of books for a birthday quite recently, newly published books by up and coming writers. One was set in the 60s. It had a character sitting in an office, looking out through the window at all the office workers huddled outside smoking. No. People smoked at their desks at work in the 60s. I know. I was there. Why didn't the author check with an older relative? Why wasn't this inaccuracy picked up on? In another chapter, a character gets a job offer and pumps her fist exclaiming 'yess!!'. No one did that in uk in the 60s. The whole book was culturally 'off'.

I had to stop reading the book after this. I couldn't decide if it was just ignorance and lazy research or whether the writer wanted a younger audience to feel connected and involved.

Question for pedants... I'm writing a book (never likely to be published). I want to set it on Town A and Town B, as I'm familiar with them. But it needs a university in Town B to work... would adding a fictional university bother you?

Whitstable Pearl -they have a police station, nearby hospital and no poo on the water. So much of it is shot here that these inaccuracies seem worse

@CarolinaInTheMorning and @EmpressaurusOfTheScathingTinsel

I don't have access to my copies of Gaudy Night, but I am pretty sure Peter does refer to the 'Corporation dump' and 'Corporation garbage dump' when he and Harriet go punting - and mine are definitely UK editions.

No, that wouldn't bother me. Good luck with the book.

If you put some kind of disclaimer at the start, I'd be OK with it. It might be less jarring if you made it an offshoot of the nearest genuine university, which you do see sometimes, i.e. 'Blah College, University of Bigcity in Mediumtown'.

quote fail, that's to @PuttingDownRoots

It's 'garbage dump' in my 1972 edition. What was it originally?

@PuttingDownRoots I would mix up the towns in other ways -its the juxtaposition of everything else being spot on with a few howlers that is so jarring

Ok, that must be my mistake then, @LadyPeterWimsey & @WelcomeMarch - I thought it sounded very strange for Wimsey to refer to ‘garbage’ instead of rubbish, but apparently not!

I remember one short story, by a Scottish author but set in my part of West Sussex, where he got the trainline wrong. I was happy to suspend disbelief for the demon-horses the character was visiting by there was no way he was getting there by the route described.

Just generally as well, I hate it when time goes too quickly in novels.

Janine switched on the kettle. 'So how's it all going with your mum?' she asked.
'Not bad' I said.
She gave me a look. 'You know you're going to have to tell her?' she said, carrying the cups over to the coffee table.

No! You have to have a whole conversation while the kettle boils, and probably about 15 sentences of chat just taking out the teabags and putting the milk back in the fridge etc. Similarly in books people exchange a couple of pages of dialogue and then it's the end of the evening. Actually it takes loads and loads of talking to fill up a whole evening. Real conversation is repetitive and filled with guff. I'm not asking for all of that to be put in, but you need to give me a sense that time is passing and other things are happening.

I don’t have a copy to hand, but from memory, it’s ’corporation dump’. ‘Garbage’ was inserted in later US editions.

I think in your example, I’d assume Janine was just putting empty cups on the table while the kettle boiled for a cafetière, not that she’d magically made coffee already?

But I know what you mean. A novelist friend’s husband pointed out the opposite — that she’d made a kettle boil over a campfire in not much longer than it would take an electric kettle. I think she caught it at proof stage.

I thoroughly enjoy that book and have actually read it twice but…yeah. I live here. It’s good for a laugh! I enjoy the actual story tho which is why I read it a second time.

When I went to a showing of the film there was lots of tittering from the audience as it majestically panned over stunning views of somewhere that was very much not Guernsey.

Lessons in Chemistry. Was so highly recommended, even had someone stop me on a train to tell me how much I was going to enjoy it. But in the first couple of pages it had a child being the envy of her schoolmates because her lunchbox contained warm cookies.

Ruined it for me. They're not going to still be warm at bloody lunchtime, are they?

I got irrationally irritated reading In Someone Elses's Shoes by Jojo Moyes. A vital part of plot involved the shoes going to a charity shop and the main characters tracing the buyer of the shoes by distracting the shop worker and sneaking a look at the buyers gift aid details written in a book behind the till.
Gift aid details are only given when you donate, not when you buy! A small detail but it rendered it completely unbelievable.

Honestly, I disagree. Her family have the house in Italy, there is no way she would have gone to a Community School.

Look at how much of a snob her brother is. Her mother is a solicitor! Not a chance she wasn’t at a convent. (I could even shortlist the actual schools she would have gone to!)