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?

Old English backstroke sounds a lot more difficult than the version we currently have - not surprised it isn’t used any more

I actually use this stroke quite a lot. Just comes naturally to me. I realise I'm a bit of an outlier with this and DH always takes the piss. Ironically I represented our swimming club at backstroke (the modern one).

I am definitely going to try it next time I’m in a pool and it’s relatively quiet

Treaclewell Maybe the ground squirrel that was used to make umpteen meals was related to the fabled Mumsnet chicken.

An error that received alot of publicity was from Richard Osmans novel. He set a scene in Waitrose in Tunbridge Wells - it doesn’t have one!

There’s one in Tonbridge! Come on, that’s close enough

An error that received alot of publicity was from Richard Osmans novel. He set a scene in Waitrose in Tunbridge Wells - it doesn’t have one!

But it ought to have! If you were going to suggest a supermarket where a stereotypical hypothetical Tunbridge Wells resident would shop, it would be Waitrose!

But errors like this are annoying when these things are so easily checked these days.

Obviously no excuse for the sheep unless it’s in a courtroom, but a shingle beach is another phrasing for a pebble beach so that’s not incorrect.

But then it would be shingle. Shingles is the disease. Or possibly roofing, though we would usually call them tiles in the UK.

We used to say “sitting on the shingles” or “up on the shingles” all the time round my way when I was a kid, we lived near Chesil beach. So I think it’s a common phrase.

From my childhood in the fifties I remember a lot of older people who swam sidestroke, so could be that?
I also think garbage is plausible in the Wimsey text; 'you are talking utter garbage" has certainly been around a long time and the origin of the word is apparently Anglo-Norman French, though originally food waste.

Weyward has been mentioned a few times. I started it on Sunday and yesterday read "Kate shuts the front door and swallows burst from the old oak in the front garden." Two sentences later I find "The village is just 2 miles away." I haven't picked it up since.

@QueenCarrot Yes, that was what I had thought when referring to a shingle beach, that it was singular rather than plural. Also a short haircut from the twenties!

Plaintiff moans though

I don’t really mind the “there’s no Waitrose there!” things - I mean, you’re reading fiction anyway. It’s stuff like an RAF pilot in the war saying “YOLO!!” that annoys me.

Even if an author meticulously researched a place, places change, buildings get knocked down…

I don't understand the link?

There is no link other than two
errors in the same chapter. Swallows don't nest in trees the it should have been 'two' not '2'.

The corporation garbage dump, whilst punting, in Gaudy Night.

It is also in the kindle edition as that, so I actually assumed that was original. DLS was cohabiting with an American at some point, I think?

I will check my mum’s original print version when I’m next visiting 😀

Swallows could perch on the branches of an oak tree though, surely?

I see your point about 'two'.

Following on from the sheep apparently in a courtroom, I read a book ages ago in which crowds always disbursed. Can't remember the book unfortunately.

The phrase about the village being 2 miles away wouldn’t bother me at all. It’s actually our corporate style that we write numbers as numbers so I’m used to it.

Agree I always feel so let down by lazy mistakes. If the author can't remember the name or backstory of a minor character, why should I? And if you are setting your novel in a historical era, then fgs make the language accurate. And consistent within the book.

I don’t blame the author for spelling mistakes or things like 2 instead of two

spelling mistakes are easy to make - particularly with autocorrect - but they should really be picked up before publishing.

in the same way, some translations are dreadful but that doesn’t put me off an author as it’s not their fault

I’m loving the ‘plaintiff’ sheep.

I agree that some of these are outrageous, but I do think some people are splitting hairs. I couldn’t get exercised about a fictional Waitrose in a real place, or a block of flats where there isn’t one. I think that’s different to having a WW2 bomb shelter in a Jubilee Line station, or Regency heroes and heroines called Brad and Topaz.

I have a character who is in particular profession in my work in progress, and have researched and talked at length to a friend who does it for a living, who will also read a full draft later on for specific errors or inaccuracies.

Given publishers use sensitivity readers are they not able to get the book read by a relevant professional/historian to pick out the glaring errors

2 instead of two is just a style choice, surely?

Lots of authors don't make enough money to live on, so they probably don't have time to research every detail like whether or not a street contains offices or flats.

In respect of filming, I assume that there aren't good camera angles on every station or road, or permits aren't possible at every location, so there is a certain amount of Cardiff standing in for London or Toronto for New York, etc.

Not all books make enough money for this!