Deliberate factual Errors

Status
Not open for further replies.

Myrealana

I aim to misbehave
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 29, 2012
Messages
5,425
Reaction score
1,911
Location
Denver, CO
Website
www.badfoodie.com
I would totally mess around with facts to make the story work. I wouldn't move Scotland to the equator or put cell phones in the Nixon administration, but I wouldn't have a problem giving someone famous a previously unknown child, or adding an office building in downtown Denver, adding a secret passageway in The Chrysler Building, making up a national security protocol that never existed, or creating towns where none exist -- just to name a few.
 

Becky Black

Writing my way off the B Ark
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 15, 2010
Messages
2,163
Reaction score
176
Location
UK
Website
beckyblack.wordpress.com
Bernard Cornwell tweaks things in his Sharpe novels about the Peninsula War, to make the stories play out in more novel-like way than real life did. Obviously he's not going to change the results of battles and big stuff like that, but he'll compress a timeline a bit, or combine things done by three or four different people into things done by one character, to keep the number of characters from proliferating too much. He'll use real people, notably Wellington, making him have interactions with fictional characters like Richard Sharpe, which obviously the real Wellington never had.

But he knows the history and locations very well and at the end of the books he includes an afterword explaining what changes he made, and how things really happened. I like that approach.
 

gothicangel

Toughen up.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
Messages
7,907
Reaction score
691
Location
North of the Wall
Now I'd probably miss the Hadrian bust, if for no other reason than I have no idea what he looked like. To me, it would just be a generic bust in the background.

Trust me, you would easily know Titus from Hadrian (the beard is a dead give away.) ;)
 

dianeP

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 12, 2008
Messages
532
Reaction score
56
Location
Montreal, Canada
I think it depends on how far you go, and of course this will vary from story to story and detail to detail. Suspension of disbelief will only go so far.

For example, in a contemporary project I have my characters meet at a bar overlooking the mouth of the Mobile River as it flows into Mobile Bay, when no such bar exists. In fact, the location I pictured is actually a coal yard, docks, rail yard, a sewage plant, and where they load barges. Not a trendy bar with a scenic view of the bay to be found. I'm gambling I'll be forgiven for this liberty, though.

Yeah, this is the sort of thing I've come across in my own work. I always expect someone to say, "No, there isn't an inn at the base of that mountain."
 

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 24, 2011
Messages
23,083
Reaction score
10,778
Location
Where faults collide
Website
doggedlywriting.blogspot.com
I would totally mess around with facts to make the story work. I wouldn't move Scotland to the equator or put cell phones in the Nixon administration, but I wouldn't have a problem giving someone famous a previously unknown child, or adding an office building in downtown Denver, adding a secret passageway in The Chrysler Building, making up a national security protocol that never existed, or creating towns where none exist -- just to name a few.

Fictitious towns in real states or counties is quite common, as is creating a corporation or product or celebrity that doesn't (or didn't in the relevant time period) exist, even though the novel is set in the real world.

The reasons for doing this are obvious. You don't want to get sued for writing about a real person or corporation in a possibly inaccurate or defamatory way, so you make one up who may or may not bear a superficial resemblance to someone or something real. Or maybe you need a corporation or person who does something that a real one could have done but didn't.

As for towns, if I wanted to write a story set in a small, Midwestern town in the 50s, it makes sense for me to make my town up. Even if I do some careful research into real small, Midwestern towns from that era (a good idea) and base it loosely or more tightly on a real one, there's always going to be the issue of inaccuracies creeping in, or fictionalizations for the sake of the story tossing some people out.

Imagine someone reading your entirely fictional but set in a real place story and thinking, "What? I went to Mill Creek High in Illinois in 1954, and I was the prom queen, not this imposter! Or wait, is this person supposed to be me? But I didn't have a secret abortion! OMG, I'm gonna sue!"

And of course, there's room for speculating about things that happened between the cracks of known history. Maybe some long-dead public figure from the 19th century who was notorious for his philanderings really did have a bastard that no one knew about. Maybe he had dozens. Any one of those possible bastards could be your character.

Changing the names of real people and places to protect their identities is another thing that's done fairly often. James Herriot (Alf Wight) created his famous semi-autobiographical veterinary stories from his own experiences and from those of some of his real-life colleagues, but he changed the names of many of the locations and people. He also rolled the time back a bit and altered some facts here and there, so it ended up being a work of fiction based on his experiences. He did not, to my knowledge, make up any information about animal diseases, misrepresent the level of medical knowledge or the medical practices that were prevalent in the time in which his tales were set, however.

That's the line I'm talking about. It's one thing to massage the facts to make them work for your story, and it's another to club them to death and string them up.
 
Last edited:

ArachnePhobia

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 16, 2012
Messages
1,070
Reaction score
214
For example, in a contemporary project I have my characters meet at a bar overlooking the mouth of the Mobile River as it flows into Mobile Bay, when no such bar exists. In fact, the location I pictured is actually a coal yard, docks, rail yard, a sewage plant, and where they load barges. Not a trendy bar with a scenic view of the bay to be found. I'm gambling I'll be forgiven for this liberty, though.

I did something like this in my science fiction. The Earth sections are set "five minutes in the future" in a town I've been to and am pretty familiar with... so I know that the MC's school doesn't actually exist and IRL the place I describe his house being is just a dried-up plot beside some forest. I mostly did this for the legal reasons Roxxsmom brought up; the MC mentions having been bullied in school and I thought it was best not to sound like I was pointing the finger at any specific school.

Or, uh, because it's the future that stuff just hasn't been built yet! Yeah. That's totally it.
 
Last edited:

BethS

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 21, 2005
Messages
11,708
Reaction score
1,763
Would you dare? Or would you let the story suffer and keep to the facts?

Authors do this all the time to suit the needs of the story. But they generally also include an Afterword explaining what they changed and why, at least in regards to the more significant events/places/people.

You don't, unfortunately, get this with movies, hence the legions of people who believed that certain events in Braveheart were true.

~Beth
 

Dennis E. Taylor

Get it off! It burns!
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 1, 2014
Messages
2,602
Reaction score
365
Location
Beautiful downtown Mordor
I mentioned this thread to my wife last night, and she informed me with scorn in her voice that Reign (the TV show) is playing very fast and loose with Mary Queen of Scots' life.

I think she's pissed...
 

scifi_boy2002

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
540
Reaction score
24
Location
Pikeville, KY
In my current wip, the Galactic Seven go back in time and meet Benjamin Franklin. They meet him through his neice, Sarah, in Philadelphia. Now, in real life, Benjamin Franklin was in France during the period that my novel takes place and I created Sarah just for the story. I don't think it's a big deal, but, if anyone ever asks, I will say that Mr. Franklin, having to escape English spies, came back to the US until the heat was off.
 

gothicangel

Toughen up.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
Messages
7,907
Reaction score
691
Location
North of the Wall
In my current WIP has the XXII Legion being destroyed in a battle in Galilee. The battle is a fiction, but there was certainly enough cause for Hadrian to station a second legion in Judaea in the city of Capercotna (Megiddo.) The XXII was certainly destroyed either in Judaea or Parthia, all that is certain is that they weren't included on a list compiled by Marcus Aurelius in 160 CE.
 

WriteMinded

Derailed
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 16, 2010
Messages
6,209
Reaction score
775
Location
Paradise Lost
In my novels, there is a very large section of land right in the middle of Britain that doesn't show on any map . . . except for Garalt's. :)
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.