Whatever you’re writing about, it’s important to get all the details right. If you can’t write about what you know intimately, you must find things out and then check again. And if what you know is from your past, unless your setting will sit firmly in that era, it’s vital to get updated.

I recently read a novel by an American author. The story begins in New York. It follows the development of a heroine living on Staten Island and working in a Manhattan office. She moves to London, England.

My own knowledge of New York is based on a short break in Manhattan that included seven minutes in a helicopter, and an evening cruise that passed Staten Island. While I was reading, although I could get the feel of New York, as I remembered it, I didn’t know enough to make judgments about whether the description of a commute from Staten Island was accurate. I was just enjoying the read.

When the action moved to London, I was on more familiar ground. And I admired the way the author could write so well about places I know that I could picture them accurately as I read.

Until I hit one faux pas.

The heroine takes a train to the West Country. And even though I recognized how the track follows the River Exe to the sea at Dawlish, then goes through the tunnels and passes red cliffs on the right and the gray sea on the left, it wasn’t real to me.

Just because the train had left from Victoria Station.

Now I know you can’t get a train to the West Country from there. You can go from Paddington, or even Waterloo, but not from Victoria; not unless you intend to change onto the one from Waterloo at Clapham Junction. And why on earth would you do that if you were starting out from somewhere near Camden Town?

Just that one tiny error and the credibility of that author was lost for me. Because of it, I wasn’t sure whether to accept the rest of the book as gospel. This was probably unfair and illogical because so much of what I knew about was correct, and no doubt a lot of hard work went into getting it that way. Nevertheless it colored the way I read the rest of the book and how I felt about it.

Recently, I’ve read a couple of books with an Egyptian setting. One was a historical novel where the characters lives were wrapped up in the competition between France and England to decipher the language of the hieroglyphics. The other has a contemporary setting in Cairo with flashbacks to the time of the second world war. What struck me about these two books was that I got the same feel from the descriptions in them. Both authors were describing the same culture, which had obviously survived the centuries, and although they did it in different ways, they both felt authentic.

They had obviously done their homework. One of these authors, Rosie Thomas, has written novels based on her own experiences while mountaineering, trekking the Antarctic, and traveling the world. These facts that I’ve been told about her add authenticity to anything I read by her and she is one of my favorite contemporary novel writers.

That is one way to do your homework – by actually experiencing what you want to write about. But if you can’t have the experience yourself, there’s nothing better than getting the information from someone else who has.

Of course you don’t always have your own personal expert to hand, but there are now various websites that will help you find one. For academic subjects, the universities are often keen to help. After all, naming their experts in published articles brings them kudos and free PR. Or check out local societies and organizations. If you can’t find them on-line, go and talk to your librarian, who will always be able to find contact details that you can follow up.

However you get your information, it’s important to get it right. Whether you are writing a full length novel or a brief article, get the facts from the people who really know.

Where do you go for expert knowledge, references, and fact checking? Have you ever found a factual error in something you’ve read that altered the impact of the entire story?

Image Credit: 12-11-05 © René Mansi