RHYS on Getting it Right

 RHYS BOWEN:  I have just finished teaching an online class on writing historical mysteries to the Sisters in Crime Guppy group. One of the things I've stressed is the need to GET IT RIGHT. Gone are the days when your train could arrive at London Station and your characters could claim to be British by saying "Pip pip, cheerio" to each other. Everybody is savvy these days. The internet is there to check everything and if you get one small thing wrong you will know it.

Sometimes the writer feels like shouting "IT'S FICTION, DAMMIT!" but the point is that if you choose a real place and time for your story, the everything has to be right about that place or you have jerked some readers out of the story.  I read a book by a well-known author (who shall remain nameless) in which she got several things howlingly wrong...incorrect procedure and form of address at the English court, the wrong island, and I was so angry I couldn't finish the book.

I was asked to blurb another book in which a train from Yorkshire came into Victoria Station in London. That one got thrown across the room.  How can authors get such basic things wrong?

It should be easy to do the big research--when I wrote the Molly Murphy book, For the Love of Mike, I read the senate depositions after the Triangle Fire so that every abuse that happened to a girl in my book had happened to a real girl. Not necessary but really satisfying for the author and a way of making the reader feel that everything you are telling her is real and valid.

It's not always easy to avoid anachronisms, however. (Isn't that a lovely word. Anachronism. Say it out loud. Most satisfying). When I was writing my first Molly book my copy editor queried the use of Streetlight. And she was right. Not in use at that time. They were still lamps--lit by lamp lighters in many places, and even when electricity had been introduced they were still referred to as street lamps.

A very small thing and one that wouldn't upset anybody but it's satisfying to get it right.  I remember researching once with a friendly librarian when elastic came into use in women's undergarments. I wanted t know how easily my hero could rip them off? Such are the small things that obsess a historical writer.

Also in the Molly books I found that the word Car park was not in usage before 1920. Also Freud was just in the process of formulating his theories so none of the characters could be stressed, need to relax, be obsessed... such concepts didn't exist.

I am very conscious of anachronisms recently because I have watched Bridgerton and The Crown.

Bridgerton--OMG, anachronism laden, and I don't mean the choice of actors of various ethnicity. I was unable to recognize one thing about what is supposed to be London. It's the Georgian period. When I lived on Queen Anne Street when I worked for the BBC my house was Georgian. Plenty of Georgian buildings to use, but I had no idea where we were in any of the scenes. Was this perhaps because it was meant to be a fantasy world? Maybe.

But small things annoyed me too: court etiquette. Three daughters are presented at once to Queen Charlotte. The mother remarks she can try again next year. I'm sorry but unless things have changed significantly you are presented once, at eighteen. I rather think that court etiquette is written in stone.

And then there is the Crown: You should see the buzz it created in UK with all the little things they got wrong: the scenes at Balmoral when they go out stalking the stag. Those who know about these things say you'd never shoot at an animal without a backdrop (ie, a hillside behind it) so that there is no risk of the bullet going through the animal and striking someone beyond.  You'd never shoot without wearing ear muffs to deaden the sound.  I can't believe they didn't offer Mrs. Thatcher a pair of boots, not let her tramp through the heather in high heels. Nor can I believe she was clueless enough not to find out in advance what the dress code might be with her hosts! If I were going to spend some time in the wilds of Scotland I'd definitely take warm trousers and a rain jacket and stout shoes, wouldn't you?  It's easy enough to find pictures of the royals and see what they wear--of course, they wear kilts and she couldn't...

When Prince Charles is fly fishing apparently he's using the wrong type of rod for the stream. Again something that wouldn't matter to you or me but would matter to a fisherman.

I also find when I am writing that sometimes my problem is the opposite. I know something is true for the period but I can't include it because my readers would never accept it. It might be a form of slang that just sounds wrong or it might be a photo that I have of Macy's food counter in 1900. The center of the display is a stack of cans of chili con carne.  If I wrote that Molly went home and opened a can of chili I would be besieged with letters telling me how stupid I was.

So I'm interested to know how much it bothers you if you find a mistake in a book you are reading?

Do you continue to read or do you, like me, throw it across the room? And writers--have you ever made an error you came to regret? (confession time--I put Claridges Hotel on the wrong street in a Royal Spyness book. Unforgivable as our next door neighbor was the night manager of Claridges!)