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Have you ever heard the story about how AARP got started?
Here's a recap. https://states.aarp.org/chicken-coop-unlikely-birthplace-aarp/
One night, about a decade ago, I was having an enjoyable dinner out with another insurance executive. He was the founder of several large insurance organizations including two large reinsurance companies. He was a serious-minded person who had a solid reputation.
We got to that part of the evening when we were done with our business and had settled in to tell war stories.
He topped anything I could offer by telling me of several friends of his who started AARP.
According to him, the fable about the elderly teacher living in a chicken coop is pure malarkey. Supposedly, his friends needed a "group" to peddle a health product so they invented one - retired people. They romanticized the group by creating the legend of the school teacher.
I don't know if what he told me was true but I have worked closely with AARP and would believe that they're capable of just about anything that will allow them to sell more products.
I tell this story because I watch authors on this site struggling to get their "facts" straight.
Facts are funny things. Just tell a good story and give it your best effort. If you need an old lady living in a chicken coop to make the story flow, so be it. It's fiction. We're not reporters and aren't bound by journalistic standards.
Several years ago I wrote a story called Baseball Annie. Erin is selling it on Amazon. It's a good yarn. Yet - when it was first posted someone ripped me from first to third for what he thought were atrocious errors. His comments knocked me for a loop. I'm a ball fan but apparently not a big enough fan to know all the trivia that he did. I almost hung up my spikes because I wasn't a good enough writer to get my "facts" straight.
That would have been a shame because I had a lot of fun writing the next 95 stories.
When someone rips you in a comment for some trivial detail you got "wrong" don't overreact -- there are a lot of people who know "for sure" that AARP was started due to the trials of a retired teacher.
Jill
Comments
Facts
Isn’t that what you use to ‘quickly’ send forms to a doctor?
In the old days
It was called 'Artistic licence'
Facts can be distorted.
Facts can be distorted.
There are reams of facts that have been distorted, misconstrued, or botched over the years. George Washington and the cherry tree or his wooden teeth? Both false yet still believed and in the past before extensive research they were believed to be true. Same goes for Abraham Lincoln and his humble origins- his family had some money so he wasn't so humble. Poor Mrs. O'Leary and her cow continue to get blamed for a drunken idiot accidentally knocking over a candle setting off the massive Great Chicago Fire- she got blamed due to being Irish, and her blame lived on despite facts saying otherwise.
Facts and history change. People make mistakes. Authors make mistakes, nobody is perfect.
I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime
artistic license is fine...
Except when it isn't. If you are trying to write a story about a historical event, or person, you owe it to your readers to at least research the basics on the subject. There is always going to be a reader that is going to know more about a subject than you do, and will usually let you know if an error is egregious.
My best writing occurs . . .
. . .after I've spent a good deal of time in research.
Fun facts uncovered in research often drive fun story arcs.
I read over ten books and spent weeks doing online research for one of my stories. I couldn't even spell intersexed when I started and after writing the story felt like I was a member of the community. Even so . . . Mark Twain had it right "What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so."
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
OMG!
Are you telling me I'm on a site for fiction instead of 'truth'? Dang, I was looking for my nanobots, skin soot..., err suit, or any of those diseases from space that turns everyone into female and we get rid of all the obnoxious males.
Starting yesterday around two it looked like hell was going to descend on us with high winds, hail, tornadoes, and flooding rain lasting for fourteen to sixteen hours. And now you dump on me I've been reading fiction on this site? Bummer.
Angela, sweety, you have been removed from my Christmas list.
Barb
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
nicely done
Have I ever told you how much I love your sarcasm, snark, and tongue in cheek remarks? It's brilliant!
I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime
Fact, Fiction? "Wormhole X-Treme"?
Sarcasm? Maybe, maybe not, or just sort of.
I suspect there may be fair number of people here hoping that, some of the fiction here just might be a case of "Wormhole X-Treme!"
What is "Wormhole X-Treme"?, you might ask if your not familiar with it.
"Wormhole X-Treme" is a fictitious show within a show in an episode of the "Stargate SG-1" TV show.
Simplified Explanation:
Someone who knows about the Real "Stargate", ends up producing a fictionalized TV show about actual secret government project and the Stargate, calling it "Wormhole X-Treme". In the end the government decides to let the the show continue as its the perfect cover for the very real "Stargate" operation, because now anyone hearing anything about the real "Stargate" will Know It Is Fiction.
The concept is sound, hiding something in plain sight, by circulating fiction about it, or allowing such. A lot of people believe this is the case with "Roswell", and possibly other stuff like the US Marshal "Black Badges" division.
So some of us are still hoping, we just might somehow find that MAU, or whatever, if we are lucky enough.
~ Hypatia >i< ..:::
PS. Do I believe this?
Well not really, but part of me can't help hoping anyway!
...or stumble over SRU shop
...or stumble over SRU shop in local mall.
Or they weren't old enough to remember TIme Tunnel
An old TV show with a big circle you went in to travel through time.
DD
"Mostly" Fiction
The stories on BC are "mostly" fiction meaning there's always a chance. . ..
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Some Readers Want Their Fiction to Seem Too Real
I had a long interaction with a reader of my Lee Corcoran series who berated me for placing my characters at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. My descriptions of the campus were wrong. I had the wrong colors for the parking areas and I had someone wearing a color which the writer claimed everyone knew was never worn or referred to on campus. I was berated for calling it Michigan University instead of University of Michigan. The writer further said I was stupid for selecting such a well-known campus with thousands of graduates all over the country and told me I should rewrite it with a made-up college.
I honestly made no attempt to know the layout of the campus because I didn't care. It was not germane to the story line. It is fiction. I stated it up front and I never made an attempt to do otherwise. I used other major universities in the same way. I had the impression that the writer believed I had purposely insulted them along with the many proud graduates of Michigan. Obviously, that was not my intent.
On the other hand, all authors hope that as the reader consumes a story, they will temporarily be transported to their fictitious world and suspend reality while feeling like they are a part of the drama. If a reader cries or laughs or finds themselves cheering for a character, then the writer has succeeded in creating that temporary warp in reality.
That is why we read or write fiction.
DD
If. . .
If some minor detail jars their suspended disbelief the readers aren't doing their part.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Except...
Isn't the author's responsibility to suspend the reader's disbelief? IMO, blaming the reader when the author gets something wrong is like shooting the messenger when he brings bad news: it's not his fault.
YMMV, of course. Just as there are authors here I won't read because I can't get through their grammatical errors without being completely distracted. My loss? Quite possibly. But there it is; if I know I can't enjoy a story, why would I read it?
(And Angela's Baseball Annie got a lot better after she rewrote it, though the factual corrections were only a small part of that.)
Eric
As I Recall
As I recall, one of the "facts" I got wrong was to have the Toledo Mudhens be part of the Twins' farm system. I knew they weren't but having the Mudhens and Toledo be part of the Twins' was something I did to allow an oblique reference to Jamie Farr, the CD corporal.
Baseball Annie got a lot better when I switched the story from third to first person and made the manager the narrative character. It also got better because I read quite a number of writing books between edits.
The corrections probably made a "huge" difference to a very small percentage of the readers. I respect their perspective but refuse to let their issues dictate my feelings.
I'm currently reading Hamilton. I expect the book to be extremely accurate. However, I've been the topic of many, many front-page stories and know how inaccurate even those stories have been. I doubt that Hamilton would agree with more than eighty percent of Ron Chernow's book. That's just how things are.
The "facts" for a super-fan of baseball are far different than for a semi-fan who attends a dozen games a year and watches another hundred a year, or so, on TV.
Facts are important. Trying to get the facts right is important. "Getting" the facts right is secondary to writing a good story . . . if your research effort was valid. I spent weeks researching for Baseball Annie. My effort was true.
My point is this -- writers need to make an effort. Readers need to appreciate that effort and willingly suspend their disbelief.
Put it this way. Somehow Robinson Crusoe became a classic -- even though Defoe made a huge mistake. In the book, Crusoe is on the shore watching the boat he just swam from the sink. He strips naked to swim out to get salvage, which he puts in his pockets to swim back.
Baseball Annie is far from a classic. Yet - Defoe's readers gave him the respect to allow a major groaner and I was taken to task for minutiae only a few people would know.
When I go to a game I normally sit in nice seats, I had front row seats right behind the plate at the College World Series. One year I bought season tickets in the last row of the third deck at William's arena for the Gophers men's team. The discussions around me in that setting was much different than those discussions had by casual fans. I've attended a number of grapefruit league games. Again, the kind of fan who goes to pre-season baseball has a much deeper appreciation of the game than the fan who goes to the game only when the team is in first place toward the end of the season. I get that.
Mistakes happen. Readers need to abide, the Dude did.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Just to Get Toledo Out of the Way...
...I mentioned that one is passing but didn't suggest you change it; referencing the same farm team on both the way up and the way down seemed even to me to override the fact that the Twins had actually changed affiliates in the meantime. Toledo had been their top farm team for eight years before they switched.
You're right, of course, about the improvement in the story having a lot more to do with other factors than with correcting the errors I pointed out -- as I think I noted in my original comment.
As you said about your writing, I'd like to think my commenting has improved over the past 10 or 20 years, both in tone and appropriateness. I wouldn't have behaved the same way today, though I'd almost certainly have mentioned the same five (IIRC) background problems in a PM.
I'm more literal than a lot of readers. (An Asperger's trait, probably.) So background problems bother me more, though I guess I can point out that I did finish reading the story; I didn't discard it in disgust or anything. But five foul balls, so to speak -- including one, the Twins' past attendance, that would have been relatively easy to look up -- puts a batter or a story at a disadvantage moving forward. That's a lot, as you put it, for a dude to abide, however inconsequential to the ultimate plot they turn out to be.
Eric
Truth is not truth
"Facts are in the eye of the beholder..."
So sez a famous former New York mayor and US Attorney General.
And if there's anybody who knows about artistic license it's these guys!
We authors can rejoice that we're living in a new age when we're not shackled
by trifling piffles like "facts". Thru their shining example The Powers that Be
have liberated us from the dull hegemony of factual accuracy.... Yugely!
Unless you have XY chromosomes + say that you're a girl,
then suddenly they're all about "truth" and facts and "science"
and their take on the matter of gender being the only possible one
and set in stone for all time. Funny how that works...
~hugs, Veronica
What borders on stupidity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
or. . .doesn't work.
eom
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Criticism is eternal
There will always be people who don't like it or criticize.
I think the original blog post is meant to tell us to not worry about those criticisms overly much. Writing anything is always a balancing act, some people will like it, others won't. In my opinion the best results are achieved when you feel free to write, to let the flow get into the words.
Anne Margarete
Facts
That's why I just make stuff up...
Melanie