Is Accuracy in Fiction Important?
Imagine this. You’re reading a compelling suspense thriller, engrossed in the story. Your heart races as the protagonist’s life hangs by a thread. The protagonist grabs a shotgun. She searches through the kitchen drawer looking for cartridges. When she gets outside, she aims the rifle at the killer. But the shell misfires.
Above is similar to a scene in a popular book by a well-established suspense novelist. Maybe you stopped and re-read the above several times. Maybe you didn’t catch the inaccuracies. Let me break them down. Inside, the protagonist grabbed a shotgun. Outside, she aimed a rifle. Shotguns are not rifles and rifles are not shotguns. Inside she looked for cartridges for the shotgun. Generally, shotgun ammunition is not called a cartridge. It’s full name is shotshell, or shell for short. Outside, the shell in the rifle misfired. Rifles don’t fire shells. They fire bullets or cartridges.
Petty, yes. Keep reading for more extreme examples. And maybe this doesn’t bother you. But as a crime fiction writer this kind of inaccuracy stops me dead while reading. Not what authors want their readers to do.
Do inaccuracies in novels bother you? Or do you breeze right past them? I asked this question on Twitter and received varying responses. Accuracy shows how the writer cares. It throws readers out of the world they’re immersed in. Others get annoyed. One even hates inaccuracies. I’m not that extreme. I’ve never thrown a book across the room because of inaccurate content.
And does this make a difference based on the genre? If the genre is “real life” such as crime fiction, contemporary romance, contemporary drama, or historical fiction is it more important to be accurate than in speculative fiction, such as science fiction or fantasy? Will only the aficionados and the writers within those genres really notice the difference?
When I read speculative fiction, I admit, believability is more important than accuracy or even possible. Especially in futuristic science fiction or fantasy. Consistency is also important in fantasy. The make-believe world should have rules and those rules should be adhered to.
With contemporary fiction, though, I believe accuracy is important because obvious inaccuracies throw me out of the story and can ruin important story moments.
Let me cite some examples of inaccuracies I’ve come across along with commentary on how I view these inaccuracies. Then you can judge if you were reading that book, would that bother you. I’ll keep book titles and author names out of this.
One popular, highly reviewed, book featured a veteran FBI profiler. The two key words are FBI and profiler. Unfortunately, there is a misunderstanding of what types of cases the FBI takes. They generally take cases that involve federal crimes. They aren’t called the Federal Bureau of Investigation for nothing. Murder is a state crime in nearly all cases. This FBI agent was suspended due to some questionable methods. Okay, we can stop right here before we get to the real inaccuracy. Profilers rarely, if ever, make arrests. They profile for the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Anyway, this profiler ala field agent goes to New Mexico. There, the local FBI branch is already involved in a case of two murdered women. The New Mexico state police have a major crime squad that would likely handle this type of case. In nearly all state crimes, the FBI can be requested to help, but they would not be the sole investigative unit on the case unless a federal crime has been committed. For murder, that usually means the suspect has crossed state lines. Even in local serial killer cases, the FBI works with local authorities and does not own the case. And by the way, this profiler never did any profiling, even when they determined they were dealing with a serial killer.
Would you have caught the above? If so, would it have bothered you? It bothered me enough that I won’t be reading anymore of this series or this author.
Example number two featured two people looking for a house in the desert. The one with the cell phone using their GPS loses her cell signal. Realistic. Happens to us all the time, driving east from Arizona. But in this case the mapping program and GPS lost signal. Oops. This doesn’t happen. GPS doesn’t rely on either cell or Wi-Fi. And if the route had been established when in cell range or Wi-Fi, the map would have been downloaded.
Again, would this have stopped you? It was a minor error. Chalk it up to literary license to advance the plot.
How about a fight scene? This one is in a cave. It’s dark. But wait, the bad guy is wearing night vision goggles. Advantage bad guy. Hold on. What’s that the protagonist is carrying? A flashlight. And yes, it works. Do you know what happens when you shine a flashlight into the face of someone wearing night vision goggles? They get blinded! Does our protagonist do this? Yes, once briefly, but then pulls it away again giving the bad guy an advantage. Okay, not necessarily inaccurate, but not too bright. Pun intended.
Here’s one that is too often seen in crime fiction. The killer is described as mentally ill. I’m not a fan of calling serial killers mentally ill. They are psychopaths. Mentally ill are generally not organized well enough to be as cunning and careful as an undetected serial killer. To the author’s credit, she at least did not call the killer schizophrenic.
Here’s one that rubbed me the wrong way, but you’ll probably be screaming, “Oh, come one, that’s so trivial.” And you’d be right, but still. Our protagonist buys a can of Dr. Pepper. A page later she calls the drink a cherry cola. I’m sorry. Dr. Pepper is NOT a cherry cola. Cherry might be one of the twenty-three ingredients, but it is not a cherry cola. Coke makes a cherry cola. Pepsi makes a cherry cola. Dr. Pepper doesn’t.
This one made me chuckle. On a stakeout, one of the good guys eats a caffeine protein bar instead of drinking coffee so that he doesn’t have to pee. Um, it’s not the coffee that makes one urinate. It’s the caffeine.
Finally, here’s one that left me shaking my head and rereading to see if I missed something. The setting is a small town in Louisiana. Not even thirty minutes from one end to the other. Our protagonist, a newbie FBI agent, is partnered with a veteran FBI agent from the Behavioral Unit. I know, cliché, right? Anyway, they are both in the Sheriff’s office when they get a tip that the suspect was spotted at the town’s hospital. The veteran goes that way, and the rookie goes to a woman’s shelter, which is still in the same town, just the opposite direction. Got it so far? Small town. One agent goes one way. The other agent goes the other way. When they split up it’s about five or six in the evening, as the sun is setting, and the streetlights are coming on.
The author then switches to the point of view of the killer waiting outside the woman’s shelter. And it’s almost 1 am and our rookie is not there yet. There is no way it took her five plus hours to get there. And even if we allow that maybe the rookie had been there for those five hours, but the author forgot to tell us, the veteran agent wraps up her business at the hospital in less than an hour. And she was going to join the rookie as soon as she was done. See why I was shaking my head and re-reading? Again, not the reaction we want of our readers.
Here’s a quick list of some other small gaffs I’ve come across:
The killer gets on his knees at the request of the agent. Without getting up, a couple paragraphs later, he’s standing and leaning against the wall. The plot needed him standing.
A homicide detective talks to the media. Doesn’t happen these days. All major police units have media relations people who do all the talking to the press.
A scalpel is used to puncture tires. Go ahead, try that one at home.
A cell phone has wires in it. It was a new smart phone.
An ATF agent threatens to shoot a little girl in a public place.
The protagonist’s sister has a different name at the end of the book than she did at the beginning.
Maybe it’s just my curse, writing in crime fiction, and reading crime fiction, that these things jump out at me. I’m sure I have some inaccuracies in some of my stories as well. However, I believe some of the fundamental errors I’ve mentioned above are a lack of research and to me, anyway, show a lack of respect for the reader.
What about you? Do these types of inaccuracies bother you?
Last month, a man named Murray Hooper was executed in Arizona for a double murder that occurred in 1980. He’d been in prison for forty-two years before being executed. According to the article lower courts had previously rejected attempts to introduce DNA and fingerprints from the crime scene. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute plea.
The quote in the article from Mark Brnovich, the Arizona Attorney General, was, “The people of Arizona made it clear once again that those who commit heinous crimes in our state will be held accountable.” But were those who committed this crime held accountable? There were two other men convicted with Murray Hooper and they both died in prison.
I’m not here to argue for or against capital punishment. Arizona has capital punishment. What I’m arguing is that our justice system is messed up if criminals convicted of a capital crime sit in prison for forty-two years before the sentence is carried out. And if a person has been on death row for that long, and is now seventy-six years old, is there really a point to the execution?
The article went on to say that this was the first execution since 2014, when they were halted. Okay, but that means Hooper had been incarcerated for thirty-four years at that point.
Why does it take that long to carry out a death sentence? Our justice system needs an overhaul. If there is going to be capital punishment, then it needs a process in place to carry out the executions within a reasonable amount of time. Appeals should not take more than six months. Therefore, if appealing to the three courts above the district court, the longest someone should stay on death row is eighteen months.
The governor can always stay an execution as well if there is doubt or circumstances warranting a stay.
I’m sure there’s some family around that remember what happened and maybe they’ve been given some closure. However, they’ve had to live without that closure for forty-two years. One might argue that the victims were once again slighted by the court system, a trend that seems to be increasing.
As far as the rest of Arizona, I doubt there’s many people who remember what happened. The message sent wasn’t what Brnovich thought it was. We have not told criminals that they will be held accountable, at least to the point of death, when it takes that long to carry out the sentence. Quite the opposite. Don’t worry about the death penalty. Chances are, if caught, you’ll die in prison. For this crime, that was the result for two-thirds of the convicted criminals.
There are two primary benefits to the death penalty. Neither of which was realized in this case. First, as crass as it may sound, is cost. We’ve held a prisoner for forty-two years. The average cost of an inmate in an Arizona prison is roughly $25,000. Holding Hooper for forty-two years cost the state just over $1M. At that point, another few years would not have mattered much.
The second benefit of the death penalty is as a deterrent. If executions are swift and public, they can be a deterrent for capital crimes. However, in this case, it certainly wasn’t swift. The risk reward factor of committing a capital crime does not bring execution into play when death row inmates stay in prison for decades.
If we are going to use capital punishment, then we need to use it effectively. Leaving prisoners convicted of capital crimes in prison for decades is not an effective use of capital punishment. Justice, in this case, was not served. The courts and the state failed the victims and the citizens.
