I seem to remember a column of Lawrence Block's (or was it in
one of his writing books?) where he talks about getting
caught when using the wrong knot in a short story about
sailing, something he knew little about. He lost future sales
to that magazine due to it.
He was caught by a reader. Of course, part of this has to do
with the degree and areas of knowledge of the reader. For
instance, a silencer on a revolver didn't used to bother me,
but now I cringe when I read of one. I can accept a few small
mistakes, but as miker mentioned, they can be cumulative,
each one drawing me a bit further out of the narrative.
Haven't figured out exactly where my threshold is.
Sort of associated with this, I'm sometimes pulled out of an
older book, have to remind myself, oh yeah, they couldn't
match DNA or whatever then. Of course, that's no fault of the
author.
Mark
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 30 Dec 2006 EST