How much effort should writer put into accurate portrayal of narrow topic?

[Toby Frost]

I think James Bond is at an extreme end of the issue, because Bond so heavily stresses that idea of High Society and "good taste" that people will get more into the minor details than elsewhere - the setting pretty much invites them to, since to a fair extent it's a wish-fulfillment story about being very rich as well as having adventures. Likewise the Hannibal Lecter stories, where the hero is held out of being of impeccable (ie expensive) taste. Personally, although glaring errors shouldn't be dumped on the reader, you can only research as much as reasonably practical. No offence to any experts who may be reading, but I can't help but feel that letting a small slip like that ruin a novel is a teeny bit sad on the reader's part.

 

[Christopher Lee]

In my opinion, the story comes first. I'll let some errors slide, but then again I'm not an expert in any field. If you make an error that I can catch, you've not done your job. I think a good 15 minutes of reading and Google-searching is not too much to ask for when fact-checking your piece. I don't usually read books that are centered on just one particular topic, so the mistakes that I find are typically minimal.

The time period of which your story is told will dictate the amount of research required. An historical piece centered smack dab in the middle of the Vietnam war had better be pretty damn accurate, because the answers are at your fingertips on the internet. And it is something nonfictional that happened in real life that a good amount of people have knowledge of (or should).

That's my opinion. But a little piece of advice from a reader with no particular expertise in any field: just do your homework, however slight, and tell the story.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Every time I come across an inaccuracy I spend a few seconds thinking about that inaccuracy -- is it really inaccurate? has it been accounted for somewhere earlier in the story? -- and then go on reading. That's not a problem if it happens only once or twice and the plot doesn't depend on it, but if it happens often -- or if a huge plot point revolves around it, so that I'm always being reminded -- it becomes distracting and harder and harder to go on. After enough of this, I'll quit reading.

 

[Darth Angelus]

I think James Bond is at an extreme end of the issue, because Bond so heavily stresses that idea of High Society and "good taste" that people will get more into the minor details than elsewhere - the setting pretty much invites them to, since to a fair extent it's a wish-fulfillment story about being very rich as well as having adventures. Likewise the Hannibal Lecter stories, where the hero is held out of being of impeccable (ie expensive) taste. Personally, although glaring errors shouldn't be dumped on the reader, you can only research as much as reasonably practical. No offence to any experts who may be reading, but I can't help but feel that letting a small slip like that ruin a novel is a teeny bit sad on the reader's part.

Yeah, good point about only being able to do as much research as reasonably practical. That is what I have been trying to get to. You will always be at a disadvantage to people really knowing a topic, which means you may need someone else who possesses such knowledge to check your piece.

As for James Bond stressing the idea of high society and taste that goes with it, I agree fully, as I think most will. The thing I would notice about Dom Pérignon and (in later movies) Bollinger (La) Grande Année, is that these champagnes only actually portray that image so much. In reality, DP was picked because it is a well known brand of expensive champagne (i.e. it is catering to the average viewer, even though James Bond is ironically also one of the reasons DP is so well known) and GA was chosen due to personal friendship between the Broccoli family (making the Bond movies) and the Bollinger family.
That means there are real world motives behind the choices of Bond's champagne.

Based on exclusivity and expense alone, these options would have been better...

The single-vineyard champagnes by Krug:
- Clos du Mesnil - About six times more expensive than DP, as young and newly released.
- Clos d'Ambonnay - About three times more expensive than CdM making it nearly twenty times DP.

Bollinger:
- Vieilles Vignes Françaises - a few times DP in price, too.

These didn't exist at the time of the early movies (and CdA has only existed for a few years), but at least in recent movies, neither DP or GA have been the most "high society" champagne choices James Bond could have picked.
I don't mean to sound snobbish or smug or anything. I am just saying Bond's champagne choices are only so much "high society", because reognition and advertizing value irl means the stuff Bond drink has to exist in reasonably large quantity, which prevents him from taking "high society" to its strictest, logical extreme.
While I, Brian is right in that DP is one of the better distributed high end champagnes (the single best distributed and most produced, actually), I think brand name recognition is the strongest reason for Bond's choice (some of the flashier places Bond visits could very well have CdM, if it were irl).

Ultimately, I think the best way to look at it is symbolic, as in him picking a high end champagne (which to be fair is the main point), or that he just has a personal preference for DP and later GA (though they are fairly dissimilar in style), just like "shaken, not stirred".

I can look past all this, of course, because as you say it would be a sad reason to ruin a story. Sorry if I got too carried away with a fairly narrow interest, but the point is that when it comes to high society in media, brand recognition among the audience is cruicial.

 

[Toby Frost]

No, not at all, I'm not having a dig at you and I don't think it would be fair to. You're right to say that when it comes down to this story, these things do matter. I suppose you could say that getting the brands right is an integral part of the Bond background, in the same way that not mentioning potatoes in a story about the Wars of the Roses*.

Which makes me think that the rules on what you can and can't do vary from story to story. To give an example, there's a charioteer in Gladiator (she's a black woman, which is perfectly possible) who has a sort of spinning, self-reloading crossbow. When I first saw the film, I thought "That spinning thing slightly too Leonardo da Vinci for Romans". A friend who is an archaologist said "A hand-held crossbow? Then? Oh, come on!" So I suppose it had pushed me slightly out of the film, but since my friend's knowledge was much better, had seemed ridiculous to her.

I do think it wouldn't be fair of a reader to give up on a book because of a few errors in background, especially if nothing plot-wise hinges on it (if, say, coloured poison was put into a drink which is really colourless, and nobody noticed, that would be different, because it's more glaring). But simply noticing it and being a bit startled (which spoils the flow) seems fair enough. So no, I'm definitely not having a go - in fact thinking about it I'm pretty much in agreement with you.

The problem really is that it's hard to draw a fixed line, and hard to know what's accepted convention in the genre. I was once told by a policeman that, in England and Wales, the inspector on the case often isn't the person interviewing a suspect, so that the climactic face-to-face between hero and villain may not ever happen. I'd be happy to get that wrong for the sake of drama - likewise conventions in SF such as artificial gravity, which just seem to be there to make the story easier to describe and film.

*Incidentally, does anyone know why there are potatoes in Middle Earth? It must have been a conscious decision, like introducing tobacco.

 

[Darth Angelus]

Toby, I didn't think you were picking on me or anything like that at all.

It is just that I know from experience that this kind of talk does offend some people as snobbery, so I wanted to make it clear that I was coming from the perspective of the "high society" angle in Bond, and was thinking about how far the writers should take that.

I guess getting the owners of the brands to let them use the names is another real-world issue, too, as would advirtisement money.

I think we agree for the most part, too.

 

[Susan Boulton]

*Incidentally, does anyone know why there are potatoes in Middle Earth? It must have been a conscious decision, like introducing tobacco.

Because, I believe that Tolkien was making a conscious link between the Shire and England’s,“green and pleasant land.” Everything about the Shire is a rose-tinted view of the rural ideal. It is also very typical of the view of many in the 1920-30s.This was the time when the fledgling National Trust and the then Ministry of Works were fighting to save the English Countryside, places like Stonehenge and the many Stately Homes that were under threat at that time. It struck a cord in those of Tolkien’s generation and class. They had seen and lived through the destruction of the trenches and in many ways the destruction of England’s history and landmarks at that time mirrored it. The destruction of the Shire at the end of LOTR shows Tolkien’s fear for the countryside.

On a side note the relationship between Sam and Frodo mirrors that of men in the trenches. The lines of class between the junior officers (middle and upper class) and your working class private blurred as both were in the same situation, living in the same conditions. In fact the death rates among junior officers, (1st and 2nd lieutenants and captains)was, I believe, the highest of all the ranks. It was their job to lead their men over the top. That also mirrors Sam and Frodo’s journey.

 

[Mirannan]

Perhaps it is simply one of the better distributed high-end champagnes?

Remember, even Bond cannot drink what the bar does not have in stock.

Presumably, Bond also has to justify his expenses claims to some extent. Claims for £1,000+ bottles of wine might not be paid? (Yes, there are such wines. I remember seeing a story in one of the newspapers about a restaurant bill for something like £60,000, most of which was for three bottles of wine.)

Regarding potatoes and tobacco in Middle Earth, it's quite possible that they were introduced species. The position of North America in the real world is roughly equivalent to that of Valinor (before the changing of the world!) in Arda, and I find it somewhat difficult to imagine Noldor mucking about with seed potatoes, but it's quite possible that these two plants were native to Numenor and that's how they got to Middle Earth - with the Numenoreans.

 

[Christopher Lee]

I think whether or not potatoes exist in Middle-Earth is a little nit-picky. I could never get through an entire story being so detail conscious as, "Potatoes? You're freakin' kidding me??"

Sorry, just seems funny to attack such small, insignificant details as that.

 

[Susan Boulton]

I think whether or not potatoes exist in Middle-Earth is a little nit-picky. I could never get through an entire story being so detail conscious as, "Potatoes? You're freakin' kidding me??"

Sorry, just seems funny to attack such small, insignificant details as that.

The thing is if you are writing fantasy, which LOTR is, you can put anything you wish too in the story as long as it follows the logic of the world you are creating.

If you are writing a thriller, horror, historcial fiction etc set in the "real world." i.e say 12th century France or England 1940 you should at least make a good stab at getting as much as you can right as regards details. The potato did not arrive in Europe till the late 16th century. It is one of those classic mistakes sloppy historical fiction writers (Bodice Ripper writers as well ) tend to make. Another thing that annoys the hell out of me is the fact that some writers take it as fact that all homes in the UK had telephones, pre WWII.... Errr no.

 

[Darth Angelus]

Presumably, Bond also has to justify his expenses claims to some extent. Claims for £1,000+ bottles of wine might not be paid? (Yes, there are such wines. I remember seeing a story in one of the newspapers about a restaurant bill for something like £60,000, most of which was for three bottles of wine.)

A fair point. I hadn't thought of it from that angle. Rather, I assumed Bond had a high salary due to being a top agent, and could afford to oay for what he wanted. I don't know the Bond franchise too well, I admit, so I could be wrong here, but I don't think it is revealed who pays for his orders.

However, this was not just about Bond. There are finctional billionaires in movies, to whom £100, £1000 or for that matter £10000 for a bottle would make no difference whatsoever. They always seem to drink Dom Pérignon, if they drink champagne. At least in Hollywood. In real life, if you have a bunch of roughly equivalent products with roughly equivalent price tag, some would pick this brand and some would pick that, due to variations in personal preference. I know prestige cuvées from Champagne are not exempt from this. 100.0% of humanity (rich or poor) is not going to have DP as their absolute favourite champagne style, vs. equivalent products. That is not how personal taste works.
This is kind of a minor nit pick, however. DP is a recognized name, which is likely why it is used in media. I stand by that point.

The thing is if you are writing fantasy, which LOTR is, you can put anything you wish too in the story as long as it follows the logic of the world you are creating.

Agreed, although Tolkien sort of claimed he was building an English mythology for our world.