It’s the Little Things

by Karen McCullough

Detail can make all the difference.

One of the reasons I like to visit the places I use as  background for my stories is the need to get the details right. It’s not always necessary, and I confess that I’ve set parts of stories in places I haven’t been to, but not often. Sometimes, if the place isn’t the main setting, I can get what I need from Google Maps, Wikipedeia, travel and tourism websites, and Google Earth.

But settings are an integral part of most stories and I really try to get it right as much as possible. The setting for my current mystery series is a market center in Washington, D.C. that is the site of various exhibitions and trade shows. Because I’ve had family living in the D.C. metro area for a long time and have visited often, I’m comfortable writing about the geographic area. During my ten years working for various trade publications, I attended numerous trade shows and got to see a lot of what goes on. I’ve also spent time talking to some of the people who work behind the scenes to get a feel for what they do.

When I come to writing something I don’t know about, I try to do as much research as I can to get things right. What I often find is that almost everything is more complicated than one suspects and there may not be any cut-and-dried right answers. Different people, different places, and different organizations do things in different ways. But there are usually some definitely wrong answers, and I try to avoid those as much as possible.

But like most people I don’t always know what I don’t know, which is why I need editors and beta readers. I first wrote Hunter’s Quest a few years ago, but published it only last year. One of the editors who read the book pointed out that I had my hero and heroine toodling around in a car with a front bench seat, although no American cars have been built with bench seats for years. Why didn’t I know that? I haven’t owned a car with anything but bucket seats in front for many years.

A couple of books I’ve read lately also reminded me of how easy it is to slip up on things you don’t know. I was beta-reading a Regency Romance not too long ago, where the American author didn’t understand how the English nobility worked. She had a character in her book, Sir Somebody, being a knight who talked about passing his title onto his son. I pointed out to her that a knighthood was not a title that could be passed on, and she probably wanted to make him a baronet (also addressed as Sir Somebody but that title can be inherited).

A different author, for whom I was doing a beta read of an otherwise very good story jolted me out of it when she described her English hero’s house as having a wrap-around porch. Because my son lives in England and I’ve spent time there, I know that a porch  means something slightly different in England than it does here. (It’s a small, usually covered, and sometimes fully enclosed entryway to the house, not a broad, elevated platform in front of the house.) I’ve never seen an English house with anything similar to an American wrap-around porch. They just don’t build houses that way. Outdoor sitting areas are pretty much always in the back of the house. And by the way, don’t call it the back yard. It’s the garden.

The first picture below is my son and his daughter heading out for a walk in the neighborhood where they live in Kent. The house directly behind has just a small porch entryway. The one in the upper left-hand corner has a small enclosed porch in front of the door. It's very common.

An English country manor with an entrance porch.

I know those things from experience. But there are tons of things I don’t know, and I don’t always know what those things are. I try to check out anything I’m not sure about, but can easily miss things I think I know. Which is why I let other people read my book before I publish it, and why I’m always happy to hear from readers who point out where I made a mistake.  I’ll always investigate and update the book when and if I can!