Do authors intentionally insert mistakes?

[TXAZ]

No author wants mistakes in their book. ...

Actually Tom Clancy gave an interview after he wrote The Sum of All Fears about intentionally inserting bad info. He indicated he intentionally put in bad nuclear weapon design information to try avoid helping a terrorist group.

What he didn't know was that Al Gore, in his infinite wisdom to show openness of the government put very specific nuclear weapon design information on the internet.

 

[jackstrawIII]

Just noticed this in a movie the other day. Was rewatching "Ant Man" with the wife in prep for the new one coming out soon.

Remember the scene when the villain (bad business guy) tries to shoot the main female character but the ants all crawl up and block the hammer of the pistol? Well, that pistol... was a Glock.

The irony is... other evil henchmen were using Beretta 92s, which obviously have hammers. If they wanted ants to block a hammer (which was kinda a neat idea I guess) then give the baddie one of the Berettas... easy fix.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Actually Tom Clancy gave an interview after he wrote The Sum of All Fears about intentionally inserting bad info. He indicated he intentionally put in bad nuclear weapon design information to try avoid helping a terrorist group.

If you intentionally do it, then it isn't a mistake, though it may be incorrect. Part of what makes fiction be fiction is when things that cannot work are supposed to be able to work.

 

[MTT TL]

I think we can all agree that the title of the thread is flawed and that mistakes are unintentional by the one making the mistake and therefore can't be deliberately inserted which is ironic for the thread. I think the OP meant errors.

 

[DaleA]

Um...I think it's MTT TL for the win. At least language wise. I think he is correct and the word 'error' would have been better than 'mistake'.

Why bother assigning to malice what can be explained by incompetence.

I like the above quote a lot and I think it probably covers a good 98% of the cases I'm talking about but I still kind of wonder if they don't occasionally toss one in just to see whose paying attention and maybe get folk talking. Kind of like the old 'There's no such thing as bad publicity' associated with Phineas T. Barnum.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

I have to disagree with MTT TL and DaleA. "Mistake" and "error" are pretty much synonymous. When the shortstop bobbles a grounder and then throws wide to first base, they don't call it an "error" because he did it intentionally.

I agree that sometimes authors include incorrect or misleading information intentionally. When they do so, the information is "incorrect," it is neither an "error" nor a "mistake."

 

[Jim Watson]

Stuart Woods, daddy of lawyer Stone Barrington, puts an afterword in his books.
Don't write to tell me about errors in this book, I already know about them by the time it is on your shelf.
He once commented that gun nuts are the worst for picking at details.

 

[Skans]

Many authors are just plain ignorant.

Fiction Authors tend to be "gun-dumb". Especially the ones from the liberal North East. I've caught some similar mistakes in Stephen King books. They are not writing for the people on this forum, they are creating sights and sounds through their choice of words to get non-gun people immersed in the action of the story.

However, you would think that people like Mr. King would know at least one gun-guy who could proofread his draft for silly gun errors. Gun-people aren't being "picky". It would be no different than writing something like:

"Jeff mashed the accelerator and redlined the 6.2 Liter V8 in his retro-styled '95 Plymouth Prowler before throwing the gearshift into 1st, smoking the back tires and launching it toward....."

Some of you will know what is wrong with ^^^^^this, and others won't have a clue. It sounds good to the average person, though.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

If an author can find the errors by the time his book reaches the buyers, why can't he find the errors before the book reaches the printer?

The problem is, a novel tells a story. At some level, the reader usually identifies with one of the characters (generally the protagonist) and, to a degree, suspends belief to become absorbed/engrossed in the situation. When serious errors pop up, they shatter the illusion and break the reader's absorption into the story line.

An example for sci-fi/fantasy: I was a huge fan of Anne McCaffrey and her Dragonriders of Pern series. I have every book in the series, and I've read most of them at least three times. Any time I went into a Barnes & Noble my first stop was the sch-fi aisle, to see if there was a new Dragonriders book out. Near the end of her life, Anne brought her son, Todd McCaffrey, in as co-author for one or two books. After she died, Todd wrote two new Dragonrider books in quick succession.

My late wife knew how much I liked Anne's books so she gave both of the new ones to me for Christmas. I read them both, and asked her never to buy another one of Todd McCaffrey's books. After almost thirty years of living on Pern in my head, I found that some elements of the story introduced by Todd were so jarringly out-of-synch with my mental construct of the Pern world that I absolutely hated the books.

I think the same thing applies to authors who allow serious, fact=-checkable errors regarding guns, cars, or whatever to creep into their books. True, some readers won't be knowledgeable enough to pick up on the errors. Others will.

 

[44 AMP]

Actually Tom Clancy gave an interview after he wrote The Sum of All Fears about intentionally inserting bad info. He indicated he intentionally put in bad nuclear weapon design information to try avoid helping a terrorist group.

I was going to mention this, you beat me to it. Clancy's "interview" is actually the afterword in the book.

 

[Brian Pfleuger]

...'95 Plymouth Prowler...

The concept was built in '93, production began in '97... but there may have been a couple unreleased "proof" models built in '95. Maybe he worked for Plymouth and got one

When serious errors pop up, they shatter the illusion and break the reader's absorption into the story line.

An example for sci-fi/fantasy:...

I don't know... consider the myriad errors in the Star Trek genre, just around the concept of "Warp" and "Subspace" speeds/distances. It's pretty glaring at times. Hell, the whole Voyager series alone is FILLED with contradictions about how long it will take to go to X, how fast the ship can go, how long it will take a Subspace signal to get to Starfleet, etc, etc. It's noticeable by anyone paying the slightest attention, but I don't think it really detracts from the fan base.

 

[Rob228]

Actually Tom Clancy gave an interview after he wrote The Sum of All Fears about intentionally inserting bad info. He indicated he intentionally put in bad nuclear weapon design information to try avoid helping a terrorist group.
I was going to mention this, you beat me to it. Clancy's "interview" is actually the afterword in the book.

Clancy also said that the Tier 1 shooters in Rainbow Six never practiced on the range with their primary weapons because the diopter sights made them so easy to use.

 

[MTT TL]

I can insert an error in to a line of code.

I can't insert a mistake.

 

[SonOfScubaDiver]

It's fiction, people. Get over it.

 

[HiBC]

I think directors,authors,etc make technical compromises with a shrug for the sake of tension or drama.
"Glock" is trendy,technical,and paints a picture. The author may have never fired a handgun and has no clue how its different than a 1911 or a Luger.

All of the safety clicking,slide racking,lever jacking,hammer cocking that we recognize (hopefully) as silly has been a Hollywood formula for escalating drama for so long some folks actually believe the sound of racking a shotgun is some level of tactical response.

"Saving Private Ryan" ,I'm sure,had WW2 technical experts to get the details right. If "getting it right" was the priority,then our US Army sniper character would have used the little Weaver 330 3/4 in tube scope for every shot.It was not a quick detach setup. There would be no swapping to the Marine version of the sniper scope.(The long tube Lyman or Unertl)
It just does not work that way.

I'm sure the director knew it. But there is more drama in swapping to the big scope.

So,a compromise was made.

I sometimes wonder,among politicians and news media,if conscious bumbling of firearms knowledge or terminology is a pose to be politically correct.
Its "cool" to be a non-gun person,and to be able to technically correct about firearms creates suspicion that (gasp) might out the person as one of "them",the politically incorrect gun culture.

"He had a high caliber powerfulAR-15 magazine clip" says " I'm cool,can I come to your party?"

 

[dakota.potts]

It's actually because of threads like this that I've actually put up a page on my site for firearms consulting services and target authors and video game developers as part of their audience... to help them proofread and inform them to avoid stupid mistakes that turn off readers. https://www.pottsprecision.com/consulting/

No takers yet but I haven't started marketing it really. Maybe it's easier for them to remain technically ignorant and focus on their writing than worry about the small details.

 

[TXAZ]

Which sells more books: The raw often boring truth? Or a highly embellished story “based on fact” (with the sole fact the main characters real names were Bob and Sam) with the rest of the story a figmentation?

 

[44 AMP]

"Saving Private Ryan" ,I'm sure,had WW2 technical experts to get the details right.

They got a lot of them right, but not all of them. Agreed, some were deliberately wrong, and done only for dramatic effect, such as the sniper cranking on the adjustable objective lens of the scope and muttering about windage...

However, there is at least one other, (pointed out to me by an expert friend) that could have easily been done "right" but wasn't.

The squadron codes on the P-51s that destroy the Tiger tank are incorrect for the time and location of the setting.

Another movie "goof" is in Enemy at the Gates. There is a scene of German Panzer HQ with facing lines of parked Panzer IIIs. The CGI is good, decent recreation of the proper model of Panzer III for the time and place.

However, one line of tanks is a mirror image of the other, which puts the bow machine gun on the wrong side of the tank! Tread heads and model builders, spot this easily. Since its all CGI to begin with, why couldn't they get it right??

I make allowances for when actual historic equipment is used, and they couldn't get exactly the right version (such as M1 carbines with Korean war features in WWII, etc.) However when its all done CGI, it ought to be right.

 

[JohnKSa]

I have talked to one fiction writer at length about firearm details. The author was agonizing over the fine details, trying to get everything exactly correct. I could tell that striving for perfection was going to destroy the picture that the author was trying to paint with words. Along with that realization, came the understanding that sometimes it's more important to get the "picture right" than it is to insure that every last detail is perfectly correct.

After all, the picture is something (if done right) that nearly everyone will enjoy while only a few people will see the problems with the details. And even many of those who see the problems may still be able to "look away" from the errors and enjoy the story.

 

[44 AMP]

I could tell that striving for perfection was going to destroy the picture that the author was trying to paint with words. Along with that realization, came the understanding that sometimes it's more important to get the "picture right" than it is to insure that every last detail is perfectly correct.

I understand this, and actually do agree with it. However, my point is that not only is the "devil in the details" but as one engineer once told me, "God is in the details".


Including EVERY detail in the description of things in the story can be detrimental to the "big picture". However, the solution is simple, don't include those details that are detrimental to the narrative, and do ensure the ones you do include are correct.

For example, saying "he cocked the hammer and drew a careful aim" tells all the important details, and saying "he cocked the target hammer with its 24line per inch checkered pad, and took careful aim" isn't really needed, and when the gun named doesn't HAVE a target hammer with 24 lpi checkering then, for those of us who know that, its an error and a needless distraction to the storyline.

to my mind, the writer is better off leaving details out than including wrong ones.

Its fine to say the D-Day landings were in France. Its fine to say they were in Normandy, but if the writer names them Gold, Sword, Omaha and Alaska, he'd be better off not naming them at all.

Just my thoughts, and worth every penny you paid for them.