Blog Flog: "Guns, play acting, and more research"
Link:
http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2006/08/guns-play-acting-and-more-research.htmlIt's full of wank, from the "OMG I had to spoil the story for my Jonny!" to "Look at how we get down with our bad RPG selves", but the last few lines irked me with their irony.
It drives me nuts when I'm reading along, and find that a writer obviously didn't do any research. I'm okay with a problem here, or there, but when it's blatantly obvious that they treated the material with no respect, it just ruins my enjoyment of the story. Research, research, research."Treat[ing] the material with no respect"? That's basically how she treats the English language, punctuation, the supernatural genre, empowered women.... It's a long list, one we've covered many times.
So I fail to see how SHE doesn't get that her rampant errors ruin the "enjoyment of the story" for her readers. Maybe I'm pickier than most, but yes, spelling matters. Punctuation matters. For a blog entry, I don't care as much because those are meant to be immediate. Novels, however, are bodies of work. They represent a writer. Speaking as an aspiring writer, I'd want to make damn good and sure that any novel with my name on the cover was as good as I could make it.
And then there's the whole research thing. I know there are differing opinions. Personally, I think some research is fine, but too much kills a story for me. For a lot of writers—LKH included—it seems like they use research to take the place of ideas and plot. Maybe a gun nut really wants to know about bullet casings and such. If it's relevant to the story, by all means include it. But on the whole, I'd rather have 2 paragraphs of ideas and plot and characterization than descriptions of clothing and gun parts. It's
fantasy, after all: it's a different world. That's the point. That's the fun.