Royal Novelist Adventures - Part 2

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Today, I'm going to talk about Research, Research, Research!

And as you might be able to tell with this blog, research is very important to me. There are a lot of reasons why you need to do research: it helps you understand things and how they work, helps you understand the scope and different points of view, it backs up your argument, helps establish your credibility, etc.

But most importantly, it helps you not sound like an idiot. In the world of fiction, authors often write about topics they are not experts in. This is allowed and there is always this suspension of disbelief where readers allow for a little creativity and impossibility.

But at the same time, the more a reader's bullshit meter goes off, the more your reader might think you are full of it. And it could affect their judgment of your work, your ability, etc.

Today, I am going to share three examples where a lack of research hurt the author.

Balcony at Trooping the Colours

Photo Credit: Cpl Paul Shaw, MoD/Crown copyright 2016 

I remember a few months ago, I was talking with a "Royal Watcher" about Meghan Markle (who is now the Duchess of Sussex) and what we thought might be her 1st balcony appearance. I had talked to this person a bit over a few months about different royal things. They had a royal blog and positioned themselves as an "expert" on the royals. They gave a lot of opinions on this and that. 

I suggested Meghan's 1st balcony appearance would be Trooping the Colours (The Queen's Official Birthday). And the Royal Watcher said something like: "What balcony appearance? The Queen stands on a platform during Trooping the Colours at Horse Guard Parade, not a balcony." 

Immediately I said to myself, "Wow!! This person has not been seriously royal watching for a year." As there is no way someone can experience Trooping the Colours (the biggest British Royal Event of the year) and not know about the iconic balcony scene at Buckingham Palace, where the Royal Family comes out and watches the fly past.

Photo Credit: Cpl Scott Robertson, Crown Copyright 

In fact, given that the BBC doesn't make Trooping the Colours at Horse Guard Parade freely available to watch outside the UK, the balcony at Buckingham Palace is often the only part people really see.

While I'm not faulting a normal person for not know this, this is something anyone who claims to be an expert in the royals must know. It is one of the pretty basic things.

In addition, to not knowing about the Buckingham Palace balcony scene, they didn't understand what happens at Horse Guard Parade either. At Horse Guard Parade, the Queen does stand on a platform, but the Royal Family watches from the windows of the Horse Guards Building. While it is not technically a balcony, it is sort of. The Royals stand in the large open windows that are draped in red and gold, like the Buckingham Palace balcony. 

In my head, I immediately pegged this person as a newbie and they lost their credibility as a "Royal expert." Any future opinion they gave had to be fact-checked, which of course lead to me spotting more errors and solidified their status as a newbie royal watcher.  

Faulty Book Proposal

As part of my real-life job, I was recently asked to review a proposal for a non-fiction, academic book and recommend whether it should be published, or not. With non-fiction, you often write the proposal and get the book accepted, by a publisher, before you actually write it. (Although you may write a sample chapter to be included with your proposal.)

A book proposal is a very important thing for academic books. It is what sells your book to the publisher. And proposals are often sent out to be reviewed by other people in that field, or related fields, to see whether this is a meaningful addition to the literature in that field.

So, academic book proposals are read by a number of smart people, some of who are experts in that field. Obviously, this means your book proposal should very be well-written, convincing, and correct. 

As I was reviewing the book proposal, there was something that just stood out to me as incorrect. I pulled out my phone and did a simple google search. And just by looking at the search results, I could see this person had messed up.

Library at Drottningholm Palace in Sweden
Photo Credit: Erik Liljeroth [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

I won't go into detail about what exactly they messed up on. But one of the questions I had to answer for my review was: "Is this person qualified and the right person to write this book?" 

The whole book and its premise is that the author is an expert on their topic, and so they have the authority to talk about it and give instruction and advise. But when you make mistakes someone in a different, but related, field can easily spot you don't come off as an expert. It hurts your credibility and authority. And of course, once I found one mistake I was on the lookout for others. (No way I was going to risk my own credibility with the publisher by recommending a bad book.)

I said in my review of the book proposal, that this was an important topic and there was some stuff that would make a meaningful addition to the literature in that field. But for a number of reasons, I could not recommend this book for publication in its current state. (& I gave a list of my issues with it).

Based on all the reviews for this book proposal, the publisher ended up asking the author to re-write and re-work their proposal and sample chapter. The author agreed and spent some time doing more research and carefully working out their ideas. When they submitted their new proposal I was asked to review it. While it wasn't perfect, and I certainly had a list of new issues, I did finally recommend publication.

This was a very knowledgeable author, who definitely had a good book idea. But because they didn't originally work out their ideas well, it almost cost them a chance to work with that publisher. 

Scottish vs. Irish Bagpipes

I was once working on this novel idea that took place in Northern Ireland. It was going to be very Irish, with a lot of culture and heritage. And in the first scene, I was going to have a funeral procession. As I knew Northern Ireland/Ireland, like Scotland, has its own bagpipes, which are used a lot in their traditional music, I had this guy walk in the funeral procession playing the bagpipes. I thought it was a great scene.

At some point, I thought maybe I ought to look up the difference between traditional Scottish and Irish music because the two are a little mixed up in my head. And I looked up the difference between the two types of bagpipes as well. And this is what I found:

Photo Credit: Mac MacKenzie (CC BY-ND 2.0)

The (Scottish) Great Highland bagpipes are:

• Played standing or walking
• Played solo or in a group
• Often part of a military band
• You have to blow into them
• Limited scale

The (Irish) Uilleann pipes are:

• Played sitting down
• Usually played solo
• You don't blow into it, air comes from a bellow under the arm
• Sweeter sounding

Well, in my scene I had described the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe, which is a horrible way to start a novel that you want to be very Irish. It immediately tells any person in the know I don't know what I'm writing about. While I was able to fix this before anyone saw it, because I did do the research, just imagine if I hadn't. 

It's okay not to know things. But take the time to research the things you don't know. Don't just make assumptions or use your faulty logic. Your writing will be much richer if you include authentic details. So my advice is to Research, Research, Research!

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