Whether your novel takes place in modern-day New York City or in a completely fantastical world, it must still be accurate to certain facts, within the real world and the story world. While you should be on the lookout for the kinds of inaccuracies I’m about to discuss through-out the writing process, the copy edit is where you will iron out the last of them.
In order to get your ducks in a row, here are five important things to look for when you are fact-checking your manuscript:
Real World Facts
Even if your book is set on Pluto or in Middle Earth, there are still real-world facts it will need to adhere to. While many readers love a good fantasy, what they don’t love is when things are weird for no good reason. If, for example, your book is set on Pluto, you’ll need to know the facts of what it would be like to actually be there, to best of current human understanding. If your main character is breathing the air on Pluto without a space-suit or some explanation of the planet having been terraformed, the reader will be jolted out of the story. Likewise with a fantasy story; a good example of this is military protocol. Regardless of the system of magic assisting the characters, if you have war-stuff going on, you need to have a rudimentary understanding of military structure and tactics. Your readers will not be pleased to find you have a sergeant at arms teaching boot camp.
Regardless of what you write, there are countless tiny facts that might affect the way your book is read. What temperature does water freeze at? How much food will an army of 1000 soldiers consume in a day? In a week? How much blood can a human body lose and still function? What does a pregnant woman look and feel like at 28 weeks?
Here are the strategies I use to make sure my facts concerning the real world are accurate:
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Fact-check everything. If there is anything I’m unsure about, I check it. Period.
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Use the internet for simple research. Fortunately, fact-checking in this day and age is remarkably easy. I use Wikipedia for most simple questions. If you can’t easily find the answer at Wikipedia, try typing the whole question into Google. Most often you’ll come up with an answer from a forum or discussion where other writers had the same question. Sometimes it will be useful, sometimes not.
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If you can’t find the answer to a question easily, consider if you can simplify the writing. While I love research, I don’t spend a huge amount of time on it. Often you can spin your wheels trying to find complicated information, when the easiest thing to do is simply change the way you’re portraying the facts so that the information, even if slightly inaccurate, doesn’t affect the reader’s experience. For example, maybe you can’t find detailed maps on the caves of Pluto. Well, chances are, nor will your reader have detailed maps on these caves. And maybe you don’t even need the outlay of the caves to be very clear in the writing; perhaps the astronauts are using them for storage instead of habitation. Instead of manning a mission to Pluto to map the caves, simplify your story so that the reader doesn’t need to know exactly what they look like inside.
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Consult an expert. At some point, you’ll probably come across something that Google can’t answer, but that is vital to the plot. You can spend some time going to the library and researching the answer in books, but you might save time by going directly to an expert in the subject and conducting a short interview. For example, say the main character in your urban fantasy is having car trouble. Instead of trying to interpret Car Mechanics for Dummies, head to your local mechanic and ask a few questions. Information from experts can add a certain richness and depth to the realism in your novel.
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Learn, and keep learning. Even though I write epic fantasy, which is about as far from hard science fiction as a writer can get, I love the natural sciences. The more you know about the world to begin with, the more accurate the facts in your book will be from the beginning.
World-Building Facts or Canon
In addition to all of the real-world facts that can affect your novel, if you write speculative fiction, there are also a host of made-up facts that you will have to adhere to. If you are writing a series, you will need to fact-check your current project against any already published books in the series, as well. This can be as minor as the spelling of a character’s name, or a character’s hair color, or as crucial as whether a specific action is allowable based on your system of magic.
Much of this you’ll check in terms of consistency, for example if the character’s hair is silver in chapter one, is it silver in every other instance. But you’ll also want to check in terms of accuracy. Maybe you’ve stated the character’s hair as silver in one place and blonde in another, but it’s actually black and that’s important because three books later we find out that her father was the black-haired postman.
For this kind of accuracy, I suggest keeping clear notes on all of your world-building facts. Basically, unless you’re famous enough to have a fan-created wiki for your story world, you’ll need to create your own. A glossary is a good start, but you should also have detailed notes on things like military structure, the system of magic, the history of each place in your world, the systems of government, history and genealogy of important families, and so forth. A good place to start with this (although, hopefully you’ve started long before the copy edit) is this post on World-Building Questions. In addition to the answers to those questions, however, you should also have a glossary of made-up terms, lists of characters and detailed information on important characters, and maps. You should have one version of everything that serves as the canon. If anything has seen the light of day (been published), that is the final version, and your notes should reflect it.
Application of Logic
There are some things you might find in a copy edit that won’t necessary have a factual basis, but that might defy basic logic and make your reader question the plausibility of your premises. Again, most major logical holes should have been sounded out by this point, but there might still be some minor questions of logic. For example, does your characteristically lazy protagonist take the stairs when an elevator is readily at hand? While you might not have something in your canon saying that character will never take the stairs, when you apply logic, it seems unlikely and out of character for them to take the stairs. Another example: If your story is set in a middle-ages-type story world, the mindset of the characters should reflect such a period. It’s not plausible that your protagonist could live in a medieval world and suddenly invent a modern computer, for example, or be espousing the virtues of democracy, or decide that capital punishment should be outlawed. Technological and social changes take generations of work, and having these sorts of things happen overnight in any historical setting can be too much for your readers to accept. You’re not necessarily violating clear facts, just taking logical leaps that are too broad. So keep an eye out for this kind of inaccuracy that isn’t immediately obvious, but can be just as detrimental.
Fairness
Fairness is something that writers of non-fiction, particularly journalists, have to pay attention too in the copy-edit process, but I think it warrants a little bit of attention from fiction writers, as well. For a journalist, it means that the facts are portrayed fairly; for example not presented out of context and thereby distorted; weight is not given to one side of a story over the other side, and all sides are given an opportunity to make a statement defending their position.
In fiction, obviously, the goal is not objectivity; fiction by its very nature is subjective and thematic, a statement or message portraying the author’s worldview. However, I do think it can be easy to get carried away as a writer. The temptation can be to use a book, especially the first book, as a soapbox, espousing all your views on all issues, and not considering the other side of any argument; broadcasting, not discussing.
By looking at fairness in a copy-edit, you can actually strengthen the core theme or message of your book. By presenting the opposing argument in fair terms, your book can become a vigorous discussion of the theme. Check for places where you may be heavy-handed with your message. Do all of your protagonists hold the same views on certain issues, and the same view as you? Is an argument against your theme represented in any way? Does the antagonist get a chance to be portrayed as a thoughtful character with depth, or are they a black and white representation of all that you consider to be evil?
Legality
Finally, in this section on accuracy I’m going to briefly discuss legality, because that is also something a copy-edit should look for. I should make a rather obvious disclaimer here that I am not in any way an expert on any law, and nothing I state here should be taken as legal advice by anyone in their right mind or otherwise. Think of this as a stepping off point to do your own research on the legality of your work, or to look for expert advice.
There are two main legal issues an author faces in terms of the content of their work: trademark or copyright infringement, and defamation. The former is the matter of including content that is legally protected by trademark or copyright without taking proper steps to get permission to include it. The latter is if someone thinks you’ve given them a bad reputation by including something inaccurate about them in your work.
There are some basic protections you can give yourself:
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Keep life simple. Basically, I try not to include anything, ever, that might be considered a breach of Copyright or defamation in my books. I only use graphics that I created and/or own. If I use quotes, I use them from works that are old enough to be in the public domain. And if I’m going to cast a character in a bad light, I make sure the fictional character in no way resembles any actual person I know of. Even if I secretly know who it is . . .
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Disclaimers. That bit of text at the beginning of a book that says that it is a work of fiction, any resemblance to persons living or dead, etc? That’s defamation protection 101.
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Google it. If you’re unsure about a word, Google it it to check the trademark status. I make up a lot of words, and sometimes I’m concerned that a word I’m making up might exist out there in the real world, already trademarked by someone bigger than me. My policy is to Google every single made-up word in my works. A byproduct of Googling these words is that I can also get a sense of the connotation of the word, and whether it’s used already in pop culture.
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When in doubt, get permission. If you are the tiniest bit unsure about a quote, or a graphic, or a reference to a real person, contact the owner (or person) and get written permission to use it.
