There’s nothing worse than reading a novel and coming across a factual error.
I’ll always remember reading a book-I-won’t-name where the narrator explained about where my hometown, Perth, was situated, and what you would reach if you travelled in each direction, as the crow flies. For some reason, the narrator had us hitting the west coast of Africa instead of the east, and it bugged me so much – I re-read the section three times to be sure I had understood correctly – that it tainted my opinion of the whole book.
Now, when I’m writing novels, I’m (so far) setting them in factual places, and places that I know reasonably well but not like my hometown. It’s really important to me that I get the details right, because I don’t want a reader to have the experience I’ve just described above. Of course, I have no doubt that something will be wrong – and I don’t want to become obsessive about it, either, and sometimes you want to use a bit of poetic licence so the place fits the story, anyway … but my point is, with the wonderful world of the internet, these days it’s much easier to get things right anyway. Tools I use all the time while I’m writing include:
Google Maps: My character’s going to drive from Poprad to Kosice, how long should it take? Just ask for directions in Google Maps and I can check that my estimation of a couple of hours is just right. Another character is driving down to Croatia for a summer holiday and needs an overnight spot to stay about half way. Pop into Google Maps and I can pick a reasonably-sized town for them, no worries.
Wikipedia and Wikitravel: So I figure out where the character is going to spend the night, but how do I give the town some local flavour? Hit the web. I also use these sites constantly to double check facts that I think I know, like historical incidents, population figures, famous people, etc.
Google Earth: To be honest, I don’t need an excuse to play around with Google Earth, but to supplement my own experience, memory and photographs, Google Earth is a great way to check the landscape, or go down to Google Street level to see some individual buildings. Love it.
Flickr: My visual imagination is not always perfect, and if I want to describe something accurately and beautifully it sure helps if I can see it “in person”. The great collection of photographs on Flickr pretty much always have something to help me write a good description. I’m pretty sure the photographers who put their photos there didn’t have my purpose in mind when they hit “upload”, but I’m still grateful to them.
Over to you: What internet sites can you simply not do without while you’re writing? I’m hoping to get some good tips! Let me know in the comments.
. The good news is that I finished it, and loved it – it’s a pretty dark story about paedophiles but totally page-turning. It’s also set in Florida, rather than Scotland, with only a couple of major Scottish characters, so that meant that the dialogue I’m scared of was a lot rarer than in some of his other novels.
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. Rimington was the first female head of MI5 (the British Secret Service, basically) and after she retired she turned to writing spy novels – which are especially interesting because you know she writes from the voice of experience. It’s a real page-turner, yet it doesn’t feel scrappily-written or trashy, as those typical buy-at-the-airport spy stories have always seemed to me.