Details…

As I edit Impatience and Balance at the same time, yes yes I know I must be mad; there are a number of scenes in both books which just plain bug me. It’s not the events that occur, or even grammatically challenged prose; rather a detail here or there gnaws at my conscious. For example, in one scene I have a pilot talking to a radio tower, something I have never done. I’ve heard this sort of thing plenty of times before as someone I know actually is a real life pilot. I was never really interested enough, or had reason to learn what the ‘Piper Foxtrot blah blah’ actually means. I’m vaguely aware of some of the terms like ‘ILS’ and umm ‘artificial horizon’ thingy. Yeah I’m sure you get the picture.

I know what I have written in this particular scene is close enough to sell most people and in truth, this is a small detail. Yet still it’s not quite right and that bugs the hell out of me. This is the sort of details my best friend Google can only help me with so far. I need to talk to an experience person, otherwise that feeling is simply never going to go away and my control freak button will be pressed forever in the on position. I simply cannot have that!

Last week I enjoyed a lunch with some friends I used to work with at a previous job. Apart from enjoying the catch up, one of these individuals used to be in the Australian Army, Signals Corps. As I am a 9 to 5 slave to the IT Corporate world, my exposure to all things military is well, ahem, somewhat limited. It’s fair to say my reliance on other way, way smarter people than me is proving to be quite useful.

Impatience has a number of scenes involving military personnel. In my ignorance, I had simply used the rank ‘Private‘ to cover about 90% of all supporting military characters. This might seem lazy and present a level of indifference. Nothing could be further from the truth! This generalization allowed me to keep moving through the story, which is a good thing as both books were finished to draft some time ago. Otherwise I could still be searching through the internet for the required details. It’s always better to finish, get the plot out and then revise until your eyes bleed, well metaphorically speaking a book rather than get hung up on details.

I’m happy to admit only a few people have noticed this minor detail of the grander plot and in truth it’s not a big deal. Yet still it gnaws at me. Suffice to say after detailed revision of my chicken scratching, covered in sauce from the lunch, I have now applied more realistic ranks to individuals and have a fair grasp on what constitutes a unit / division / platoon.

I strongly believe the less distractions, or annoyingly incorrect details within any story, lead to a better reading experience. In essence, if a reader purchases a book and the author has done sufficient homework to ensure they are not insulted, annoyed or otherwise peeved, than the experience should be a positive one. Hopefully positive enough to prompt the reader to enter a second agreement, that is buy another book from said author.

Now that would be really cool!