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A retired librarian called me out on my timeline errors in chapter 3 of my historical fiction novel last Tuesday
She read the first 30 pages at our monthly meeting in Seattle and said 'no steam locomotive would have been running that route in 1887' and now I have to redo half my research, has anyone else had a reader spot a detail that wrecked your whole plot?
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ruby_grant5d agoMost Upvoted
Oh gosh, I once had a beta reader point out that my character couldn't have gotten smallpox in 1872 because the vaccine was already around, and I basically had to scrap the entire first half of my book!
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miles_grant355d ago
Haha well at least you didn't have to scrap it because the smallpox vaccine was actually created by some guy named Jenner in 1796, so your beta reader was totally right but also that's a pretty deep cut for a historical nitpick. I'd be tempted to write the character as getting it from a contaminated vaccine or something, but that's probably more trouble than it's worth. Your mileage may vary but sometimes you just gotta laugh at how much research goes into fiction.
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