How important is being factually correct in your stories?

[serria]

Do you find yourself fact and detail checking everything possible when you write? Do you think "creative interpretation" or flat out ignoring facts is always a flaw of writing?

I think every genre has its own popular muddling of facts. Crime dramas might show a crime being easily solved with minimal evidence. A sci-fi might ignore physics for the sake of flash, explosion, and convenience. A historical drama might have two characters interacting who never would have met one another... and so on.

I find that when I write, I really make an effort for accuracy, though sometimes I wonder if it isn't better to relax the rules a bit in a way that might ultimately make for a better story - at very least, faster and more interesting pacing. On one hand, muddling facts is said to be something that throws people who are "experts" in that particular area out of the story, but on the other hand, is it justifiable when most people probably won't know or care either way?

What do you think? Have you ever had to debate whether being completely factually accurate or plausible is worth it or not?

Comments

[agilebrit]

I use Rule of Cool unless it's something egregious or I'm writing hard SF. Just because we can't do faster-than-light travel right now doesn't mean it's not possible; it's just not possible with our current tech. If I'm not violating my own in-universe rules, then I'm good.

That being said, if someone gets real hard-and-fast facts wrong ("Elementary," I'm looking at you and the notion of a "black box" on a four-passenger private plane, yes, I am still irritated by that ep), I get really annoyed.

[ljwrites]

It comes down to internal consistency, keeping true to the rules of the world. Factual accuracy in the real-world sense would only be a problem when the world is our world, with the same history, physics, level of technology etc. I imagine that's why truly implausible things like faster-than-light travel can fly (so to speak), while even small inaccuracies in a real-world setting are distracting and annoying.