and stomped on the floor just for fun
You know, I get that many media fans are not sports fans, and really have no interest in the major league American team sports, but jesus, mary and joseph, baseball does not have halftime! Hockey does not have quarters! American football is played from September to February! You can't just throw in a random jumble of sports terms and the name of a team and hope it makes sense! Especially not if you are making one of your characters a sports fan (or sports anchor *cough*).
You do research about other aspects of your story, don't you? I mean, it's one thing if the character isn't supposed to know anything about sports, but if you're making one of them, say, a Cubs fan, then you should know that the Cubs play National League baseball (and yes, it is different in some ways from American League baseball, most notably in the fact that the NL does not use the designated hitter except in interleague play taking place at AL ballparks) in the city of Chicago.
This is like having a character be a big music fan and then completely blowing the music references! (Which I have also seen in fic. Which. Dean would know the track listing on Zeppelin II! And it's not like there's a lack of Zeppelin discographies on the internet!)
It's one thing to have your characters blather on about fake arcane things like transporter beams or poltergeists or mutant powers - my suspension of disbelief is pretty rubbery and can withstand a lot. But small details are where verisimilitude lives, and making sure you've got one or two right ones, instead of a handful of wrong ones, will make your story a hell of a lot better. And I say this as someone who I'm sure gets things wrong when they're not things I know about (see: all my HP fic set in the UK), but I at least try to do a little research when it's something a character has some expertise in, even if it's just asking my dad about engines or whatever.
[/rant]
Whew. I feel better now. That one's been building a while.
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You do research about other aspects of your story, don't you? I mean, it's one thing if the character isn't supposed to know anything about sports, but if you're making one of them, say, a Cubs fan, then you should know that the Cubs play National League baseball (and yes, it is different in some ways from American League baseball, most notably in the fact that the NL does not use the designated hitter except in interleague play taking place at AL ballparks) in the city of Chicago.
This is like having a character be a big music fan and then completely blowing the music references! (Which I have also seen in fic. Which. Dean would know the track listing on Zeppelin II! And it's not like there's a lack of Zeppelin discographies on the internet!)
It's one thing to have your characters blather on about fake arcane things like transporter beams or poltergeists or mutant powers - my suspension of disbelief is pretty rubbery and can withstand a lot. But small details are where verisimilitude lives, and making sure you've got one or two right ones, instead of a handful of wrong ones, will make your story a hell of a lot better. And I say this as someone who I'm sure gets things wrong when they're not things I know about (see: all my HP fic set in the UK), but I at least try to do a little research when it's something a character has some expertise in, even if it's just asking my dad about engines or whatever.
[/rant]
Whew. I feel better now. That one's been building a while.
***