Fixing Mistakes Before You Publish Avoids Outrage from Readers

I made a factual error or two in my first novel, A FALSE DAWN, but when readers notified me about this (they love to find mistakes), readers weren’t upset because the errors I made seemed so minor to them. But in my new novel, I’ve tried to be extra careful. Though I keep doing research to avoid making historical errors, recently I caught myself making a BIG mistake in the novel I’m now editing. A mistake that might truly upset and outrage readers.

Every novel needs a villain, and for my sequel, call SUNRISING, I was going to pin the tail of villain on the Jesuits. Not in any snarling, Snidely-Whiplash way, mind you. But I was going to attribute ideas and opinions to the Jesuits that would help me explain how Catholic missionaries worked with Native Americans in the colony of New France, which is what the French called their territory in Canada and the American Midwest in the 1700s.

But the more I researched, the more I realized that I could not, even in fiction, hang certain ideas and opinions on the Jesuits, no matter how well it suited my purposes, not if these ideas did not reflect the actions of most of the Jesuits. Writing fiction does not give you the freedom to distort what you know to be true, or put words in people’s mouths that they never would have said.

Besides, I realized, why pick a fight with a huge group of potential readers, namely Roman Catholics, who might be offended by what I write about the Jesuits? Especially if I cannot defend it?

I solved the problem by creating a renegade Jesuit who leaves the order and, while doing many good things, also espouses beliefs more radical than those held by the Jesuits in the 1700s. That way, I can dramatize events the way I want to without portraying Jesuit ideas and behavior in a false manner.

It’s hard to keep your head straight when you’re writing a novel. Some temptations you have to learn to avoid.