Discarding a story over a minor detail...

The subject line says it all. I was working on a story, discovered that I had a minor detail wrong, and now I'm tossing it.

The worst part is that it's not a detail that most people will spot. The story is set during the summer of 2001, involves a ghost (or maybe a "ghost" - which would be someone in a historical costume) that can manifest at certain times during the moon cycle, and I used the wrong weekdays for those phases of the moon. I've nailed down events that always happening on certain days of the week, but now all the ghostly action is happening on the wrong days, which means I'd have to rewrite most of it for the story to make sense. Too many details would have to change for those bi-weekly (Tuesday and Thursday) conversations to make sense, and I feel I'm better off starting something else.

All because I accidentally typed "moon calendar 2011" rather than "moon calendar 2001" when I was working on the outline. It wasn't until I went back to check to see if the new moon was officially 7 or 8 nights after the third quarter that I saw the mistake.

Yes, this is a minor detail, something that maybe no one else would ever see - but I know and that minor detail being off ruins the story for me.

When Stephen King wrote The Cycle of the Werewolf, he admitted to having 'adjusted' the actual cycle of the moon so that there would be a full moon at the particular part of each month (generally on some holiday) that his short novel's plotline required it.

Couldn't you simply advance your story's setting to 2011, or would that conflict with some other aspect of it...?? --C.K.

It would conflict with the ending - gathering around a TV on September 11, 2001, with all the big conflicts between the characters now appearing to be minor, insignificance issues.

Now if you had not disclosed the fact the story was a mere 10 years out, which I am sure makes little difference as regards to the moon etc, 98% of readers would never have known or likely cared if we did. I think and encourage you to publish the story as you wrote it, and if some comentors say anything I would simply tell them to write their own stories and then we can all check it for minor errors

You are a good writer Goodgulf, and now I want to read the story so....

CS

Whenever I am reading stories about the moon, I always check the pocket Lunar calendar I carry around with me wherever I go, to make sure the author has included the correct phases of the moon, and that they correspond to the correct days of the week, month and year.


NOT!

Publish the story, Goodgulf. No one will notice and if they do, just tell them they are mistaken, and block their messages from ever reaching you again. Or, tell them they would be right, IF your story were set on the current planet Earth, but, since it is set on a different planet - call it ERTHE (the e's are silent), which is exactly the same as Earth, except for a teensy-weensy difference in Lunar cycles (Plus, beer tastes better) - the Lunar cycles are quite correct, thank you very much. Then block their messages as well.

I already have enough trouble writing new stories. If I have to start fact-checking my fiction, I might s well go and get a real job.

Publish the story. I won't say anything if you don't. Ooops, wait - you already did. Ssshhhhhh!

Why let the cat out of the bag? I don't think your readers would be so fastidious as to check that particular point. Please don't deprive us of what must needs be another good story of yours.

There's a famous song here called 'I Was Only Nineteen' by Redgum, and it talks about the Australian Vietnam experience. There's a line 'he kicked a landline the day mankind kicked the moon. God help him, he was going home in June'. It rhymes, but if you know that the moon landing took place in July, then that means the poor chap who blew himself up had another 11 months to survive, so was nowhere near the end of his tour as the song suggests. This didn't stop it from becoming a chart topper down here. Hopefully you haven't gotten rid of the story GG. I do understand where you're coming from, though. My Dad was a painter, and he also made miniature houses as a hobby. I've seen him get rid of houses in the early stages, because there was a flaw that only he knew about, but it bugged him so much that he couldn't keep going without a way to fix it.

I hope you publish the story. This reminds me Asimov who once stated that he discard and entire novel because the very last sentence was very similar to the last sentence of an already published novel.

I'm in agreement here, since that's an aspect of the story which I'm highly doubtful would be noticed by the overwhelming majority of posters.

If you'd made a mistake in history, I'd be much more likely to notice it if/when reading your account--I have pointed out historical incongruities in Library stories on occasion.

Back to Stephen King, in his time travel/alternate history novel 11/22/63, about stopping the Kennedy assassination, he apparently didn't know much about pro football history but nonetheless included a couple of such (inaccurate) references, presumably in order to provide period background for the early 1960s.

Well, I noticed those errors and they did annoy me a touch, since either he could have avoided mentioning them (as they weren't meaningful to the novel's plotline) or he could have done a few more minutes' worth of research to check out the facts rather than 'bluffing it through.' He obviously had researched the details of the assassination quite thoroughly.

(The book's premise that John F. Kennedy surviving the assassination plot would have proven disastrous to the United States, I didn't find it very convincing--but that was merely 'counterfactual' speculation, not objective fact, after all.)

If King had included incorrect data concerning the phases of the moon back in '63, however, I'm pretty certain that I'd have missed such a mistake... --C.K.

I agree. Publish and be damned. You'll give pleasure to many including maybe a few who will enjoy pointing out the mistake.

I's odd. We can invent whole countries, towns within real countries, political parties... but I do think the scruple reflects well on you. Carelessness with basic facts, for example in historical stories, does annoy me.