Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
I'm an American and I wouldn't even try to set a story anywhere north of Oklahoma.
The stupidest map error I ever saw was the "author" thought that in the US, the bigger the number, the more people would be on that road. The main character in the book needed to hitchhike from Amarillo to El Paso but avoid New Mexico. The quickest way to do this would have been south to Odessa then hit the interstate west.
The way the guy went was southeast to Snyder then another little road southeast to Abilene. Then instead of getting on the interstate he then went southwest towards San Angelo then headed back north to Odessa and finally caught the only road to El Paso.
Note, that detour added so many miles, he couldn't have done it in the 8 hours alloted.
Second note: you might could now but when the book was written, the short way would have been 10 hours. Speed limit is now 80 out in rural west Texas.
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I once read a book set in the area where I live and the author described the distance from point A to point B as being a few miles, but in actuality it's less than a mile. This book was written in recent times - the author could have just checked an online map to get the correct distance.
Plot devices I hate tend to do with timelines, such as:
1. First chapter starts in the middle of some exciting event; then you find out that this is actually something late in the story - you are thrown back to the actual beginning of the story in chapter two.
2. Story bounces back and forth between past and present. Just when I start to get into the story in one time period it switches to the other.
3. First half of the book is full of heavy hints about some Big Incident (accident, illness, death of family member, etc.) that happened to one of the characters in the past and is influencing his/her current life - but you have to wait until at least halfway through the book to find out what it was. I'd rather just have a prologue about the incident.