Mindful of recent topics, I'm posting this in an easily accessible forum

As I (finally) near the end of my novel, my idea for the second one is taking shape (probably still WF but edging towards Nicci French territory). However, MC is probably going to be a psychologist.

Now, I work for a mental health charity and over the years I've become pretty familiar with the jargon and I can even follow most of what our (flash git) consultant psychologist is on about and I could probably ask him for clarification of some points if necessary. I can also borrow reading material from work and swot up a bit, but I'm really wary of acquiring just enough rope to hang myself, knowledge-wise.

Any opinions on this? The novel isn't going to be centred on her work, but it will be important at various points - is this potentially too fraught with dangers to be sensible? If you've written about someone whose profession you don't have first-hand knowledge of, how deep into the subject did you go?

As always, any advice welcomed

Bearing in mind what Sharley was saying about people asking about usps, it probably helps from a selling point of view if you have actually done the job your mc does. This seems to be quite common with American thriller writers such as Linda Fairstein and Kathy Reichs. However, there are tons of writers who have invented very successful and much-loved coppers/ private detectives but have never swung a truncheon, so I would say that ultimately, it comes down to the quality of the writing and how convincing it feels to the outsider - which goes way beyond getting the facts right and is more about the strength of the world you manage to create. I can't see any reason why you shouldn't go for it.

The novel isn't going to be centred on her work

In that case I would have thought you don't need to be ultra-cautious. However, you would need to get somebody in the know (such as the person you mentioned) to read through and check the jargon and statements of the character to eliminate any horrors. I imagine many 'experts' would be rather flattered to be asked.

A good example of an author going into extremes of depth in precisely the area you are proposing to deal with is Sebastian Faulkes in Human Traces. Could be worth a look.

Chris

I'd definitely get an expert to check it over. I think most would be flattered to ask. I'm writing a thriller with a specialist MC whose specialism I know quite a bit about but will be getting an expert in to review the material before I publish because I'm terrified of getting an Amazon review saying, 'I do this for a living and it's full of mistakes'.

I think that people often are attracted to novels about their professions - you don't want a lot of psychologists reading your novel and tripping over unrealistic things.

Just my view but I'd get it checked.

My main reaction is that if we never wrote anything that we didn't have direct and detailed knowledge of... there would be very few interesting books around.

Agreed that lots of specialists love being asked for stuff. On the other hand, don't let what they insist on being right hamstring you - or make you feel obliged to dollop lots of stuff into the novel that isn't wanted. This is fiction, not fact.

Apparently there's a scene in a John Buchan thriller, which is set on a duck-shoot in the Norfolk Broads. It's a classic of sporting literature, a beautiful bit of writing, the best evocation ever, say the duck-shooting fraternity, of this very specialist sport. Buchan had never been duck shooting. His son had. Buchan sat the son down and asked questions for an hour and a half, and then went away and wrote the scene.

So, no, don't be shy of using specialist stuff, if you've got access to someone to check things. But I think there are various risks with venturing into specialist territory which isn't your own.

1) you get something egregiously wrong, which half the world knows is wrong. At best it breaks the "fictional dream" for those readers. At worst it means the bottom's dropped out of your plt.

2) you don't have a good sense of what you need to check and what you don't. The danger with getting off your own ground isn't actually that you'll get important facts wrong, it's the things you won't think to check (like the US thriller writer who set a car-chase in London, and didn't think to check what side of the road we drive on).

3) more subtly: because you're aware that you don't know the proper details, you fudge them - put in safe, generic guesses. And although most of us do that sometimes in a novel and it's none the worse, the more you do that, the more generic and standard-issue it gets - the less there's the scratch and texture and smell of real, surprising life about it.

4) the new facts you find out are so fascinating, and so new, that you put them in in lumps - or too often - or both. It's hard to tell, with new knowledge, whether it's in there in the right proportions. You know that instinctively with stuff you know well: who'd actually notice what, who'd comment on what, and which bits of new stuff actually only turn up when the characters happen to interact with in the course of the story.

Emma

.... and I'd add a number 5 to Emma's list

5 You put in far, far too much information, because you have done such a lot of research and it seems a shame to waste it. The research topic starts to become important for its own sake, rather than for the purpose of telling the story. Ian McEwan's Saturday is on the whole a great book, I think ... but my God, there is way too much fine detail about surgery.

Yes - it's all so TASTY and yummy and fascinating.

I never write worse than when I've got the textbook or research notes at my elbow.

This is my take on the risks of consulting experts:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2012/01/a-novel-is-not-the-singular-of-data.html



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If I were going to make sweeping and sexist generalisations I'd say that I think fiction aimed at men - and the men who read it - are much more tolerant or even actively enjoy lumps of non-fiction - of data - which is independent of any particular forward-movement of the actual story-arc of the characters.

If I were going to make sweeping and sexist generalisations I'd say that I think fiction aimed at men - and the men who read it - are much more tolerant or even actively enjoy lumps of non-fiction - of data - which is independent of any particular forward-movement of the actual story-arc of the characters.

Comparing my reading habits with those of the males I know, I think there's a lot of truth in this. I know whenever my husband's lent me something to read, I've usually ended up skipping over pages of technical stuff to get to the more interesting (to me) bits.

As always, good advice here - thanks, everyone. Time to suck up to flash git consultant psychologist, methinks...

Time to suck up to flash git consultant psychologist, methinks...

LoL! He'll love it - flash gits adore having The Little Woman hanging on his every word.