{"id":6504,"date":"2021-07-02T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-02T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/townhouse\/articles\/the-worlds-biggest-pedant\/"},"modified":"2021-07-02T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-07-02T12:00:00","slug":"the-worlds-biggest-pedant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/the-worlds-biggest-pedant\/","title":{"rendered":"The World’s Biggest Pedant"},"content":{"rendered":"

My missus and I are currently watching a Netflix drama, Orange is the New Black<\/em>, set in a women\u2019s prison in the US.<\/p>\n

And \u2013 it\u2019s OK. The show has kept us entertained. We\u2019ve stayed watching. (Still on Season 1, mind you. We\u2019re years behind.)<\/p>\n

At the end of the most recent episode, however, the following little drama unfolded.<\/p>\n

A nasty prison officer (called \u2018Pornstache\u2019 in honour of his facial hair) is escorting a drug-using inmate, Tricia, through the jail. He wants her to start distributing drugs for him. She doesn\u2019t want to do it. He applies some pressure, then leaves her alone in a small room, for no very obvious purpose.<\/p>\n

Tricia swallows the entire packet of drugs that he\u2019s pressed upon her and overdoses.<\/p>\n

Pornstache, returning to the room, finds Tricia dead. Not wanting the investigation that would surely have fingered him as the source of the drugs, Pornstache makes it look as though Tricia hanged herself. In the next episode, we\u2019re told, in a somewhat offhand way, that the prison authorities had had the body cremated quickly to avoid a bothersome investigation. And that, more or less, was the end of that story thread.<\/p>\n

I bit my lip and said nothing, but my wife \u2013 who is not a crime author and doesn\u2019t know her way around the bureaucracy of death \u2013 said, \u2018That\u2019s ridiculous, isn\u2019t it? Surely there\u2019d have to be an autopsy?\u2019<\/p>\n

And yes, there would. In England and Wales, the jurisdiction I know best, there\u2019s a simple rule which would require autopsy in the case of any homicide, suicide or unexplained death. In the US, the rules are complex, and vary state by state, but \u2013 duh! \u2013 you can\u2019t just burn embarrassing corpses. Of course, you can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

In other words: the story was rubbish. It simply didn\u2019t hang together.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure that the screenwriters knew this perfectly well. They had, as consultant to the series, Piper Kerman, on whose memoir the series was based. And \u2013 this was a lavishly funded Hollywood production. If they\u2019d needed to pick up the phone to a lawyer or coroner, they could have done so with ease.<\/p>\n

So the writers clearly just thought \u2013 \u201cHey, a murder plus a faked-up suicide would drive the series forward nicely. No one will know it\u2019s all unrealistic, and if they do, they won\u2019t care. So we\u2019ll do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, but, but \u2026<\/p>\n

Look, you guys know me. Detail-oriented to a fault. (I once had to return the \u201cWorld\u2019s Biggest Pedant\u201d Trophy, because, as I was obliged to point out, I\u2019m the World\u2019s Most Pedantic Pedant. I\u2019m not, however, especially large.)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no way I\u2019d have brushed off a fake suicide as easily as these writers did.<\/p>\n

In one way, that\u2019s annoying, because care for the facts can be annoying. Telling your story gets harder, because you have to work your way around obstacles.<\/p>\n

But pedantry \u2013 care for the facts \u2013 doesn\u2019t just make your storytelling harder, it also makes it better.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Go back to the Pornstache \/ Tricia story. If I\u2019d been writing that episode, I\u2019d have had to consider a whole set of different options:<\/p>\n