Is it OK to annoy marine engineers?

I said last week that:

“If you’re writing realistic, adult novels, you can’t just wave your hands at all [the technicalities]. You need some measure of accuracy. That’s not really because your readership is going to know all about sub-sea cable repair. It’s more that your writing won’t smell authentic unless it’s deeply rooted in reality. The more you discover about the reality, the more you’ll find details which seem utterly compelling.”

Every now and then I say things like that, thinking that they feel roughly true – then wonder afterwards, is that really true, though?

I did, in fact, spend significant time trying to figure out the whole business of cable repair and the like. I think that if a proper expert read my text, they wouldn’t have huge problems with it. (I once wrote a book about the early oil industry and the head of BP, who had a deep knowledge of early oil-drilling technology, wrote to tell me that I’d done a pretty good job. Phew!)

But could I have just skipped the research? Could I have made stuff up and written just as good a book? I mean: I’d risk annoying a handful of cable-repair engineers, but that’s a pretty small sub-group of readers. For everyone else: does the accuracy really matter?

Well, let’s take a look.

Establishing trust

The first real block of text that feels research-y is this one – a quotation from a (fictional) expert report on a suspect vessel:

Gantry

The gantry is of sufficient height and width to launch/retrieve a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) but, as originally configured, the gantry’s positioning would have risked collisions between any ROV and the existing stern ramp, thereby potentially damaging ROV. Gantry has been visibly adapted to locate suitable handling equipment further aft, including an A-frame style pulley system which is not required for ordinary fishing purposes. Note also cabling to stern winch mounting, implying possible existence of a tether management system (TMS) …

Now that’s boring. It’s kind of meant to be boring – the author is a marine consultant and the text needs to sound appropriate.

But notice the nouns: gantry, ROV, stern ramp, handling equipment, A-frame pulley system, cabling, stern winch. Those nouns say to the reader, “We’re in technical territory here. This stuff is firmly rooted in engineering reality.”

What’s more, the nouns convey that message even if the reader slightly glazes over at the details. “Blah blah gantry … blah blah, stern ramp … blah blah, cabling – yes, OK, I believe that you know what you’re talking about.”

I honestly doubt that I could have generated that list of nouns through my own invention. In my case, at least, I needed to spend time poking around on shipping websites and the like. But the result of that research? Getting the reader’s buy-in for my project. That’s still rather emotionless, of course – this is dry, abstract material – but I’m carrying the reader with me. They trust me on the topic of fishing vessels and Remote Operated Vehicles. For now, that’s all I need.

Establishing character-in-setting

As the novel proceeds, I get my character on board ship. She’s taken a job as a ship’s cook, pretending to have had experience, when in fact she has none. She’s also a terrible cook. Here’s her welcome on board:

So Honnold nods. Holds out a lean hand. Says, ‘Welcome aboard,’ and shows me brusquely to my tiny berth below decks.

I stow my bag. Take my pots and pans to the galley. Get used to the clamps that hold the cooking equipment stable. Go down to the holds. The giant freezers which will store the catch as it comes in. The ice-maker, which will make as much ice as those fish, and those freezers, need. The room-sized freezer compartment which holds food for the voyage. Boxloads of it, mostly heat and serve.

This has more flavour, because it’s in Fiona’s voice and Fiona herself is navigating the world being described. The nouns are still really significant in establishing place: berth, galley, clamps [for holding pots and pans steady in high seas], freezers, ice-maker.

That phrase ‘room-sized freezer compartment’ draws the reader’s attention to the fact that this is a real ship! Catching real fish! And the volumes they expect are so large that they need a freezer as big as a room! Now, OK, maybe that’s too many exclamation marks, but the point is real. The research gives me the nouns; the nouns convey a depth of authenticity; that authenticity then starts generating mood and atmosphere and (still at a low-level here) excitement.

I don’t want to suggest that the research and the technical-type nouns are all that you need. They’re not. You also want stuff like this:

A rattle of anchor chain and the deep bass of the ship’s diesel. Honnold on the bridge and navigation lamps showing.

Blue water to port and starboard.

Water, and two huge oil refineries. Towers, pipes, tanks. Brightening silver in the dull light.

Dyfed-Powys can’t see me now and I stand on deck, watching the land slide past.

Or this:

The land has vanished. We are travelling on sea the colour of wet rock. Of light falling on slate. Waves trouble the surface and a steady breeze rakes ripples into the broader swell. Our trail is marked out in a white that vanishes as you watch.

My gaze keeps reaching for the world’s rim. Looking for a glimpse of land, an anchor.

Nothing technical there, but we’re feeling properly out at sea now. We have confidence in a world with gentries and stern-ramps and clamps for the cooking. But we also have just that beginner’s sense of the ocean being a big, wide, empty place.

Ramping up the atmosphere

Fiona’s on board a real fishing trawler which is about to be put to a nefarious purpose. A storm comes in. Fiona is still in her role as cook / cleaner / dogsbody. Here’s the feel of the trawler now:

Buys says nothing, not right away. Just pulls a bit of liver from a badly gutted skate. Throws the fish down in an ice-nestled plastic box. Stares at Pearson. Stares at me.

Then, ‘You need to check the bathroom. Wee Philly’s been redecorating.’

I do my job. Clean up in the bathroom, which is indeed disgusting. Wear my oilskins and rubber boots to do it because, as the ship is moving so violently, I can’t help but be tumbled against the walls as I work.

That done, I go up to the darkening deck. Let the rain and sea spray clean me off. Caff comes in from the bow, harness clinking at his waist. Shouts, ‘This is whit his ahll aboot, is it no? A grand peedie tirl.’

A grand peedie tirl, indeed.

There are lamps at the stern. The ROV’s yellow tanks shine luridly under their glare, but the rest is emptiness. A waste of wind-torn water, nothing else.

The nouns are still doing their bit here. (Skate liver, oilskins, harness, the yellow tanks on an ROV.) But that’s all mixed up with more general atmospherics: vomiting landlubbers, a violently moving vessel, a sailor from the Orkney Isles speaking a dialect that’s all but incomprehensible.

I’m not sure I really had to research anything much here, but I had the confidence that came with research. The combination of wind + oilskins + harnesses (to stop yourself being washed into the sea) is powerfully suggestive of extreme conditions and danger. I think it’s hard to get to that kind of detail without having read and researched enough to have those ideas lying close at hand.

Climax

My climax arrives with technical detail, yes, but also just merrily over-the-top atmospherics too. So here’s the weather conditions:

The sea is all but impossible now.

The noise is the worst thing, I think. An indescribable howling. A noise that makes you realise that, every second of every minute, the boat is being assaulted by thousands of tons of water. A furious energy hurtling against the hull. And beyond that hull, only a green-black emptiness, a chilling cold.

Death’s howling army. An underworld populated by sea-monsters.

Coxsey, briefly swapping his duties on the bridge with Caff, so he can get a hot drink and a bathroom visit, pops into the galley to give me a status report. Winds of sixty miles an hour, and gusting higher. Waves well over thirty feet. Probably nearer forty. A ‘proper storm’. Force ten, a full gale.

The ‘death’s howling army’ language is obviously not the product of research. But those details about the wave heights are precisely correct given the gale force. In fact, as the storm builds, I was careful to check on the Beaufort scale precisely what Fiona would be seeing at each new point in the storm. I think that delivers some extra authenticity to the reader. It certainly gave me the confidence to write with freedom about something I’d never experienced. So it’s not just about the nouns; it’s about hard facts as well.

And then:

I go downstairs.

The fish processing room. A big bucket of fish guts still there. Scales, fins, heads, livers, guts, eyes, anything. The last person on processing duty should have shoved the lot down the discards chute, but they didn’t. Unless it was meant to be my job, perhaps.

Anyway. I take the bucket.

Go down to the engine room.

Engine. Auxiliary engine.

Pumps. Boiler. Cooling system. Whatever.

I find the cap that lets you refill the cooling system. Wrestle it off. It’s hard to do, and I gash my left hand, but I get it done. My hand looks nasty, but it’s only a cut.

Shove the fish guts into the cooling system. Not all of them, but most of them.

Go over to the auxiliary engine.

Do the same there, using all the fish guts that remain.

Nothing happens. Nothing good, nothing bad, just the engines hammering away exactly the way they did before.

I wish I knew more about engines.

But of course: Fiona knows plenty about engines. The book opens with her getting detailed instruction in how diesel engines operate. The fish guts are enough to destroy the cooling system. The engine overheats. The ship becomes uncontrollable and the crew abandons it to the waves.

I don’t think you could have the confidence to deliver that kind of climax unless you knew enough about engines to feel the whole thing was plausible (in a good-enough way; I don’t mean you need to pass an exam).

You’ll notice the nouns still play a big part in delivering that plausibility.

Summing up?

So yes, I think what I said last week is right. You’re going to struggle to deliver a real sense of authenticity without actual research. I think nouns matter. I think facts matter. I think that before you can do your Big Atmosphere work (death’s howling army and all that) you need to persuade the reader of your right to talk about this stuff at all.

If you can do all that without researching things, then that’s fine with me. But I don’t think I could do it – and I doubt if you could either.

***

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Your research

Go on then. Show me a passage which shows off (a) what a busy bee you’ve been in terms of researching stuff and (b) what fancy nouns you’ve collected on the way.

250 words, please. Add any comments that you think would be of interest.

Got that? Rubber boots on? Oilskins? Harness? Bucket of fish innards?

Good. Then go! When you’re ready, log in to Townhouse and share your work in this forum.

Til soon.

Harry