By Stacy Nockowitz
I was disappointed in the final season of Stranger Things. In the four previous seasons, the mid-1980s details in the series were pretty spot on– the shopping mall, the wall phones, the Kate Bush music. I was a teen in the 1980s, and the show really brought me back to those days of cassette tapes and Sam Goody stores. So, the lazy writing exhibited in Season 5 really bummed me out.
The moment that epitomized this uninspired effort happened when one of the main characters exclaimed, “My bad!” as the gang was running amok. When I heard him say those two words, I was sucked out of the story faster than Ms. Pac Man chomps up cherries. No one said, “My bad!” in the 1980s. It wasn’t a thing then. Anachronisms like that in historical pieces take your readers (or viewers) out of the setting you’ve so carefully crafted, slingshotting them back to their present.
Historical accuracy means everything. This is true for literary nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, and, of course, historical fiction. Even the smallest details– especially the smallest details– need to be true to the time and place you’re writing about, lest you ruin your credibility as a writer.
As I wrote my 2022 historical fiction, The Prince of Steel Pier, I had to do meticulous research about what was and was not applicable to the year 1975 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I was eight years old in 1975, but I could only rely on my memories so much. What stores and attractions lined the Atlantic City Boardwalk in 1975? If you’re thinking casinos, you’d be wrong. Gambling wasn’t legal in AC in 1975, and casinos didn’t open on the Boardwalk until later in the decade. In one scene in my book, a truck full of televisions is being offloaded in a parking lot. What brands of televisions would have been on the truck? And what did those TVs look like? For me, researching means finding primary sources and cross-checking information across multiple sources. Televisions in the mid-1970s were not thin, “smart,” or even cable-ready devices from Samsung and LG. They were boxes, even cabinets, of tubes from Zenith, RCA, and Magnavox.
Though I tried to be as accurate as possible, I still made a few mistakes. After I sent an early draft of The Prince of Steel Pier to a friend, she pointed out that supermarkets weren’t using plastic bags in 1975; they only used paper. A grocery bag filled with arcade prize tickets plays a big role in the book, so I was grateful to my friend for finding that anachronism in my draft.
Avoiding anachronisms
requires something called horizontal research, a term I used often when
teaching information literacy to students in my years as a school librarian.
Horizontal research means opening multiple tabs across your browser so you can
check facts from several sources against one another. But what sources should
you use and which should you avoid? I taught students to avoid using Wikipedia,
or any user-edited site, as a definitive source. Primary sources are always
best, but don’t take their veracity for granted either. Whose account are you
reading? What are their biases? Are they professionals in their field? Examine
photos carefully, especially in these days of AI manipulation. Absolutely
anyone can post falsehoods online, so check and double check facts using
trusted sources like library-vetted databases and websites.
My next book is a picture book biography of the 18th
century writer Emma Lazarus. Just the other day, as I was working on revisions
of the manuscript, I was reminded of just how vulnerable we all are to having
anachronisms work their way into our writing. After rechecking my sources, I
changed a number from six to five. I know that sounds like a pretty negligible alteration,
but if I’m going to put my name on a book, the difference between six and five
is monumental.
Thank you so much for this helpful post!
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