Areas of Expertise

Reading about characters who work/play in an area of your own expertise can be tiring. Of course as writers you do as much research as you can. But there isn't a reasonable way to really get that ‘day in the life’ feel unless you’ve lived it. I am a horse trainer by day, and horses are something so many people like to add to their fiction. But there are so many bad takes on horses and their riding that I don't read horse books. I can't. You can tell right off when someones research is all done from watching movies. Hollywood gets it wrong a lot too so that is not a great teacher. 

I’ve run into this issue in a book I am reading now. It's multi-POV and 95% of it I'm loving. But one POV character is a horse trainer. She's actually a lot like me, introverted and would rather spend her time alone at the barn. Great, I can relate to her. Wrong! Whatever research the writer did was probably out of YA girls books about horses. ‘Gentling’ them, calming them, and tying the reins to the porch rail. Every time her chapters come up I wonder if I can skip them and not miss anything too important. 

It's almost worse because the author was clearly trying. Some things are so close to right that it kind of makes it worse when the other things come out of left field. And I know we all do it, I can only read so much about police procedure, I realize from this side of the screen that there are likely officers cringing at my characters handling of evidence or paperwork. It's too bad we cant all just have a giant convention where people of all jobs come and talk to us about these tidbits that annoy them in our books. For now though, if you ever have questions about horses/riding/their care. Feel free to ask me!