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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24006
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24006
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Look at it this way: artistic license is granted by the reader. You are not entitled to it in any blanket way. Some readers will grant you more; some will grant you less. Generally, they will grant you more the more you charm or entertain them.

If you are trying to write what I like to call diorama fiction, you will get very little license on these kinds of details, because physical and temporal verisimilitude the the chief pleasure of diorama fiction. (Though moral and philosophical verisimilitude are generally not wanted at all. Diorama fiction is a reenactment by modern people in period costume; historical values and patterns of thought are definitely not wanted.)

But if you are not writing diorama fiction, then your intended audience is not going to care, nor are they necessarily going to be deterred by the slings and arrows of the outraged diorama fiction addicts with too much time on their hands.

I tend to look at these matters this way: what pleasure is my book designed to provide? Will doing this or that enhance those pleasures or diminish them? There are no absolutely wrong techniques. It is all a matter of which ones create the pleasure your book is trying to deliver.

Original score: 1