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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43066
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43066
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Some events are far-off historical events. The most you risk if you write about them without doing the proper research is making a fool of yourself.

Other events are still within living memory. Some of your readers might have lived the event. @SaraCosta says in the comment that not doing research is a sign that "the writer has very little respect for their chosen period / event". Well, there would be living people whom you'd be disrespecting.

One particular way in which you could show disrespect is believing yourself to be exaggerating an event, when in fact you're falling drastically short. I always have a nervous twitch watching _Casablanca_, when they talk of Laszlo having escaped the Concentration Camps. I think of a concentration camp, I see this (warning graphic):

> [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pk0jd.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pk0jd.jpg)([source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps))

Only, of course, when _Casablanca_ was filmed, they didn't know yet. At least, the film-makers didn't.

The issue with believing yourself to be exaggerating an event, when in fact you're falling drastically short, the way you're being disrespectful, is you're underestimating the magnitude of the event. You're underestimating how big it was, how horrifying, how inescapable. You're telling people that their experience is not as big as they know it to have been. That can strike deep.

Also, if an event is still within living memory, it isn't too hard to do the research. You can find accounts and testimonies - written, or on youtube. Because research is easy, it follows that you _didn't bother_ to do the research - you thought it "not worthy of your time", "not sufficiently important". That is how people would see it, and this too they would find offensive.

Original score: 29