Authors need to think things through
Jan. 26th, 2022 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrSo I'm reading this story. Setting seems to be somewhat medieval. Guards carry swords, that sort of thing. Palace, queen, etc.
So We're in kingdom A. Queen receives a messenger from neighboring kingdom B. After various back and forth messenger relectantly tells Queen of A that Queen of B is demading...
... one hundred tons of food.
Queen of A complains that this would be *half* of their reserves.
Cue record scratch in my head.
Ok, lets think this through (which the author obviously didn't). Just rough calcs to get ballpark figures.
A ton is 2000 pounds (~1000 kilos). So they are asking for 200,000 pounds of food.
Say a person needs a pound (half a kilo). Say there are only 1000 people in Kingdom B (a ridiculously low figure).
That'd mean they'd need 1000 pounds a day. So that food would last for a whole 200 days.
Note that they are demanding the food because of a drought. So they may need food until the harvests come in (if they do).
So this is outright ridiculous. It was so far off that I knew it was stupid *before* I double checked by running the calcs above.
Please folks, stop and *think* before you throw around numbers in a story.
Also during negotiations, the messenger was talking about sending bread, and maybe a bit of meat. Arrgh.
Before modern times (and I mean the last century or two) you did *not* send bread any great distance. At *best* it'd be stale and like a rock. At worst, it'd be moldy and inedible.
Yes, hardtack will "keep" longer, but its a pain to make, and not commonly prepared.
Meat wasn't shipped except "on the hoof" because it spoiled even faster.
There are *reasons* why butcher and bakers were *neighborhood* businesses.
Fresh food was *not* shipped. It was brought in from *local* (very local) farms or grown in the city.
Preserved meats (salt, jerked, dried, smoked) are more transportable but...
Again, failure to consider the milllieu.
Yeah, yeah, you don't need to be an *expert* about these things. But try to avoid things that will jerk a reader out of the story.
So We're in kingdom A. Queen receives a messenger from neighboring kingdom B. After various back and forth messenger relectantly tells Queen of A that Queen of B is demading...
... one hundred tons of food.
Queen of A complains that this would be *half* of their reserves.
Cue record scratch in my head.
Ok, lets think this through (which the author obviously didn't). Just rough calcs to get ballpark figures.
A ton is 2000 pounds (~1000 kilos). So they are asking for 200,000 pounds of food.
Say a person needs a pound (half a kilo). Say there are only 1000 people in Kingdom B (a ridiculously low figure).
That'd mean they'd need 1000 pounds a day. So that food would last for a whole 200 days.
Note that they are demanding the food because of a drought. So they may need food until the harvests come in (if they do).
So this is outright ridiculous. It was so far off that I knew it was stupid *before* I double checked by running the calcs above.
Please folks, stop and *think* before you throw around numbers in a story.
Also during negotiations, the messenger was talking about sending bread, and maybe a bit of meat. Arrgh.
Before modern times (and I mean the last century or two) you did *not* send bread any great distance. At *best* it'd be stale and like a rock. At worst, it'd be moldy and inedible.
Yes, hardtack will "keep" longer, but its a pain to make, and not commonly prepared.
Meat wasn't shipped except "on the hoof" because it spoiled even faster.
There are *reasons* why butcher and bakers were *neighborhood* businesses.
Fresh food was *not* shipped. It was brought in from *local* (very local) farms or grown in the city.
Preserved meats (salt, jerked, dried, smoked) are more transportable but...
Again, failure to consider the milllieu.
Yeah, yeah, you don't need to be an *expert* about these things. But try to avoid things that will jerk a reader out of the story.
