"Out of the moment?  More like out of your mind!"

I used to be a mortician.  No, I didn't take all the courses and get the piece of paper that made it official.  But I worked as the good right hand of someone who did and he assured me I was an honorary member of this noble profession.  I wish he'd been an auto mechanic because perhaps I could have been considered a Lamborghini.  But I digress ...

But for one year, I worked in Estate Planning and funeral pre-arrangements for a local cemetery company.  It was very satisfying work in that three years before, when I'd lost my mother and had to cope with all the funeral planning by myself, I was glad to help other people solve their problems before they occurred.  There wasn't a lot of money in the field at that time, but that's another issue.

By the way, even more of another issue is to when you blow off a funeral consultant by saying, "I'm not planning on dying any time soon."  Hey, tinhorn!  Neither did (fill in the blank of your favorite celebrity/friend/relative)!  I would tell the more obnoxious clients, "Like the old commercial used to say, you'll either pay me now or you'll pay me later."  But I digress again ...

When you throw yourself into a job, you learn all you can about it in order to do it well.  Having held a number of jobs in my life, I can discuss not only writing, but also doughnut making, funeral procedures, forensics, acting, water distribution, comic book retailing, inventory control, graphic novel production, and even certain retail aspects of the adult entertainment industry.  And usually, that interest doesn't go away when one leaves that field of endeavor ... nor does the knowledge.

Not long after I left the funeral industry back in the mid-90s, I watched an episode of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.  The episode dealt with the world's most famous reporters investigating a plot to fake the deaths of various gangsters to evade arrest and naturally, several scenes took place in a cemetery.  In one scene, towards the end of the graveside service, someone performs the "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" ceremony and tosses a handful of dirt on the bare coffin lid before the rest of the berm was shoveled onto the bare coffin.

Immediately, my jaw dropped like my belt buckle had turned into white dwarf material.  From my work in the funeral biz, I knew that caskets were placed inside vaults made of either PVC or cement.  I was told this was not because of a need to help preserve the body or the casket, but the cemetery's desire to minimize the amount of ground that settled post-burial, thus to facilitate grounds keeping.  But for whatever reason, the vault on Lois & Clark should have been sealed before the dirt went on and this kinda took a great deal of the pleasure from the story for me.  And it wasn't even a major plot point.  The scene simply made a decent visual for the audience, not a sin in itself.  However, the incidence could have been done correctly or not at all for what it contributed to the tale being told.

How could it have been fixed?  If the writer had done the research, the scene would have been written correctly with the vault being sealed first.  The drama and information needed for that scene to function would have been delivered as the burial was more "window dressing" for the program than anything else.  It made for a good visual, but the error brought me out of the story's "moment."  In a millisecond, I was no longer in Metropolis, a great metropolitan city, but back in my home, watching actors pretending to be Clark Kent and Lois Lane, shadowing another actor who pretended to be a criminal.

So how often do we think we know something and we're wrong?  How often do we credit a weapon with more or less damage than it can truly do?  Do we believe building a house is as simple as buying a lot and then hiring a carpenter?  How long have the ninja arts been taught?  Do we know how many members of our audience are shaken by our lack of knowledge and returned to the real world instead of remaining immersed in the one we've constructed?

Research is a vital part of the writing process.  It gives the piece verisimilitude and gravitas (and other impressive-sounding qualities).  It educates those who don't know and for those who do, it shows we care enough about their field of expertise to get it right.  Heck, learning about something new might give us ideas for more tales, wouldn't it?

To "outsiders," someone's professional world may seem like an entirely foreign dimension.  So when you build a world, just illuminating someone else's profession might appear totally foreign ... at least until you educate the audience enough to feel at home.  The job becomes the environment itself as evidenced in books like The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, Brad Meltzer's The Tenth Justice, or The Firm by John Grisham.  Until reading those books, how up-to-date was the everyman's knowledge of immunologists, Supreme Court clerks, or even lawyers?  As an attorney once told me, you could learn just as much about the legal profession from watching Perry Mason as you could from watching Wagon Train.

Doing the legwork on the facts is more than looking something up on Wikipedia, although I've been known to double-check their referenced materials.  Researching might mean a Google/Ning/Yahoo search to find a variety of experts online.  It might consist on making some phone calls to find a professor at a local university (and believe me, people appreciate sharing their knowledge with you) or another professional in the field that you can locate from the phone book or the Internet.

Simply explain why you want the information ("I'm writing this screenplay and I need to know how to repair a broken water man under pressure.") and ask if there is a convenient time to talk.  Then bring your questions, a tape recorder (two, if you're paranoid like me), and notepad.  If someone can give you ten minutes, plan your most important questions to be asked first and don't assume they'll be so flattered by your attention that they'll give you more time.  If they do, demonstrate the appropriate amount of appreciation.  Also, be sure to acknowledge their assistance somehow, whether it's giving them a credit in your article ("Special thanks to ... ") or naming a character after them.  Give them the option of fact-checking your piece.  Thank them a lot ... then go home and write a thank you letter (or e-mail, if you must).

If you care enough about your work, you want to make certain your facts are true.  You do a disservice to an unfamiliar profession, as you do your own work, if you take the lazy way out.

So when have you caught a book or movie or TV show in the act of getting it wrong?  Feel free to discuss in the comments area below or drop me an e-mail at bkmorris56@gmail.com if you have a comment or suggestion for a future column on creativity.  And yeah, I'll give you credit.  It's only fair.  Discuss.