Stretching

Today as the snow falls I have been picturing the warm spring morning in which Hannah spends her first day at Matheson Court House. As I have never been called in for jury duty I have had to depend on accounts other than my own to create her experience. I have of course had to do some research into the process of how a jury is selected. And of course as the internet goes it takes a lot of digging, not only to find a creditable site, but also to find more than just a mention of selecting a jury but what the process is like. While I am not yet an expert, I hope to be by the time my book is completed.

As I researched, reading articles here and there I found an interesting explaination about the differences of jury selection in each state. Logically you would think that as a country we would have a pretty standard way of doing this kind of thing. But apparently in this area state power trumps and each state is allowed to do its selection in any way it pleases as long as the defendant is given a trial by jury. As a result of this I found that technically in most cases in Utah jurors being interigated by the representatives is a rather rare event. At this point I had to rethink how I might write this section of my book. I really wanted to have this initial interaction, so my options are: one change the location to another state (which is doable, but a rather large pain and would again take a lot of research as I have never lived anywhere but Utah), two create a kind of accidental bumping into one another kind of moment (which in some aspects could be fun, but most likely it would just be one more awkward moment added to my book), and finally three write it the way I planned and just fudge that it is possible (which is the current path I am taking).

Now that I had choosen my path it lead me to question how much stretching I as an author could do in my book. Of course the idea in and of itself of writing a non-fiction book like this is that it could be possible, but it is not the actually story of someones life. So of course I can't include faries or magic or those kinds of thing, but can I make up some random street name, or ward, when does making things up cross the line into unbeliveable? Of course all authors do it, they take liberties with many things to make their story flow the way they want. And that is the difference between real life and story is that our lifes don't just flow by, life is a constant rocky path with twists and turns made by our own thoughts, words, and actions.

In the end I hope that while everything from the situation to the characters was created by me, I hope that it is a believeable and realistic book, that doesn't offend people when I take liberties of my own.