: Re: How to tell readers that I know my story is factually incorrect? Sometimes, it so happens that I do some research for a story and find that a major plot point could never work in real life.

@Eichhorn147

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This happened to me earlier while I was writing fan fiction - given the informal nature of it, I simply let my character survive a wound that he shouldn't have survived

If this impossible thing is not critical to the story, you might be writing yourself out of a corner with magic. This can yank the reader out of their immersion, and demonstrates that nothing really has consequences in your stories. Change it to something plausible.

If the impossible thing is critical to the story, do it and quickly move on before the reader notices. Absolutely do not draw attention to it with a note. If it's in the middle of a tense situation the reader will probably be so immersed they won't notice until hours later, if ever.

For example, there's that awesome scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones escapes capture by climbing on board a German submarine and catches a ride across hundreds of miles of open ocean to a secret German U-Boat base. Wow!

Hold on... Did he hang on to the outside of the submarine for hundreds of miles and days on end? Did it never dive? Did he sneak inside? How do you sneak inside a submarine? If he did, how do you stay hidden inside a submarine?

Forget it, rule of cool applies. If you have the reader wrapped up enough and it's awesome enough, it won't even occur to them that it's implausible.

They filmed scenes of Indy hanging onto the periscope trying to sleep and wisely did not include them. This is the equivalent of your note. Trying to explain it just draws attention to how implausible it really is. Just move along quickly.

Or make sure the impossible thing goes along with the theme of the story.

For example, Greg Egan's Permutation City is hard sci-fi about computing and virtual reality... except for one bit where he decides...

"dust theory" works. There is no difference between physics and its mathematics. So long as their virtual reality can be computed it will continue to be computed no physical hardware required.

This is not the central plot of the story, but it's built up as an outside possibility over the course of the story. It's an extreme exploration of the theme the story: virtual reality is truly virtual and not tied down to physical limitations of time nor space.

Greg Egan has a FAQ about this (note: contains big spoilers to a very good book) where he admits he doesn't take it very seriously.

Which is all to say: if you're going to do something impossible, make sure it's either really cool, or has a thematic purpose. Best if it's both. If it's neither, it's lazy writing.

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