Only in my head
Recently I had the opportunity to edit my page proofs and correct an error of fact I had learned of recently through my friend Mandy. Mandy is a lawyer, just like my character Natalie is a lawyer. In the context of a conversation she let drop that opposing counsel do not sit next to each other during depositions.
"Really?" I asked.
Really, really, she assured me.
I panicked because I had sat opposing counsel next to each other during the deposition scene in my novel.
Oh the horror! The wrongness of it all! I would be derided by all lawyers, laughed at by critics for this basest of law culture mistakes.
So when the proofs came I was happy to be able to fix this error. I read the scene, looking for the part where my lawyers sit down. I looked and then I looked some more. You know what? It wasn't there. Yes, they depose a witness. Yes, they are seated. But nowhere on the page does it mention where they are sitting.
That, my friends, was all in my head. It got me to wondering just how many other such scenes and situations exist in the novel that I could describe with perfect clarity, but which, in fact, exist not on the page. I know that as a reader I have committed the same action: settling characters where I like in a room where the author has not done so explicitly. If I get too far into a book without a character's description I make one up and if the later author's description conflicts with my own, too bad. Mine, having come first, usually lives on.