Factual Accuracy in Fiction

Research is something that all novels need. If you say that in Santa Fe, Guadalupe Street intersects with Paseo De Peralta, these streets should intersect. People know these things, and if they find that you've made a mistake, you break that delicate trust that a reader extends to a writer. Always check those kinds of facts. [Writers of nonfiction, of course, are held to an even higher standard of factual accuracy. In a novel, so what if the geography is a little off?]

N. M. Kelby, The Constant Art of Being a Writer, 2009