Continuity and Consistency

Continuity and Consistency

Say you have a group of eight characters.  Not all of them are major, but that isn’t important at the moment.  At the end of chapter three they have to escape a city and the only way to safely escape is to break into two groups and later meet up at a predetermined location.  Group one consists of characters A, B, and C, and they have to escape the city by a land route.  They’ll continue to travel by land to the predetermined location.  Group two consists of characters D, E, F, G, and H.  They have to escape through a waterway that flows through the city.  They’ll follow the river to a village where a few of this group’s members have allies that can get a ship for them.  Chapter four follows group one as they escape overland to draw their enemies from the trail of group two.  Of course, group one loses any pursuers, but through narration and dialogue, characters A, B, and C are all present and accounted for.  We get to chapter five and lo and behold, character A, last seen leading group one through the mountains at the end of chapter four, has magically appeared on the ship with group two.  This would be fine if there had been a time lapse, and in many ways there was one.  However, group two has not yet reached the predetermined place and they’re talking about how long they should wait for group one, since group two will almost certainly arrive first.  

Umm…no.

At first, I thought character A was there in name only, a typo because his name had been accidentally inserted in place of another character’s.  Unfortunately, as the scene unfolded I realized that all of group two’s characters were also accounted for and all were interacting with character A.  Not only that, but character A had a major role throughout the chapter.  So guess what happened?

Yep, a major rewrite of the entire chapter.

Not all continuity and consistency issues are that major.  One author referred to a specific set of objects by certain names near the beginning of the manuscript.  They weren’t mentioned again for roughly one hundred pages, but the author called them something else at that point.  He seemed happily surprised I caught this, but readers have a tendency to see stuff like that.  I admit I had to go back to the first mention of these objects to verify that yes, the names were different, but continuity and consistency are very important.

This is true for sequels as well.  Make sure all your characters have the same eye color and hair color as in the previous book, unless there’s a plausible explanation for it to be different.  If you write a scene in the previous book from one character’s POV, and then write that same scene in the next book from the POV of a different character, you want to make sure the scenes echo each other.  If your character only says two or three word sentences a couple of times in the second book, but in the first book he spoke a total of five times—twice in one sentence consisting of three or four words, once in two sentences, and once in a paragraph consisting of six to ten sentences—then you’ve got a problem.  If a character had their hands tied behind their back in the scene in book one, and they’re tied in front of them in book two, you’ve got a problem.  The same can be said for the layout of buildings, a school mascot, the name of a significant other’s ex, basically anything that’s pretty much concrete in your story or in your series.  If you say it’s May on page ten, you can’t have your character tugging her jacket closer and kicking at the orange leaves littering the ground when your reader gets to page twelve, not without a significant time lapse.

So keep in mind you want to look out for the major continuity and consistency issues as well as the small ones that might only be mentioned twice, a hundred pages apart.

Stay True to Your Character's Voice

Stay True to Your Character’s Voice

The voice of your character includes many aspects.  Would your character use contractions, or are they more proper?  Would they say "ain't"?  What about "cain't" instead of "can't"?Do they drop the "g" at the end of "ing" words?  Would they use words like "superfluous" and "salubrious"?  Would they use "heck" and "darn" or "dang", instead of their more frowned upon cousins?  Or would they say things akin to what the symbols in the picture above are supposed to represent?  No matter what the case may be, you want your characters to talk like they would actually talk.  While you don’t want to run your readers off with rampant vulgarity, you also don’t want to lie to them in your fiction.  If a character would actually say, “Oh, poop.” that’s what you should write.  However, if your character would use a word that’s a little more, shall we say…colorful, that’s also what you should write.  (As a matter of fact, Stephen King says the same thing in On Writing.)  We all know people who rarely, if ever, use a vulgar word.  We all know people that have such foul mouths we cringe whenever they start to speak.  And we all know people who are somewhere in the middle.  Your characters are going to be the same way if you tell the truth in your fiction.

And let me say this.  Just because your character’s a little old lady, that does not mean she won’t swear like a sailor.  We’re talking about the character and what they would or would not say.  Not all little old ladies would say “Oh, poop.”  One evening, I was around a group of people.  My husband and I made up one couple, and we were probably in our mid- to late twenties.  One of the couples was of an older generation, around the ages of my grandparents, between the ages of sixty and seventy.  Another couple would have been roughly around the age of my own parents, between the ages of forty and fifty.  The six of us were standing around talking and out of the blue, the woman who was roughly the same age as my granny, maybe a little younger, started talking about personal things.  Things that I know made my face match my hair.  And it wasn’t just the fact that my own granny would have literally died before discussing those things in what she would have viewed as “mixed company”, meaning males and females.  It was the vulgarity of the language she was using.  I was shocked because most of the people I knew who were roughly the same age as my granny talked like my granny.  They did not talk like this woman.  She wasn’t a bad woman, just very frank and vulgar.  True story.  So, get to know your characters.  Don’t take all of your little old ladies at face value, because they might shock you with the things they will talk about and the language they will use.

Don’t water down your character’s language if that wouldn’t be in character for them.  Likewise, don’t ramp up their language if it would be out of character.  You don’t want your readers to say, “They wouldn’t say that!  That’s not how they talk.”  Get to know your characters and stay true to their voices.

And please, please don’t add unnecessary profanity for shock value.  Please.  Just…Don’t.

Repetition

Repetition

We’re not just talking about repetition of words, gender pronouns, dialogue tags (if it’s clear who’s speaking, dialogue tags should be deleted anyway), and names.  We’re talking about two or more sentences that say the same thing in different ways.  This usually happens because the author’s scared they won’t be understood and they’re trying to clarify their meaning.  I once saw an entire paragraph that was pure repetition.  The author was trying to clarify two things and it made a mess of the paragraph.  We were able to streamline it into three, or perhaps it was four, sentences.  Keep an eye open for things like this.

This issue also comes up with character description.  One author kept beating the readers over the head with their character’s eye color.  “Gray eyes”, “stormy gray eyes”, “slate gray eyes”.  This character’s eye color was mentioned at least once in every scene they appeared in (which was a lot.  They played a major role in the entire manuscript.  Not a secondary character at all.), and sometimes it was mentioned more than once in the same scene.  Another author wanted to make certain the readers knew their character possessed “flame-colored tresses”.  Although that one probably qualifies as a pet phrase as well, because almost every time the character’s hair was mentioned, “flame-colored tresses” was the

description.  “She tossed her flame-colored tresses back.”  “Her flame-colored tresses glinted in the sunlight.”  “She ran her hand through her flame-colored tresses.”  After the initial description of a character, mentioning eye color, hair color, etc., a few times over the entire course of the novel as a reminder would be fine.  And I do mean a few times.  Like maybe three times after the initial description, spread out over the entire manuscript.  But that’s it.  (See, I did my own little bit of repetition there, and even bolded it.)

Keep an eye on your descriptions.  Telling us a few times that her eyes are emerald, or that his voice is gravelly is fine.  Telling us at least once every time we see the character is not.

Pet Phrases/Pet Words/Pet Actions

Pet Phrases/Pet Words/Pet Actions

Authors have a tendency to develop pet phrases and/or pet words.  With pet words the author is usually able to space the word out so it’s not as noticeable.  Other authors seem incapable of this, so the readers will pick up on it.  If I start to notice a pet word, readers will probably notice it as well.  One author had a love affair with the word crystalline.  A person’s eyes were crystalline, the air had a crystalline quality, another person’s voice was crystalline.  Another author was fond of “just then”, which is really bad because both just and then are on the list of unnecessary words you want to cut whenever possible.  I’ve also seen authors who were infatuated with “in the nick of time”, “quick as a cat”, and “lightning quick” or “lightning fast”.  In a few manuscripts a ball of ice was always forming in the pit of some character’s stomach.  It’s easy to fall into this trap because sometimes that’s the perfect word or phrase for what you’re trying to convey, but you have to make yourself aware of it.  And yes, quite a few of the pet phrases have also been clichés.  If the pet word or phrase is used for effect, it can work.  (Like Gollum saying, “My precious” or “precious” in LOTR.  Oh, haven’t I told you?  Yes, I can be a geek.  Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly…Oh, my!)  You just have to be careful.  You don’t want to turn it into the word or phrase that gets made fun of because you overused it for effect.

Then you have what I call pet actions.  These are more along the lines of repetition.  You have characters who are constantly shrugging, pursing their lips, sighing, crossing their legs and/or arms.  Other characters are constantly glowering, smirking, glaring, huffing out a breath, or sucking in a breath.  It’s different than an affectation the character has as a habit.  I have a habit of playing with my hair, and when I sit, I often have to cross my legs or curl them under me because I’m short.  But I’m not always rolling my eyes…yeah, not always.  Frequently isn’t always.  *grin*  Your characters can play with their hair, bite their nails, pick at their cuticles, etc., if you establish it as a habit.  But when a lot of your characters are always doing these things that aren’t habits, there’s a problem.  Yep, been guilty of it and been called out on it.  My beta pointed out that both characters in a particular scene sure were shrugging a lot.  *headdesk*  While you don’t want whole chunks of dialogue with no movements at all, you also don’t want to overdo it.  And you do not want a lot of:

She shrugged.  “Yada yada yada.”

He smirked.  “Blah blah blah.

She rolled her eyes.  “Neener neener neener.”

Sentence. Variety.  You want it and you need it.

Mistakes in Submissions Continued -- Time Line

This week I'm going to continue discussing the most common mistakes I've seen in submissions.

Time Line

I’ve had to work with authors to fix time line issues numerous times.  If you describe a character doing something that takes place at midnight, and then you have them doing something that might take three hours at the most, you can’t have dawn breaking when they finish.  Especially if it’s in an unbroken scene where there’s no indication of a time lapse.  I once spent hours trying to untangle an author’s time line, because it started out with one, and then split into two sets of characters on different time lines.  At first you didn’t realize they were on different ones because when specific times were mentioned in one line, it wasn’t mentioned in the other one.  There were a few things that seemed a little off in each one, but they were easily corrected and weren’t that noticeable until you started breaking down the time line.  The problem really surfaced when two characters, one from each line, came together and were pretty much together for the rest of the book.  Even though it wasn’t the only big issue, one of the major problems was that dawn had broken for one character, but when she came together with the other character, they were running around in the dark and dawn broke a second time.  Either I had somehow missed an entire day during the reading, or the author didn’t keep track of their time line.  We discovered the issue was the latter.

I usually see this in books with more than one POV.  This is especially true if the author likes to mention specific times.  And yes, a book can follow this character or certain events on one line for a few chapters, and then the book starts following another character through the same time line or sequence of events.  That’s not a problem, and it’s done frequently.  The problem comes when you follow one character through a long stretch of time or sequence of events and then start following another character through that same stretch of time without indicating you’ve gone back to the beginning.  If you do go through a long period of time and then switch to another character, it’s helpful to indicate this at the beginning of the chapter.  Perhaps something like:

Monday

April 1^st

8:45 a.m.

There are other formats an author might choose, but the above is one of the most common examples.  And by “long stretch of time”, I mean if you start with your first character, pretty much begin with the start of their day, and then follow them until suppertime or even bedtime.  If you don’t use some kind of time indicator at the beginning of the chapter, and you just start with your second character having breakfast, people are going to assume it’s the next day.  So when you get to the part that evening where your two characters are on the phone discussing the events of the day, and your readers realize they’re talking about the same day, there’s bound to be a moment of confusion.

However, I’ve also seen this happen in the same time line, which appeared to be pretty linear.  I’ve seen characters arrive at work at 9:00 a.m., do some things that might only keep them occupied until around 1:00 p.m. or 2:00 p.m. at the latest, including accounting for travel and the time spent at each location, and suddenly it’s 7:00 p.m.  Normally, this isn’t a problem when there’s an indicator that there’s been a time lapse and the characters did some stuff “off-screen”.  But this was presented in a linear fashion where we were with the characters every step of the way.  Nope.  That doesn’t work.

Unraveling a convoluted time line takes a lot of time and work.  In some cases, the author can fix it easily with a scene break to indicate the time lapse, giving a chapter a time indicator, eliminating specific time references, etc.  Other times it can cause entire scenes to be rewritten, moved, or eliminated.  So for the sanity of your editor and yourself (Yes, fixing a time line can cause Fried Brain Syndrome.  Consider yourself warned.), please try to keep track of your time line.  You can use a style sheet or create a file to help keep you straight on which events occur when, and where each character is during those events, during specific times, or on specific days.  Just use a format that makes the most sense to you, whether it's a spreadsheet, writing it out on notebook paper, using note cards, using a calendar...the available options and formats are endless.  The only thing that matters is that it works for you.  In some stories, it’s pretty easy to keep track of.  In others…well, it’s easy to create a mess if you aren’t careful.

Character Development

Character Development

I’ve seen a lot of stories where the story was good, but the characters were flat.  The protagonist is beautiful or handsome and seems to have no flaws.  The antagonist is inherently evil with no redeeming qualities simply because the author needs a villain.  Okay, sometimes the latter works, but usually only when you’re dealing with an entity of some type.  But humans are different.  We’re a psychologically messy and complex breed of animal.  Even the best of us have dark sides.  Geez, even the angels from the Bible have dark sides (really dark sides).  After all, Lucifer was an angel before he screwed up and was cast out of Heaven.

Characters need layers.  We don’t need to see every layer, but scenes should be written with those layers in mind.  You want to make the characters live and breathe for the readers.  You don’t have to drown us in the details, but let us inside the character’s head from time to time.  After all, ninety-nine percent of the time, we’re in that character’s POV, so we’re supposed to be in their head.  We’re supposed to hear the voices in their head when those voices are talking about the scene.

You know what I’m talking about.  When you’re arguing with someone, you’re not just listening to what they’re saying and not reacting at all.  You’re listening, and you might be thinking what a jerk this person is, or you might be in shock or disbelief this person could actually believe the words coming out of their mouth.  You’re likely to be thinking of what you’re going to say next, but you’re not likely to be staring at that person and listening to what they’re saying with drool running down your chin.  Your mind’s not going to be one big blank as they rant and rave and call you an ignorant idiot for the tenth time in two minutes.

So when we listen for those voices in the character’s head and we hear nothing but crickets chirping, it freezes us out.  Now, if the character’s mind is wandering and they’re wondering if the pants they have on makes their butt look big, no, we don’t need to see that.  Unless it somehow pertains to the scene—and I doubt that whether or not the pants make her butt look big is going to be relevant—it’s not something we need to see.  If, on the other hand, she’s fighting the urge to choke him if he calls her an ignorant idiot one more time, that might be relevant (sort of like in Hancock, when Hancock tells someone to call him a certain ugly name one more time, or when Mary tells Hancock to call her crazy one more time.  If these were written scenes, wouldn’t you just love to know what was going on in their heads at those moments?).


Just let us into the character’s head from time to time, show us what they’re thinking or feeling.  Give us opportunities to figure out what makes them tick.  Some writers think letting the readers inside the character’s head means using internal dialogue, but the same can be accomplished in narration or a combination of both.  Just remember to show us instead of telling us, and make sure you don’t slow the pace of the story.  Don’t drag on for three pages as your MC agonizes over all the reasons why she shouldn’t or can’t do this or that.

Relying on Spell Check and Grammar Check

Relying on Spell Check and Grammar Check

No matter what program you use, it likely has one or both of these functions.  However, while both are good things to have, please don’t rely on them.  Spell check can’t tell you that you should have used their instead of they’re.  It can’t tell you that you’ve transposed words.  I’ve even seen cases where the grammar function suggested an author replace “a unicorn” with “an unicorn”, simply because unicorn starts with a vowel, but “an unicorn” is incorrect.  Not only does “a vs. and” rely on whether the word starts with a vowel or not, it also relies on what sound the first letter makes.  Hence, “an hour” instead of “a hour”, “a unicorn” instead of “an unicorn”.  Make sure you read your manuscript during revisions.

And please, do not use global replace or replace all unless you’re absolutely certain the word you’re replacing isn’t part of another word.  We don’t really think about it until something draws our attention to it, but so many of our smaller words are contained within larger ones.  For example, say you’re writing a short story where your only character is female.  You decide to make her a guy.  You use replace all to change her to him.  Whoops!  Now all of the chickens on his farm no longer have feathers.  They now have feathims.  This can make for interesting reading, but it’s not a good idea.

In one manuscript I received, I sent the author an R&R because she had a really good story with some minor issues.  One thing I noticed was an odd use of the word “willow”.

Willow breath...

Willow brook...

I finally realized the author probably meant to use the word “shallow”, but since this was in an original world, I decided to mention it in my R&R.  It could have easily been a situation where the people in her world used “willow” in this fashion.  When the author responded to the R&R email, she knew exactly what had happened.  She had been using formal language in an earlier version of the manuscript and decided to make the language less formal to keep the dialogue from being stilted.  She did a replace all on the word “shall”, changing it to “will”.  Hence, “willow breath”.  Darn shame, too.  I kinda liked the unique usage of “willow”!

Your Manuscript Isn’t Ready

This is probably the number one issue I see.  Ninety-nine percent of these manuscripts are rejected.  They’re often riddled with grammatical errors, plot holes, continuity issues, and character development issues.  Some of these are evident in the submission, which is summarily rejected.  Others don’t show these issues until somewhere between chapters two and six, although occasionally you might not see it fall apart until half-way through.  Why am I so specific in saying between chapters two and six?  Because the majority of fulls I rejected for simply falling apart usually did so around those chapters, depending on the length of the book and the chapters.  Like other editors and agents that have commented on this issue, I believe there’s a very simple explanation.  I think it comes from workshopping the query, synopsis, and first few chapters until they shine, and then the author submitting the manuscript without applying what they learned to the rest of the novel.  This was always a disappointment.

However, I will admit this.  I had one manuscript that had a lot of issues.  In spite of the issues, the story itself was wonderful and compelling, and I wanted it.  I put that manuscript through three R&Rs before contracting it, and of course we still had edits after that.  (And before anyone asks—NO, it was not Carol’s.  *grin*)  Would I do that again?  Maybe, maybe not, but I can tell you it would have to be an amazing story in spite of the flaws.  Not just good or even great, but amazing.  I can also tell you this situation was the exception to the rule.  It’s very rare for an editor to do something like this because detailed R&Rs like the ones I sent out for that manuscript take a lot of time.


So my advice in this area is to make sure you revise your manuscript.  Send it out to betas, and if you workshop the first chapter or the first few chapters, make sure you apply what you’ve learned—or revisions you’ve made—to the rest of the manuscript.  There’s nothing stranger than reading a manuscript and learning that when Carla was a child, her mother died.  Then, Carla goes home somewhere around chapter five or six and sits down to a family dinner…complete with Mom.  And no, it wasn’t Mom’s spirit or a step-mother or anything like that.  Mom wasn’t dead in the original draft.  She died because of workshopping suggestions for some reason or another, and the family dinner scene wasn’t revised to reflect this.  Make sure your manuscript doesn’t fall apart because you revised the first few chapters and neglected the rest of it.