Continuing Education: Weird Science

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored—Aldous Huxley

Kari Donald, A4A Member

It’s time for another installment of Continuing Education. Science surrounds us and has an enormous sphere of influence. It’s impossible to explain the physical world without it. No matter what genre you write, science and facts will have some involvement in your story. Inaccuracies and errors create distractions (which most readers definitely don’t enjoy). Today we’re going to look at the use of these types of information in your narrative, why they’re important, common pitfalls, and how to avoid mistakes. 

Are science and facts really so important in fiction?

Definitely. Accurate representation of known and accepted facts is very important in your story. I knew an Air Force pilot who described the movie “Top Gun” as a great comedy. Anyone who’s seen this movie will tell you it’s obviously intended as a drama, not a comedy. However, the misrepresentations of military aviation were so laughable to this person, they could not suspend disbelief enough to see the movie as anything other than a farce. 

Ideally, people from every walk of life should enjoy your book. Unless you’re planning on limiting your intended audience, make sure your facts are correct to avoid taking subject matter experts out of your story.  

Will readers really look that closely at the facts in a story?

Probably not. I seriously doubt anyone is googling the facts in your book while they read to check for accuracy. But once again, recall that our continuity read is looking for anachronisms and errors that could distract readers and pull them out of your story. 

For example, consider something as simple as a pond or lake freezing over. Your characters cannot go to sleep and even remotely hope that the overnight drop in temperature will freeze a body of water sufficiently to walk across it. Nor can they assume frozen solid edges indicate the entire pond is frozen solid. It takes time for the water to cool enough to freeze (lake turnover) and longer for deeper water to freeze solid enough to support weight, especially if the water is actively flowing. At the very least, you will lose any reader from climates with lots of lakes and cold temperatures, such as Minnesota or Michigan. 

While this may not be common knowledge for many, it is experience some people will have, making them de facto subject matter experts.

Would a small mistake about an obscure fact seriously impact my book?

Possibly not. But I have seen one star reviews where readers commented that they stopped reading a book because the author’s mistreatment of horses made it impossible to finish the story. And “mistreatment” in this sense was not beating the horses; it was unrealistic representations of a horse’s abilities or the ignorance of a supposedly expert handler. 

Again, people who have never had horses would have no clue there was a problem. However, as in this case, there are a lot of experienced horse lovers who are offended by such cavalier disregard for their beloved equines. Don’t make assumptions about what topics your readers may or may not be familiar with.

I also need to add if you really want proof about how readers can be VERY particular about “known facts,” ask any fantasy author what happens if their characters use the wrong armor or weapon during a story. Response from die-hard fantasy fans will be swift and brutal. Basically, consider the risk and the return on investment of research. 

What sorts of facts or topics need to be researched?  

Just about anything from a subject ending in “ology”? Seriously though, we aren’t born with innate knowledge of the universe. Everything we know, we had to learn somewhere—either at school, by life experience, from knowledgeable people, or through the internet (I saw it online so it must be true...). 

Everyone, especially writers, use language on a daily basis. Yet in spite of that, how often do we make mistakes or need to look up spellings, definitions, grammar, or punctuation? Now expand that idea to topics you never studied or haven’t thought about in years, and the potential for mistakes is huge. Any solution to a problem, especially medical, should be thoroughly researched. 

Should I get bitten by a venomous snake, I personally don’t want someone treating it by making incisions on the bite mark and trying to suck the poison out. That solution may be fine for a clichéd western, but should not be presented in a way that portrays it as a viable option for treatment. I am sure we all have examples of well-meaning people repeating something they read “somewhere” which really isn’t true.

How do I check for factual inaccuracies?

There are lots of things you can do. The internet is a great place to start. Just be careful about using reliable and comprehensive sources. A personal blog of someone with no credentials or education is probably not a great source. 

When including any type of fact, whether you think it’s common knowledge or something you’re sure you heard about somewhere, ask yourself how or where you learned it. Even if you have an old textbook, check for updates as science changes. Mythbusters was able to find enough material from movies and urban legends to fill 20 seasons worth of plausibility experiments, so things you only vaguely remember hearing about at some time may not be factual. Basically, anything that you haven’t studied recently or is outside your normal sphere of knowledge should be double-checked for accuracy. 

Don’t be afraid to ask experts in the field you are writing about for advice. Will your character experience a painful injury? Then interview someone with a medical background for feedback about the condition, its treatment, and recovery time. It doesn’t matter how skilled your surgeon is, there’s really no chance your character will be able to run a race less than a week after surgery repairing a torn ACL. Bleeding late in a pregnancy? Don’t follow in the footsteps of the male author who argued with his female editor and insisted it was perfectly normal for pregnant women to keep having periods. As such, it was a totally acceptable explanation for said bleeding. I am not making this one up. You can find it on TikTok. 

And while you are talking to that expert, don’t forget to ask about special jargon they use in their profession if you are going to portray characters in that field. Again, simply make sure your representations of science and other facts won’t distract someone familiar with the subject.  

But I am writing speculative fiction or fantasy, so facts don’t really matter.

Well...yes and no. There is a tricky balancing act when writing about alternate worlds and times. Modern medicine would never treat a fever by bleeding someone. However, it was acceptable therapy even as late as the 19th century. Obviously your facts need to fit your world. In your fantasy universe, it may be entirely possible to heal bones in 24 hours (Gotta love Skele-Gro!). 

The deciding factor is how closely you model your alternate reality after Earth. If a character in your book fetches some carrots from the garden, I would expect they’re dug up from the ground, not picked from a tree. When a process or item in your world has the same name as a process or item on earth, its description and function should match what people would reasonably expect—which means it needs to be accurate. By the time you either research something or manage expectations with explanations of how your item is different, you could have simply given it a unique name, removing the comparison. Just make sure you’re consistent using your new vocabulary in your book. 

That’s all for this week. Look for the next continuity blog, Well-Seasoned.

 Let's Keep in Touch!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date on our books, authors, and more!

You can also sign up for our mailing list here.

Can't wait? Check out our website for available books!

Continuing Education: Call It a Day

“Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”
–William Shakespeare

Kari Donald, A4A Member

It’s the dawn of a new installment of Continuing Education. Each day in the life of your book is a microcosm of your story and world. The details and descriptions of events during the day not only set up the experiences for your characters, but also provide a window into the cultures and traditions of your world. Inconsistencies during and between the days can be both confusing and distracting. Today, we will look at some of the important elements of a typical day as well as  potential mistakes and ways to avoid them. 

How could a single day possibly be that complicated?

There’s more to a day than twenty-four hours (or however long a day is in your world). Within each day is a finite amount of time that progresses, with patterns both for individuals and for groups. When are meals served, and what are they called? What sorts of routines are typical during the day? How long do your days last? Do seasons or holidays affect how the day unfolds? Consider these questions when describing scenery and activities throughout your story’s day. Even topics that are part of world building still need to be incorporated into your narrative in a way that supports the world you created.

Do I need to include every single routine of the day?

Absolutely not. Only those routines that affect your plot, add description, or establish patterns in your world need to be included. For instance, consider the delicate topic of bathroom breaks. When catching up with friends and family, would you include details about going to the restroom? (That might be TMI.) There is definitely a time and a place. Characters missing out on major events because they were heeding nature's call have a very plausible explanation for an absence when necessary. However, just because you don’t want to address this routine does not mean you can ignore that it is necessary for your characters. The poor maiden forced to wear a chastity belt for months while her knight is away fighting dragons will evoke more than just sympathy. Speculation on how she will perform personal hygiene could take readers right out of the narrative. The Harry Potter stories do a great job demonstrating how to balance this. Several scenes take place in bathrooms, establishing that they exist and are available, but the only details on use of the bathrooms are those relevant to the particular scene that supports the plot. Just check that your routines are natural and organic to the story.

With this in mind, you don’t have to squeeze every daily routine into every single day. Just make sure that events throughout the day are consistent and follow established patterns. For example, some people refer to the evening meal as dinner, and some, as supper. Using these terms interchangeably could be confusing. If your travelers regularly eat supper before retiring and then suddenly eat dinner and retire, your readers may not be sure what time of day it is. Did they retire for the night or just for a nap? If dinner is the large meal at noon, then showing up for Sunday dinner at six would be totally unacceptable. Basically, make sure that your descriptions and labels match from day to day. 

Anything else I need to look for with routines?

Be sure to keep track of the frequency of your routines. There are routines your characters will likely only do once a day, like eating a particular meal. If your travelers partake in a hearty breakfast before they set out on their journey, then they shouldn’t be stopping for breakfast again several hours later (second breakfast anyone?). Likewise, routines need to happen in order. Morning prayer after lunch doesn't make a lot of sense. Try to map out each day in a similar way you would map out your story.

Why are lengths of days or seasons important?

Lengths of days are important because they influence the type and amount of activity of your day and how you describe the passing of time. You might expect to cover more distance traveling during daylight or want the cover of darkness for something clandestine. If you write speculative fiction and your world is Earth or loosely modeled after Earth, then your world will be tilted on its axis, have seasons, and variation in length of the days depending on the time of year. If your world is different from Earth, make sure the progress of your day matches the physics of your world. Timing and pacing during the day is just as important as for the chapter or story. Too much activity squeezed into too little time can be overwhelming, while too little activity over a long amount of time can drag. Try to be aware of the amount of time available in your day to avoid exhausting either your characters or your readers. 

Isn’t worrying about the proper length of a day rather picky?

Yes and no. It depends on the setting of your story. The more closely your world is related to Earth, the more important it is to be careful about time of day. Anyone from Boston will tell you there is no way the Fourth of July firework celebration started at 7:00 PM, because the sun won’t set until almost 8:30. The outdoor all-night movie marathon in Anchorage, Alaska, on June twenty-first might not be such a good deal since it is only “night” (and not necessarily very dark) for four and a half hours. Remember, we are trying to avoid distracting the reader. In the same way your descriptions of a known location need to be accurate, your descriptions of time of day in a known location need to be accurate. While this degree of consideration is not as important in a totally made-up fantasy world, consistency still needs to be maintained. It would be very distracting to have consecutive days where the length of the day changes dramatically or without a predictable pattern.

In a similar way, your descriptions of the sun and moon during the course of the day need to be realistic. Just because we have the expression “high noon,” it does not mean the sun is always directly overhead at noon. Sunrises and sunsets are arguably among the most magnificent backdrops, making them popular settings in art and literature. In fact, they can be too popular. Is it already time for another full moon only a week after the last one? Do your characters really have time to hike another 5 miles through the mountains between the first twinkle of stars coming out and the sun finally disappearing below the horizon? Do the two separate portrayals of a sunrise on the same day mean that your world has two suns in a galaxy far, far away?

Of course, I found a great tool for today’s topic. This day and night world map page is a lot of fun and shows the location of the sun and moon on any given day, from the past to the future (I was way too entertained putting in dates of eclipses to see what they would look like). You can calculate how much time passes between twilight and sunset, note the intensity of light based on location and time of day, and generally use it to provide accurate descriptions. It even has links to information about the moon phase. Your world isn’t on an axis like earth? No problem. Just pick a date for one of the equinoxes to check out time of day for your world. A day cycle on your world isn’t 24 hours? Again, no problem. You get to apologize to your middle school math teacher because you will need to use those math lessons to calculate the time that works for your world. 

Is there anything else that could cause problems in a day?

Of course! Probably more than I can cover. But as a final note, I want to point out the importance of maintaining consistency between different points of view on the same day. One character should not be experiencing a fierce thunderstorm during their narrative while another character is walking under a cloudless sky less than a mile away. As always, edits are the most common culprit for continuity errors, so you always want to check for these issues during the editing process. However, it is also easy to get sucked into writing an amazingly creative description, ignoring what would realistically be taking place. Avoid duplication and work toward consistency to avoid time-of-day continuity distractions. 

That’s all we have time for today. Check back next time for Weird Science.  

 Let's Keep in Touch!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date on our books, authors, and more!

Can't wait? Check out our website for available books!

Continuing Education: Space Time Continuum

Time and tide wait for no man—Geoffrey Chaucer

Kari Donald, A4A Member

Time again for more Continuing Education. (It’s about time!) One universal constant in any story is the passage of time, even when the narrative involves time travel or multiple dimensions. Timeline issues are among the most glaring problems and present some serious challenges to fix. Timeline is crucial and regularly impacts other areas of continuity. So let’s look at some typical timeline errors and ways to avoid or correct them.

There is more than one way for the timeline to impact my story?

Absolutely. Timeline involves more than just the amount of time that passes from the beginning to the end of your book. Time is a common phenomenon. Even if your world has its own way to account for time, it will still be in flux and changing as your story progresses. Also, it is the one thing you can guarantee readers will identify with. Time may seem to pass differently depending on your perspective, but it’s still passing at some measurable rate. Readers expect timelines to be realistic and consistent. Anything less is confusing and distracting.  

How can my timeline be distracting?

No matter what setting you choose for your book, characters engage in actions and activities readers relate to. Any person has a good idea how long it takes to complete basic tasks. How would your reader perceive a character who showers, washes and dries their hair, brushes their teeth, and dresses in formal attire (including accessories and makeup) in less than ten minutes? Unless your character is The Flash, this freakishly amazing efficiency can easily distract a reader.

While my example may seem obvious, there are plenty of other routines you’re not familiar with but your readers are. One situation might be an author who isn’t a parent writing a scene where the character learns they must leave and gathers up their two toddlers, gets out of the house, and drives off in less than five minutes. This scenario makes for great comedy, but not a realistic rendition of life. Bottom line: either keep the time vague enough so you don’t put your characters in impossible situations, ask an expert, or use that wonderful tool known as Google to look it up.

Isn’t there more to a timeline than individual events?

Most certainly. Many books have more than one point of view or minor plots that are concurrent or overlapping. Such isolated incidents often create the biggest timeline issues. It is very easy to get wrapped up with creating the narrative and quite literally lose track of time.“The next day” can add up to weeks or months, which alone is not a bad thing. However, during these individual storylines within your book, you want the same amount of time to pass amongst all your characters. It doesn't work if only seven “the next days” pass for one character while ten “the next days” pass for another character before they are reunited. Juggling multiple timelines is not an easy task, so props to anyone that can do it while maintaining the overarching one.

You might be tempted to use time warps and breaches in the space-time continuum to explain or fix your timeline, but those might not be credible. I mean, how well would it go over if after being gone for a month, your significant other can only account for two weeks of their absence? Most people would have a serious issue with this and find it difficult to believe some trite excuse like an alien abduction or getting stuck in a time loop with a groundhog. The same thing goes for your book. Attention to detail is the key. Don’t cheat on your readers.  

I plot my books, so there won’t be any timeline problems.

Do not disparage my pantser friends. It does not matter what writing style you use. I see the same issues from both plotters and pantsers. Editing can destroy even the best timelines. Rearranging and cutting events in order to help with pacing and gaps in the narrative make your initial timeline obsolete. The fallout from such developmental edits is one reason I recommend doing an edit looking just at continuity. 

What can I do to avoid timeline issues?

There are a couple of basic approaches that help avoid timeline problems. A good starting point is documenting the timeline of your book. While there are lots of programs for plotting a novel and tracking timelines, I prefer a simple spreadsheet. You can easily customize and tailor it to track the passage of days, major events, time cues, time relative to events, or anything else that may be important to preserving the integrity of your timeline. Besides spreadsheets, just about any software useful for plotting your book can also be used to track your timeline. I’ve used Plottr, but software such as Scrivener or Evernote can work for tracking a timeline too. Most offer free trials so you can check them out before committing.

That sounds a lot like plotting. Are there other tools or techniques I can use?

Most definitely. Be creative in developing tools for tracking your timeline. You might even set up an actual calendar for your book. Add different colors or lettering to represent different characters and events and your calendar will provide a great snapshot of your timeline. You could even set up a system using post-it notes! Just make sure they are locked away from the prankster in your life (obviously).

When organizing your tools, also think about how you want to calculate the passage of time. Counting the number of days from the beginning of the book can be tedious, especially if your book covers a long period of time. You might want to consider chunking your timeline by using major events as milestones and relate the passage of time to these specific happenings. For example, track the number of days since the Red Wedding or the days since the Council of Elrond. Relating the passage of time to events simplifies the process by creating smaller, more manageable timelines. This type of relational time tracking is also very important for any speculative fiction novel following actual events in history. It helps ensure there are no discrepancies between your book timeline and the time period it’s modeled after. In this case, historical events would serve as the milestones or major events your timeline relates to.

Another way to avoid timeline issues is to take time and pay attention during the editing process. Track your revisions (or your editor or beta reader’s revisions) in Track Changes or Suggest mode. As you review the changes, identify and adjust the manuscript as needed when the edits affect your timeline. While this may seem time-consuming, it saves you from an editing pass dedicated solely to analyzing your timeline. 

So glad we had this time together! Check back next for “Call it a Day.” Until then, happy times!

Let's Keep in Touch!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date on our books, authors, and more!

Can't wait? Check out our website for available books!

Continuing Education: Stellar Cartography

"If the map doesn't agree with the ground, the map is wrong."—Gordon Livingston

Kari Donald, A4A Member

Back again for some more Continuing Education. According to an old saying, “A picture says a thousand words,” which is likely the reason for the popularity of “the world map” in most fantasy or speculative fiction novels. Today, we’ll be looking at why your map is important and how it can create continuity issues in your book.  

How can a map cause continuity issues?

Your map, should you choose to draw it, gives the reader a window into your world and provides a sense of situational awareness. 

What types of physical features or landmarks make up the world? How close or far apart are the major cities? What are the relative sizes and locations of other kingdoms or countries? Where are the major obstacles your characters may face? These are only a few of the questions your map can help answer, and often much more easily than your narrative could. 

In other words, your map can also tell a story; so the story of your map needs to match the story in your book. Remember, we want to make sure your novel is free of anachronisms, errors, or anything else that could distract your reader. Some readers will reference your map while they are reading, so if descriptions in the prose don’t match the image, you may lose credibility points. Potential sources of discrepancy could include the scaling, layout, and geography of the map.

Do I seriously need to draw my map to an exact scale?

Absolutely NOT! There are many styles of maps with cities and other features represented by images that are larger on the map than the space they would actually occupy if they were drawn to scale. However, you do want to make sure that the space between features reflects a realistic distance as described in your story. 

For example, unless you are driving from downtown Los Angeles to Las Vegas (or something similar), it should not take two hours to travel the first quarter of the journey and then only three hours to travel the remaining distance. Anyone looking at a map of southern California can easily see how traffic congestion affects travel time. 

When considering the scale of your map, it should not take your characters a week to travel halfway across the open realm and then just two more days to travel the other half without an explanation. Likewise, it should take your characters longer to travel that two inches through the mountain range than it does to cover the same distance when crossing the plains. Rough terrain, inclement weather, mode of transportation, distressed dudes needing help, or your world’s equivalent of the dreaded orange barrel complete with detour sign could all be factors affecting travel time. So long as either a feature on your map or the narrative in your story justifies any oddity while tracking the progress of your characters, it doesn’t need to be exact, just close enough to avoid distractions.

In a similar way, placement and area of other regions in your world need to be fairly accurate. You don’t want to plan on sending reinforcements to your southern border to prevent an incursion of rogue elves if they hail from the Kingdom of the Great White North. Readers may scratch their heads if the (so described) tiny and insignificant country of Iota Minor takes up half the map. This is a case where size matters.

You mentioned geography can cause problems.

Thanks for the reminder! 

Geography is probably the most fundamental component of your map. It involves more than just physical features as it also dictates human elements such as culture, industry, and population centers. There are immutable elements of geography to account for when creating your world. 

For instance, unless your world is like the top of a hoverboard and can rotate or tip at different angles, water will only travel in one direction—down hill. A river that starts in your northern mountains and flows to your southern sea may be drawn perfectly, following the contour of the land and providing a means of transportation. However, your heros will not be able to “float downstream” on this river as they journey north. Both “float” and “downstream” would be problematic in this scenario. “Float” would mean your vessel is drifting along with the flow of the river. Downstream is with the direction the river is flowing. Traveling north on this river would be going against the current (upstream, not downstream) and would preclude being able to float. 

While magic can help you out of such situations, it should not be used as a crutch for poor planning or inadequate world building. There are lots of resources available to help with creating your map. Some even get incredibly detailed and look at things like prevailing winds and weather. For the important map basics, I suggest checking out the great blog post at Mythcreants. 

Another reason geography is so important is that it can literally dictate the direction of your story. Once your map is in place, the features and layout may limit how events unfold in your book. This could be significant if you’re beginning a new series. Plan ahead to avoid writing yourself into a corner, either figuratively or physically. 

Does that mean I can’t draw my map until I plan my entire series?

Not at all. There are a couple of things you can do to avoid continuity issues with your map. You could take a minimalist or “need to know” approach. Only include the part of your world where the story actually takes place. You can add arrows pointing toward the edge of your map with labels for the names of neighboring lands. Give the reader enough information for a sense of direction as they follow your narrative while still giving you flexibility for future installments. Your map can expand as your series grows.

If you already have a good idea of the major events in your series, then go ahead and map your entire world. Just keep a copy of your map in front of you while writing and reference it. Checking your map as you write helps maintain consistent descriptions and accounts of travel time, scenery, resources, and any other things that can influence your plot. The sooner you catch anything that could be problematic, the less work it will take later to fix it.

That’s all for this week. Check back next blog for the Space Time Continuum. Until then, happy drawing and writing.  

Let's Keep in Touch!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date on our books, authors, and more!

Can't wait? Check out our website for available books!

Continuing Education: Location, Location, Location

Sense of Direction: Not just for your characters

Kari Donald, A4A Member

Time for more Continuing Education (our series on Continuity editing...get it?) As authors, whether writing speculative fiction, historical fiction, or something in between, you select locations to provide the best settings for your story. Today, we’re looking at why scrutinizing location as part of a continuity check is so important. 

What does location have to do with Continuity?

So why is location so important? It influences the setting and scene descriptions in your story, plus it impacts the plausibility of events. Remember, during our Continuity edit, we look for things that are out of place or could be distracting to the reader. There are many ways your location can cause a Continuity issue, either by itself or when it integrates into one of the other elements of Continuity. Today, we’ll dive deep into the ways that settings and descriptions (that innate sense of direction all writers have...or not) can make or break your story.

How can using an actual place cause a continuity problem?

Using an actual place puts an additional burden on your narrative since accuracy is a must. Some of your readers may be familiar with your chosen locale. For example, an account of someone that drives their car all the way to the Statue of Liberty will immediately surprise any reader who’s actually visited the landmark and knows the only way to get there is by taking a boat.

Not only can mistakes ruin your credibility, but there isn’t much that will distract a reader faster than the wrong name or detail of a known area. It can be as simple as using “Avenue” instead of “Street,” going the wrong way down a one way street, or having the sidewalk on the wrong side of the road. Add in things like transportation with stops, descriptions of buildings with their surroundings, and events with time of day or seasonal references, and the possibility for errors or misrepresentations becomes endless. Taking these details into account can be a daunting task and probably contributes to the misplaced advice “write what you know.”     

In the words of Roger from Rent, “Zoom in on my empty wallet.”

No problem! Can’t stop by the Live Cafe in person? Writers today have the advantage of a number of tools at their disposal. Google Maps is an invaluable resource for researching locations since you can quite literally immerse yourself in your desired setting. Photo spheres  and street view allow you to take a tour at ground level and see buildings, roads, landmarks, and shops, among many other things. Just be sure to check the date for when the picture was taken. If the photo is dated, some things may have changed, like businesses or the surrounding area. You’ll want to make sure Stuart’s Comic Shop is still open before using it into your story. 

Not only that, but the time of day or year may not match the timeline in your story, so elements like lighting, traffic, and foliage may not be the same. The bottom line here (which is a common theme throughout the Continuity edit) is don’t make assumptions about elements or topics outside your area of expertise. A few minutes of research is worth the investment and often saves lots of editing time later.   

I am using my own world, so I don’t have to worry about location.

If only it were that easy. 

One of the advantages of speculative fiction is that you can create your own world. One of the disadvantages of speculative fiction is that you can create your own world. 

If your location is loosely based on our world, then modeling it after a real place is helpful as all of the details have been worked out naturally. You won’t have to worry about accidentally setting up contradictory situations like a polar ice cap next to an arid desert or a citrus tree growing on top of an alpine mountain. It might work in your favorite video game, but those environments are created to keep a gamer engaged rather than a reader. For example, the fifteen square miles that Skyrim would occupy on our planet makes it easy for a gamer to be a world traveler but is hardly representative of a realistic location. 

It is just as important for world builders to take advantage of the internet to research elements that work for your chosen location. UCB has a pretty good introduction on biomes to get you started.

But my world is totally made up!

Awesome! Some of the most popular series are from made up worlds. You don’t have to be a flat earther to appreciate or accept the plausibility that a story can happen on a flat disc carried about the universe on the back of a turtle (thanks Terry Pratchet). 

The authenticity of characters or situations may be more important, as the focus on them allows readers to lose themselves in your story despite any unrealistic worldbuilding. You just need to put some thought into your location and work out a few details for viability and sustainability. You don’t even need to reveal these details in your narrative, just make sure there is nothing about your location that has contradicting elements or prevents readers from using their imaginations to fill in the blanks. You might have a hard sell that your barren wasteland location can support an abundance of livestock or lush vegetation. 

I am trying to avoid a cliché from a superhero movie about power and responsibility, but you get the idea. Just take into account how the location of the story will fit into your world while you are busy creating. 

Check back next time for some more Continuity tips. Up next: Stellar Cartography.  

 

 Let's Keep in Touch!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date on our books, authors, and more!

Can't wait? Check out our website for available books!

Continuing Education: A look at Continuity Editing

Not just another blog about editing!

Kari Donald, A4A Member

There’s a reason “edit” is a four-letter word. For some authors, it’s the least exciting part of the writing process, but one of the most important steps for improving your manuscript. Editing is so essential there are numerous blogs providing helpful hints about the different types, such as structural, developmental, line, copy, and of course, proofreading. For this, however, let’s look at one very specific part of editing: the continuity edit. 

What is continuity editing?

Continuity is often grouped in with copy-editing. However, I personally think every work can benefit from an editing pass dedicated to looking only for continuity issues. This edit is one where you’re looking at the details in your story and making sure they make sense in the real world. Filmmakers do something similar where they pay people to sit on set and do nothing but observe scene set-ups, watching for things like putting a glass of wine in a different place during a retake, seating characters in the same chairs after a break, and other similar details. Continuity edits on your manuscript are very similar: you’re checking for misplaced, out of order, or other anachronisms and inconsistencies. 

Why is continuity editing so important?

As with any edit, a continuity edit helps to remove potential sources of distraction and make the story the best it can be. It goes beyond basic writing mechanics and structure. We want the reader to stay immersed in your narrative and not wonder why someone that sat down next to the fireplace is suddenly giving an answer from their position standing next to the window. A continuity check also helps maintain the credibility of your story. Try to tell me your character recently visited Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell in Independence Hall and I will cry “Shenanigans!” The Liberty Bell hasn’t been in Independence Hall since 2003. (Or 1976 if you count the time spent in a pavilion next to Independence Hall; I’m all about accuracy; just ask any author whose book I have edited.) The last thing we want to have happen is your book ending up on the literary equivalent of Cinema Sins.

But I carefully planned my book; there shouldn’t be continuity issues

It doesn’t matter if you are a plotter or a pantser. I have done continuity reads on manuscripts from both styles of writing (and those in between), and there is no difference when it comes to the number or types of errors that I find. In my experience, the biggest influencer on continuity issues is previous edits. The developmental edit can be brutal to even the best-laid plans. Adding, deleting, or changing scenes and events in your story can cause problems like eating supper before breakfast, having Monday follow Wednesday, or watching the sun set twice at the end of the day (and no, your world is not Tatooine). You might think it was just a small change, but it can cause a ripple effect throughout the rest of your book. The bottom line: you need to check your book for continuity issues at least once after you’re done with major edits.

I’ve gone through my book several times and I don’t see any continuity problems.

That’s great! But as the author, you’re very close to your story and you know it inside and out. I’m certain that if you were to rewrite one of Gordon Ramsay’s recipes so that it was missing some ingredients or steps, give it to Gordon, and then tell him to execute the recipe you gave him, he would still make the dish the same way he always has (and not just because he would “bloody well do it the right way”). He’s so familiar with the recipe that his brain just doesn’t notice the missing or different parts of the written recipe. When checking your book for continuity, your brain will do the same thing. Since you know what’s supposed to happen, you can miss holes, incorrect details or conflicting events. Because of this, try to find fresh eyes, someone that hasn’t read your manuscript yet, to do your continuity edit. Your person of choice should be someone that is very logical and detail-oriented. However, that doesn’t mean that you are off the hook for trying to look for them yourself, especially during revisions and edits.

Okay, so what should I look for during a continuity edit?

Glad you asked! There are a plethora of factors to look for when checking a manuscript for continuity. Since it would be impossible to cover them all in a single blog (I tried), we’re going to present a series of blogs dedicated to continuity. Each one will do a deep dive on a particular topic as well as provide hints, tips, and resources to help find and resolve continuity issues. So check back for these in-depth continuity topics, and happy writing!

Join us next week for an interview with A4A author Karen Heenan, and in two weeks for our next continuity blog on location.

 

 Let's Keep in Touch!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date on our books, authors, and more!

Can't wait? Check out our website for available books!

Editing: Keeping Track of Characters

Wait, didn’t she have blue eyes?

Rebecca Mikkelson, Editor-in-Chief Authors 4 Authors Publishing

I wanted to keep this for the last post because this is a little bit different—it’s more preemptive. Keeping track of your characters will help you edit when it comes down to it, yes, but it will also help you from making the mistakes in the first place. 

The characters in general

Thanks to our illustrious founder Brandi Spencer, I have an information tracker for all of my characters. There is so much information in there that it can sometimes be a little overwhelming, but it’s been invaluable for making sure that I don’t forget names of minor characters or physical features of some of the more frequent characters. 

So what should you keep track of in this section?

Your columns

A lot of times this is information that you as the author will feel very obvious and unnecessary to write down, but let me tell you, you’ll be happy you did if you ever take a sabbatical from your WIP to start another one, or because life gets hectic. And right now, life is very easy to become hectic thanks to the pandemic. So, your very basics should at least be:

• Names—first, last, and nickname

• Birthplace—either their country of origin or city of origin, or both

• Description—this will be their relation to the protagonist(s)

For me, I added a few extra bits of information because I’m keeping track of characters across a series of six books and otherwise, I might forget when the characters appear. These are the extras that I need a little help remembering sometimes:

• Titles—this is both for the military titles and noble titles, and when they change in the series

• Books in which they first appear

Physical appearance

My absolute favorite example to give of why it’s important to keep track of physical features both for yourself—and to hopefully share with your editors or publishers to ensure a cohesive picture—and your readers is from Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series with Dell Publishing. Her main character Claire (Beauchamp Randall) Fraser is very well reported to have whiskey-colored eyes (light brown), but in one of the books her eye color was definitely not the correct one. With this information readily at your fingertips, it will be easier to avoid small mistakes like that. 

I will note, very strongly, that everyone makes mistakes, whether you're self published, published with a small press, or a large publishing company, and these mistakes should not be villainized. Authors and editors alike are human, and there’s only so much you can catch. 

Your columns

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m bad at writing character descriptions and leave them as scant as I can get away with. Unfortunately, you need to know the basics of what your characters look like aside from, “She’s pretty and has brown hair.” So what do you need to look for? Here is what I’ve got to help me keep track of my characters physical appearance:

• Skin

• Hair color, texture, and style

• Eye color

• Mouth

• Nose

• Height

• Build

• Distinguishing features

• Corresponding actor—for those of you who are like me, you might need some visual aids to help you fill out your information or visualize facial expressions on a similar face

Personality Traits

This, I find, is one of the hardest to nail down as an author because a lot of times I want to keep track of characters in “good” and “bad” columns, but that’s just not how the world works in real life, and it’s now how your world should work in your books. Every person has positive and negative traits, and sometimes the positive traits that your characters have are actually negative because of their motivations. These are all the things that make well-rounded characters to make a richer world for your readers. 

Positive

The positive traits are almost always the easiest to come up with because we like to see the good in people. We’re breaking this down into a couple of categories. For your positive traits, you want to look at four things: moral, achievement, interactive, and identity. You might be looking at that list and say, “What in the heck does that mean?” Don’t worry, I’ll give a brief description of each. 

Moral is what influences the mortality of the character, like their loyalty and honesty. Achievement is the characteristic(s) that helps the characters reach their goals, like their adventurous nature, boldness, or curiosity. Interactive is how your characters interact with the other characters in the book, like being flirtatious or courteous. And finally, identity is how the characters truly identify with themselves, like being passionate about things or imaginative.

Negative

For the negative, there’s a little bit less to examine. You want to look at the character’s core flaws and their lesser flaws. There’s also the motivation behind the character’s actions, and you can tie that into both the positive and the negative traits, but I want to tie it mostly into the negative traits because often times we have more motivation for our negative traits than our positive ones, and sometimes our positive traits have negative motivations...which in turn makes them more negative than positive. So what would your core flaw and lesser flaws look like?

Your core flaw is the heart of the matter that will help influence your lesser flaws, like being manipulative and greedy. With these flaws, your lesser flaws would slide into being controlling and inflexible. Things are going to be the way that character wants, no matter what they have to do to get it. 

Now, this is where I think tying the motivations in the negative trait is a lot more useful to understanding the character compared to the positive traits. Let’s take the negative traits listed above and explore some internal and external motivations for why your character is the way they are. Greedy and manipulative could stem from growing up in poverty and wanting to better themselves by any means necessary, such as manipulating others and hoarding wealth so as not to lose it.

If all this sounds great, you can download a blank copy here.

Join us in two weeks when we start a series on another branch of editing: Continuity. 

Let's Keep in Touch!

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date on our books, authors, and more!

Can't wait? Check out our website for available books!