Being consistent in your story..

Good Thursday morning!

Today's post in on the writing, not how to edit, though this will fit into that part of it as well, but we'll not look at it from that point at the moment. Consistency...

So, you're typing your fingers to their bones, you're so on a roll and filling up page after page and all is going fantastic! You fly right through 5000 words and you're ready to take a small break and then you sit right back down and keep the momentum going. Before you know it, you've racked up another handful of pages and have completed a chapter. You're floating on a cloud and are finished for the day.

The next day, you glance back at the last page or two of your story to refresh your memory and then continue writing. Things are going well, you're writing several pages, maybe not at yesterday's pace, but you're doing it.. and so on...

After you've finished a few more chapters you take a look back from the beginning and it isn't long before you run into a small rut. You could have sworn you've been calling your hero Josh, but you remember the last few pages you finished typing, you've called him Andrew. And another couple of lines in, you notice you've done it again with Josh/Andrew with hair color and eyes.

You skim a page or two more and it dawns on you your heroine has the same rut, and worse, she's in a different town than what she started at last for no reason. And you remember the couple of chapters you had her doing something but didn't end it/tie up a loose end, so she could move on to where she is and what she's doing in the last chapter you've written about her.

While I understand this sounds a bit like editing, you're right, it is. But it's a quick fix instead of reworking sentences and perhaps paragraphs (except for the part of the heroine where she is at two different places doing different things) Eye and hair color as well as names are an easy fix and for myself, I don't usually put this under the edit category in my mind because I treat it like a typo. The other though, for me, does fall into editing because it'll take more than a click of the mouse to fix it.

So, if you're like me and you'd rather not fall in this rut, it helps to keep track of your characters and their lives. It doesn't have to be grand, or it can be, it's totally up to you. But to keep you out of this pitfall, a note or card, or even the back of an envelope will do. Just jot down your hero on one side of the paper, heroine on the other. From there, add their names, hair color, eye color, job..you get the idea. And keep it close to where you're working so you can pull the note out quickly and make sure you're on track and that everything is the same from the beginning to where you are in the story now.

I'm a plotter; so I have a large piece of plastic as well as an erase board on the wall on each side of my desk. In dry markers, I've covered my characters on one and written the bones to the story and have broken it down into chapters on the other.. so at a glance I can see where I am at any time, and helps me so I don't go too far off of the beaten path with what is happening in my ms.

Hope this helps :)    Happy Writing!