Continuity

[Zootonius]

Ever write a scene where person A is undressing person B, and think, did I describe what they were wearing at the beginning of this scene?

I'm reminded of a story on A. Conan Doyle writing a Holmes story that starts on a spring day, and ends a few days later on an autumn evening.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I literally just redid a bit, where character 1 looks down at character 2 ... and I realized that last time I described their positions, they were lying down with character 2 on top of character 1.

-Annie

 

[ronde]

I always keep track of dates, probable elapsed time, and where my characters are. I do check to make sure I didn't change a character's hair or body type. I don't usually do much description of how they're dressed. If I don't, I'm sure to hear about it in the comments.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Yes, but I usually catch them before posting. Usually.

 

[RetroFan]

I've made some small continuity errors in some stories like everyone but usually minor and not affecting the plot too much. For example in my Halloween story last year I referenced two attractive female teachers at the Halloween Dance one of whom is blonde and the other brunette and which subjects they teach, one is English and the other Math. However in the subsequent events after the dance I show the wrong teacher teaching her subject to a class, but nobody noticed.

On this subject of continuity errors though, we are amateur writers for the most part writing or editing alone, so mistakes including the odd continuity errors are understandable. Its stranger to see professionally produced TV shows where there are major continuity errors made when there is a whole team of writers, editors, producers, directors, actors and other people working on set who could and should pick up on the error - which fans most certainly do when the inconsistency makes its way onto the screen.

Using hypothetical situations with sitcoms, say in a 1980s/1990s domestic sitcom the main family has to spend summer vacation with their insufferable relatives - the wife/mother's sister, brother-in-law and their kids - and the episode rates so well they decide to have the obnoxious relatives back for the Christmas episode, only this time it is said that the aunt is the sister of the main family's husband/father whereas before they were maternal not paternal relatives. Or a work-based sitcom - say about high school teachers - where in an early episode one of the young female teachers is seen driving as part of a team-building scavenger hunt on the weekend and in another episode is running late for work one day when she says she encountered bad traffic after dropping off her brother and his girlfriend at the airport early in the morning. How could anyone not notice if by Season 3 she has become a non-driver who never got her license, and also says she is an only child?

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Keeping track of clothing and limbs in sex scenes can be really tricky. I had one recently where I caught that a guy had his shirt removed three times at the start of an encounter, before sending it to a beta reader. Who spotted the shirt being taken off yet again. Oops.

Generally I'm not too bad at continuity within one story, but I hope people don't try to match up all the stories in the Kumquatverse, because it gets distinctly timey-wimey... There's been a few times where I've mentioned crucial legislation or such, so had to pick a precise time, and the stories don't all fit together. Of course there's also the one where I couldn't remember what I'd named a sister, went back to story 1 to check, and merrily wrote a different name all through story 2...

Gotta make life interesting for my future bibliographers, right?

 

[StillStunned]

Keeping track of clothing and limbs in sex scenes can be really tricky. I had one recently where I caught that a guy had his shirt removed three times at the start of an encounter, before sending it to a beta reader. Who spotted the shirt being taken off yet again. Oops.

Like a modern-day Dance of the Seven Veils!

 

[onehitwanda]

@Zootonius - it really bugs me that your avatar is not blinking.

 

[Writer61]

I find continuity between scenes to be the main challenge ('he kissed her for the first time' except he did a few pages before), exarcerbated by my habit of writing in a patchwork (stuck on one scene work on another one …). To keep continuity between stories in a series I use a spreadsheet of characters (physical characteristics, age, etc.) and a timeline.

There is also the problem of historical consistency. I was about to publish one story when I realised that it included a reference to a real-life event that had not happened when the story was set. Consequently my master timeline now includes major events like 9/11 and Covid so that I can refer to them when appropriate.

Events aside the world is changing, My current project is set in the early 1990s and have to keep reminding myself that mobile phones were rare and not everyone had email.

 

[PrimalDual]

If this kind of thing DOESN'T happen during any stage of writing, I figure my scene isn't complex enough.

In the same spirit as another comment above, I've attempted only a couple of multi-part stories, but I found I had to have at least a second draft in place for each installment, before I dared submit the first for publication here, lest I find in a later part that I really wished I had foreshadowed something at the outset. I know that's not quite what you are saying here, but it's all connected.

 

[yowser]

There is also the problem of historical consistency. I was about to publish one story when I realised that it included a reference to a real-life event that had not happened when the story was set. Consequently my master timeline now includes major events like 9/11 and Covid so that I can refer to them when appropriate.

Events aside the world is changing, My current project is set in the early 1990s and have to keep reminding myself that mobile phones were rare and not everyone had email.

Category: The Trouble with Expertise

Just finished a sweet read, on the history of typography: Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield.

Turns out these typography folks generally HATE any movies with a historical setting and will cringe profusely. In 'Titanic' for example the restaurant menu used in the film was set in a font not invented until decades later. Horrors! Movie directors usually have a staff who are really good on clothes, hardware, period paraphernalia, but almost never typography.

Moral: unless you are perfect (and maybe lucky) there's always going to be somebody who will howl about some detail in your work.

 

[Writer61]

Turns out these typography folks generally HATE any movies with a historical setting and will cringe profusely. In 'Titanic' for example the restaurant menu used in the film was set in a font not invented until decades later. Horrors!

That's an angle that I had not thought about.

 

[Zootonius]

@Zootonius - it really bugs me that your avatar is not blinking.

I blink therefore I am?

 

[onehitwanda]

I blink therefore I am?

I'm going to nail you to a plank next to @Voboy down in Porpoise Spit.

 

[Zootonius]

I'm going to nail you to a plank next to @Voboy down in Porpoise Spit.

What? You expecting continuity in my train of consciousness?

 

[gunhilltrain]

What? You expecting continuity in my train of consciousness?

You may have more than one of those, and they are getting in each other's way?

https://media.gettyimages.com/id/52...=rbQwCjJ5S9YMBTwwQOXjH1cDcPfufnU0JJ63R1SA7pU=

 

[gunhilltrain]

Category: The Trouble with Expertise

Just finished a sweet read, on the history of typography: Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield.

Turns out these typography folks generally HATE any movies with a historical setting and will cringe profusely. In 'Titanic' for example the restaurant menu used in the film was set in a font not invented until decades later. Horrors! Movie directors usually have a staff who are really good on clothes, hardware, period paraphernalia, but almost never typography.

Moral: unless you are perfect (and maybe lucky) there's always going to be somebody who will howl about some detail in your work.

I hope James Cameron doesn't read this. He still got his Oscar.

I have trouble with writing accurately about the 1970s and '80s, specifically about electronics. I once wrote about someone with an Apple Laptop, and somebody caught that it hadn't been introduced yet. I think I was about two years early.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Category: The Trouble with Expertise

Just finished a sweet read, on the history of typography: Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield.

Turns out these typography folks generally HATE any movies with a historical setting and will cringe profusely. In 'Titanic' for example the restaurant menu used in the film was set in a font not invented until decades later. Horrors! Movie directors usually have a staff who are really good on clothes, hardware, period paraphernalia, but almost never typography.

Moral: unless you are perfect (and maybe lucky) there's always going to be somebody who will howl about some detail in your work.

Titanic also got nitpicked for having the stars incorrectly located, although I think that one was fixed digitally.

 

[Yarglenurp]

Just write a second story to explain continuity errors.

It was a time bandit! A sexy time bandit, her pert nipples pointing out of the time sphere. She was going to set things right, even if it meant making a lot of other things wrong.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Titanic also got nitpicked for having the stars incorrectly located, although I think that one was fixed digitally.

Yet they had no problem with the two lookouts being distracted by Jack and Rose. Those two caused the collision, if that was true!

 

[gunhilltrain]

Just write a second story to explain continuity errors.

It was a time bandit! A sexy time bandit, her pert nipples pointing out of the time sphere. She was going to set things right, even if it meant making a lot of other things wrong.

Do all ladies written about on this site have to have pert nipples? Do any have saggy ones?

 

[RetroFan]

I hope James Cameron doesn't read this. He still got his Oscar.

I have trouble with writing accurately about the 1970s and '80s, specifically about electronics. I once wrote about someone with an Apple Laptop, and somebody caught that it hadn't been introduced yet. I think I was about two years early.

The lesser known of two Titanic film of the 1950s - 'Titanic' of 1953 starring Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyk - had a major problem in that in trying to appeal a young audience it had young characters (teenagers and young adults) talking like and using the same slang and expressions that teenagers in 1952 would use rather than teenagers of 1912. It stands out more than the iceberg that doomed the great ocean liner.

 

[alohadave]

I find continuity between scenes to be the main challenge ('he kissed her for the first time' except he did a few pages before), exarcerbated by my habit of writing in a patchwork (stuck on one scene work on another one …). To keep continuity between stories in a series I use a spreadsheet of characters (physical characteristics, age, etc.) and a timeline.

There is also the problem of historical consistency. I was about to publish one story when I realised that it included a reference to a real-life event that had not happened when the story was set. Consequently my master timeline now includes major events like 9/11 and Covid so that I can refer to them when appropriate.

Events aside the world is changing, My current project is set in the early 1990s and have to keep reminding myself that mobile phones were rare and not everyone had email.

It's interesting to see anachronisms creep in. One that I remember is the movie Super-8, set in the early 80s. There was a gas station with several dome style security cameras. So ubiquitous today that we don't even notice them most of the time. In the 80s, the only place you'd see a dome security camera was in a casino, and they weren't hand sized.

An interesting case is the Kinsey Milhone mystery series by Sue Grafton. All her books were set in the late 70s-early 80s, and she had said that it became increasingly difficult to remember what life was like before cell phones and internet everywhere.

 

[alohadave]

Movie directors usually have a staff who are really good on clothes, hardware, period paraphernalia, but almost never typography.

Or computers, or guns, or the law, or anything else you can think of that you know anything about.

 

[Yarglenurp]

Do all ladies written about on this site have to have pert nipples? Do any have saggy ones?

All time bandits have pert nipples. It’s an effect of time stream exposure. It makes you sexier.