What’s the biggest blooper you have made in a story?

[gunhilltrain]

Pearl necklaces in erotica, heaven forfend!

Em

Especially in erotica.

 

[gunhilltrain]

No. That will get you to yesterday or tomorrow, depending which way you travel, but won't give you a seasonal swap. You've got to go north-south or south-north to swap seasons.

I know, I've been posting too many things without thinking them through. It's too easy online.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Happily, dropping a negative is a notable mistake, but not a spectacularly dumb one.

I delberatly left that there, to see if anyone would pick it up.

That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

My most recent story has a happy man lying on a woman's lap. He's dripping, except the sentence actually says dropping, which doesn't make much sense. Annoying.

I have a series which I'd nearly finished when I had to move it from 2015 to 2010, approximately. So references to buildings got changed to them being built, plans for the Olympics instead of what happened at the Olympics. Thankfully the kind of guys they were could still plausibly have smartphones with fingerprint locks, which was a major plot point. Except the characters play a computer game in the first chapter which wasn't released until 2014.

I had a kind beta reader point out a guy took his shirt off, fucked his girlfriend, and took his shirt off again when he finished. Somehow with my edits I managed to have him take his shirt off twice just before the sex.

No-one's commented on any of those, so I must have blown readers away with the quality of my writing (or just sent them away...)

 

[PennameWombat]

As I’m writing a story, I sometimes add notes enclosed in square brackets […] Allows me to do a search for the brackets and remove them as I edit, once I’ve made sure I covered whatever the note said. In one of my longer stories, at the beginning of a named section I made a note of the rather large cast of named characters involved in the section.

I forgot to remove that note. Weirdly, in the published story it was split across a Lit page boundary, so it was almost invisible.

The other has been to use the wrong one of ‘prostate‘ <-> ‘prostrate’.

 

[Trionyx]

As I’m writing a story, I sometimes add notes enclosed in square brackets […] Allows me to do a search for the brackets and remove them as I edit, once I’ve made sure I covered whatever the note said.

When I want to go back to a particular section or line in a story (to research or rewrite), I change the color of the words. It is easier to find when scrolling through the work and if I forget it, the final copy here on LE appears completely normal.

 

[Duleigh]

I too suffer with changed names, in one series of stories a main character is Jake, in another series a main character is Josh. I learned the hard way to always always always check for the Jake/Josh issue because sometimes an edited version takes so damn long to get posted.

Another issue is text formatting, we're kind of limited here, there are ways to change the text font, but I screwed up the process and there's a story out there with bad HTML instructions visible to the reader. Right now, I'm experimenting with Small Caps, I need that to work for an upcoming story.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Another issue is text formatting, we're kind of limited here, there are ways to change the text font, but I screwed up the process and there's a story out there with bad HTML instructions visible to the reader. Right now, I'm experimenting with Small Caps, I need that to work for an upcoming story.

A pet peeve of mine is HTML that works fine in story preview, but falls on its ass when published. It would be nice to eliminate that.

The same story in which I got my time zones mangled has that type of HTML fail as well. But not entirely my fault.

Em

 

[MrPixel]

I'm finding this particular confessional interesting to watch, especially with the number of you reporting mixed-up character names. Oddly, I never seem to have that problem. I have to wonder if it's because my characters have such distinct personalities that make it obvious they would or wouldn't be doing that in any particular scene.

Then it makes me think of my mother scolding one of us (five) over something. It sometimes degenerated into going down the list, "Ellen! John! Susan! Oh crap. Whatever your name is, kid!"

 

[KeithD]

I'm finding this particular confessional interesting to watch, especially with the number of you reporting mixed-up character names. Oddly, I never seem to have that problem. I have to wonder if it's because my characters have such distinct personalities that make it obvious they would or wouldn't be doing that in any particular scene.

With me it happens when I've left off writing on the story and come back to resume later.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Then it makes me think of my mother scolding one of us (five) over something. It sometimes degenerated into going down the list, "Ellen! John! Susan! Oh crap. Whatever your name is, kid!"

My mum often included the cat, doing this. And that was after the older two siblings had left home!

 

[PennameWombat]

When I want to go back to a particular section or line in a story (to research or rewrite), I change the color of the words. It is easier to find when scrolling through the work and if I forget it, the final copy here on LE appears completely normal.

I've used the color idea now and then for inline text, it's a useful enough technique.

But it still would've been obvious in the published version in the case I mentioned, my note literally said "[Characters in this section are..." and a list of their names and position on the starship (e.g., astrophysicist, geologist, biologist, etc.) Having it in a different color I might've noticed it, but I'd still use the brackets to allow for ease of searching.

 

[PennameWombat]

My mum often included the cat, doing this. And that was after the older two siblings had left home!

My late father was infamous amongst the extended family for almost always referring to anyone as "what's his/her name," including his own children. If it was to your face, it might've been "what's your name..."

It'd gone on so long no one in the family took it personally. You just hoped he included sufficient context to understand to whom he was referring .

 

[MrPixel]

It'd gone on so long no one in the family took it personally. You just hoped he included sufficient context to understand to whom he was referring .

Hmm... my mother's father was that way with us. Okay, now I know where she got it from!

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Hmmm... mine was in the Winds of Change where I named the interstate I-95 instead of I-94. The story takes place in North Dakota.

 

[IsabellaEmily]

Humiliation time. I would often proof read one story over a few days to fix my god awful typing (What I call my typing dyslexia) while writing the next.

As I wrote the next story, I accidently swapped the name of the male character of story one into story 2. Worse, my proof reading of that story skipped right over it. A week later, a comment, "Where did Bill come from."

Cringe... I reposted a corrected version but that error hangs over me. Now excuse me while I find a rock to crawl under until this painful reminder passes.

(Now, a good editor offered to help. Although I try my best, I appreciate his patience.)

This exact same thing happened to me, on a story that published this week.

On the bright side I received what felt like a record number of comments with the first 8 hours of the story being up from people helpfully (gleefully) pointing out my error.

I submitted an edit, but I receive reminders a few times a day that I goofed.
Isabella

 

[Candy_Kane54]

In my very first submission, I had my character arriving at Los Angeles Air Force Base in May of 1985 when, in fact, it was still Los Angeles Air Force Station. It didn't actually get designated as a base until September 1987.

 

[Cali_Love]

Real life: I flew 15 hours to Shenzhen and when I got there, realized I forgot to pack underwear. So stupid.

Story time: because I write multiple tropes in parallel, I mix names up. So stupid.

 

[YANKEE DAN]

I wrote two stories back to back very quickly, in one the lvoe interest name was Mark, in the other it was Frank. however while writing the second one I accidentally reffered to Frank as Mark about a dozen times. A user commented on it and I posted that Mark was Frank's middle name lol

 

[holliday1960]

My mum often included the cat, doing this. And that was after the older two siblings had left home!

This changed for me when calling my girls (4 including my niece who stayed with us a LOT) became, "You know who you are".

 

[EmilyMiller]

Mine was just recently, in Just Do As I Say. I have an edit submitted to fix it, but at the time of writing my stupid error is still there for people to point and laugh at.

What happened was - as I often do - I combined two actual events because my life is too boring and normal without doing that.

In this case, the first was my boyfriend going on his first European business trip since we started cohabiting. I went a bit crazy and decided that going to a bar by myself in a short dress and flirting with guys was the way to go (yes I am obviously still a teen at heart).

The second was an earlier Face Time session we had when he was on a domestic business trip and involved trying to provide JOI for him.

So I thought it might be interesting if my motivation for the JOI was to say sorry for the more recent ill-advised bar trip (nothing happened beyond flirting BTW - well a lot of flirting TBH ). I tend to work through stuff on my mind by writing about it.

So that’s the story I wrote. But I managed to reverse the Europe / US time difference in the process, which rather messed the whole thing up.

The worst thing is that I put the phrase “I’m a details person” in the text. Hubris, much?

What detail (or major item) did you screw up in a published work?

Em

My heinous error has finally been expunged by an edit being published:

https://literotica.com/s/just-do-as-i-say-1

Em

 

[MetaBob]

I'm finding this particular confessional interesting to watch, especially with the number of you reporting mixed-up character names. Oddly, I never seem to have that problem. I have to wonder if it's because my characters have such distinct personalities that make it obvious they would or wouldn't be doing that in any particular scene.

Then it makes me think of my mother scolding one of us (five) over something. It sometimes degenerated into going down the list, "Ellen! John! Susan! Oh crap. Whatever your name is, kid!"

To (help) prevent this (and other things), I keep some rules about naming characters:

* Limit the number of named characters! Any time I give a character a name, that character wants a bigger share of the story, and also sows the possibility for confusion.
* No two characters start with the same letter and should be visually distinct. My worst bump against this rule was having seven active female characters in Cascade Fire: Callie, Dani, Ingrid, Jess, Kelsey, Sati, and Taylor. None had a surname. Dani and Sati might have visual similarity, but their roles were vastly different. All had recognizably different behaviors. Most were nicknames, but I only said so about two of them.
* Whenever possible, I don't use surnames. Keep it simple. In my three published novels, my recollection is that a total of only three characters have surnames, with one only revealed because I think it led to a clever and gently self-deprecating nickname: Rolf Lake -> Flake.

 

[AlexBailey]

It just dawned on me:

I’ve got a character who rams her “favorite hairbrush” up the ass of a guy who is basically trying to date-rape her.

The problem is she she wouldn’t carry a brush on a date because she wears her hair in long tight braids.

 

[EmilyMiller]

It just dawned on me:

I’ve got a character who rams her “favorite hairbrush” up the ass of a guy who is basically trying to date-rape her.

The problem is she she wouldn’t carry a brush on a date because she wears her hair in long tight braids.

That’s funny

 

[Limnophile]

Mine was just recently, in Just Do As I Say. I have an edit submitted to fix it, but at the time of writing my stupid error is still there for people to point and laugh at.

What happened was - as I often do - I combined two actual events because my life is too boring and normal without doing that.

In this case, the first was my boyfriend going on his first European business trip since we started cohabiting. I went a bit crazy and decided that going to a bar by myself in a short dress and flirting with guys was the way to go (yes I am obviously still a teen at heart).

The second was an earlier Face Time session we had when he was on a domestic business trip and involved trying to provide JOI for him.

So I thought it might be interesting if my motivation for the JOI was to say sorry for the more recent ill-advised bar trip (nothing happened beyond flirting BTW - well a lot of flirting TBH ). I tend to work through stuff on my mind by writing about it.

So that’s the story I wrote. But I managed to reverse the Europe / US time difference in the process, which rather messed the whole thing up.

The worst thing is that I put the phrase “I’m a details person” in the text. Hubris, much?

What detail (or major item) did you screw up in a published work?

Em

Accidental incest, when I mixed up the names of mother and daughter characters.