Mistakes

[seun]

I've been doing a lot of editing lately and have picked up on a number of mistakes that slipped by me the first time.

I have forgotten about a character in the middle of a scene involving several characters.
I've had a character tap someone on the shoulder even though I placed them several feet apart two lines previously.
I've had a character shout during a tense scene in which they needed to be quiet.
And my personal favourite: a character finishes their cigeratte...and then carries on smoking.

Anyone got any other cock ups?

[Willowmound]

Yesterday I caught a character of mine hanging out with her dead dad. Not a good look...

[Linda Adams]

Referred to a Confederate character as a Federal ...

[Nangleator]

I got into this terrible mixup in a science fiction story. See, I had an airlock within an asteroid. The place has been abandoned so long that the atmosphere froze out -- vacuum everywhere.

So, the explorer finds a tunnel leading to the airlock. He heats up the tunnel, which turns the frozen atmosphere inside back into gas. Fine. Then he has to get into the airlock, which is in vacuum. Think that door swung open fast? What if it opened outward?

And thence the inner door of the airlock. The interior is a LOT bigger that the volume of the airlock. Does the inner door swing inwards or outwards? How do you warm up the interior from inside the lock?

Geez.

[Saundra Julian]

I once had a store front with plate glasses windows...and a woman who felt a little sheep ...duh!

The very best I've ever heard was when a friend of mine wrote her MC put her lipstick back in her eel skin pus*y! Goodness...

[Nangleator]

Must... restrain... self... uh!

[seun]

I once had a store front with plate glasses windows...and a woman who felt a little sheep ...duh!

The very best I've ever heard was when a friend of mine wrote her MC put her lipstick back in her eel skin pus*y! Goodness...

I think your friend wins so far :D

[Perks]

I changed the neighbor's name a third of the way through. Just caught it yesterday. I love the 'find and replace' command.

[Tracy]

I had a character called Phil, and my editor wanted me to change it as the MC was called Patrick, and it's best not to have characters starting with the same initital in case it confuses the readers.
Fair enough, the work of a moment, to change his name to Darren via that magic Search & Replace.
Until the editor pointed out, amidst gales of laughter, my passing reference to that well known American city of Darrenadelphia!!!

But there have been plenty of others. Sitting down when the character's already sat down, messing up timelines - you name it. All first draft stuff stuff, hopefully.

[jbal]

I just caught one where a character had been knocked down and stood up... and then stood up again a few sentences later (just caught it).
But my favorite was someone stepping on a crayon and grinding it into the carpet...in the kitchen. Must've lost track of that one.

[LeeFlower]

I just had a character take a sea voyage and then appear in her city of departure three days later. That was a good one. I had to write her off of the ship, because she definetely needed to be in the city.

Same story, a character worried about the quality of her clothes in chapter one because she can't afford nice ones makes an offhand comment about her family's small fleet of trade ships in chapter twelve... ::headdesk::

[Prawn]

This one got thru several drafts:

I kept referring to "Officer Earlierinthebook".

I just got used to it and never went back to check what his name actually was when he had first been introduced in Chapter 1.

[PeeDee]

I wrote a wonderful scene in my novel which was the kick-off point for a whole sub-plot, and then.....I forgot to ever come back to it, or even mention it.

*sigh*

I will probably just can that one scene, since obviously the side-plot wasn't riveting or important enough for me to remember.

[nevada]

My character went to bed Sunday night and woke up the following morning, Sunday morning. My mom caught that one.

[BardSkye]

Perhaps he was on a ship that crossed the international date line?

Unfortunately, I've done most of the above. Well, except for the "eel-lined p**sy."

[veinglory]

I actually send a book to my editor hwere I changed the characters name mid sex scene and then back. So all of a sudden there were three of them in bed. That was embarrassing

[Carrie in PA]

I've done a bunch of stupid stuff like having my character get up when he/she is already up, or going downstairs when he/she is already there. I pray I'll catch it all in editing!

[gp101]

This usually happens to me in the revision phase when I hack away all the extraneous scenes and forget to make the scenes ahead of it and before it make sense on their own. Of course, I still suffer from the occasional brain fart and make impossible situations for the characters.... which requires even more revision.

[britlitfantw]

He tucked her hair behind her hair.

...

Oh yeah, that's productive ... *tut tuts at her character*

[seun]

There's some good stuff here. I'm smiling and feeling glad that others mess up as well.

Just to add to my mistakes: a character in a record store asks another character if the delivery has arrived. He is told no. Three lines later, he's opening the boxes that haven't arrived.

[maddythemad]

In the very first book I wrote, I had a character break her leg. . . then run away from a couple of badguys, kick a few people's a$$es, and walk through an entire forest. . . only to remember that her leg was broken, and lie down on the ground, wailing in pain.

[Dollywagon]

I've wanted to say this for ages (nothing to do with the thread,) I've also got a Maddy the Mad. Except she is a duck. But not actually a duck because she is a drake (but looked like a duck when younger, hence the name,) then again he/she is not really a duck either because he/she is actually a muscovy duck which is genetically out on its own because it's actually more closely related to the goose family.

Anyway, my Maddy the Mad, is so called because he/she actually thinks he/she is a chicken.

It causes problems.

I make mistakes when writing as well. I really can't understand why.

[ChaosTitan]

In the very first book I wrote, I had a character break her leg. . . then run away from a couple of badguys, kick a few people's a$$es, and walk through an entire forest. . . only to remember that her leg was broken, and lie down on the ground, wailing in pain.

A character did this in a PBEM game I participated in years ago. I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair.

[DamaNegra]

Once, my character yelled at her boyfriend and ran out of the room, slamming the equation behind her.

[LeeFlower]

I mix languages up sometimes... I had a story once where someone spoke to the MC in Spanish, and she replied (in spansish) "I'm sorry, I don't speak [even half] a word of Spanish. Do you speak English?"

[Andre_Laurent]

I just found one. The MC is in bed, pretending to be asleep and this girl who is hot to trot for him climbs in with him and it read, "... and curled against his cool body." Two sentences before that, it states he is dressed in sweat pants and a t-shirt. DOH! :Shrug:

[earthshoes]

I'm the world's worst for forgetting minor character's names (I have big problem with names in real life, too). One maid in Witness Tree vacillated between being Susy and Jill. When I realized I'd named her husband Jack I fixed it.

I had a character surprised by the same information twice.

I mentioned this to another friend who writes who relayed to me that a famous actor presented his newly written book to his agent for review. When he asked the agent what he thought, the agent replied, "Pretty good, except that you killed the same guy twice."

Nice to know it happens to all of us.

[Alex Bravo]

Every now and then, I'll be writing a scene and for some reason I'll type the name of another character who I guess I'm thinking about but who isn't in the current scene. So I've had reading friends write notes like, "I didn't know this character was there." Ooops!!!!

[Alan Yee]

Earlier in my novel (which I'm not done writing yet), I had the bad guy's wife pack a gun into her purse before leaving. When she got to the place where her husband was, she suddenly didn't have it anymore. Oops. Thankfully, it wasn't a huge problem, so I fixed it quickly.

There's one minor character named Bruce whose hair color I kept blanking out on for a minute. I knew it was either brown or black, but I had to go back to check. It was brown, and I'm managing to keep that consident for the rest of the book. I will have to go back and fix all the places where I might have accidentally said it was black.

One time I accidentally thought it was the husband's brother who used to be lovers with my black character named Mitch. I was wrong. Earlier in the book, I had actually said it was Bruce. However, Mitch had a consistent pattern with his past lovers that made it more logical for him to have been partners with both of them at one time. That problem was fixed with a little tweaking.

I'm catching more of the little mistakes as I go, now that I'm more familiar with the story and characters. Hopefully, I won't make a huge mistake that I won't be able to fix later.

[Willowmound]

I knew it was either brown or black, but I had to go back to check. It was brown, and I'm managing to keep that consident for the rest of the book. I will have to go back and fix all the places where I might have accidentally said it was brown.

Looks like you're doing it again there, Alan Yee!

[Alan Yee]

Looks like you're doing it again there, Alan Yee!

That was seriously a typo. It was!

[Anonymisty]

Fair enough, the work of a moment, to change his name to Darren via that magic Search & Replace.
Until the editor pointed out, amidst gales of laughter, my passing reference to that well known American city of Darrenadelphia!!!

Tim Powers once told the story of his own Search&Replace boo-boo. He'd named a character David, then decided to change it to Dondi instead. He user S&R to make the change, and only later discovered that the motorcycle in his novel had been transformed into a Harley Dondison. *grin*

[Aubrey]

I'm constantly tweaking as I go along, so believe me this happens all the time, generally with character name changes. I just read something written ages ago where I changed the character's name and for the life of me I couldn't remember if Emma was name #2 for the OCs's sister or some background character.

I also had a character whose life had been spent with just him and his dad on the road. His parents had divorced really early and mom wasn't even much a part of his life and had her own family. Who came to the character's graduation? Why dear old little brother! Not half brother either. No idea where he came from.

[LeeFlower]

Neil Gaiman had a funny S&R story at Balticon. When the British slang was getting changed for the American release of one of his stories, the editor S&R all instances of "Flat" for "Apartment." Unfortunately, this resulted in a few characters saying things 'apartmently.'

[Nangleator]

Search and Replace is a powerful and powerfully dangerous tool.

[Mod35tBabe]

I once temporarily paralysed a character, had her wheeled into the church for a funeral, at the end she got up and walked out, got into a car and got out at the cemetary and walked to the grave site and back, and the next day ran to catch a bus. Whoops! I wrote the whole book and when I re-read it the 2nd-3rd time it wasn't until then I picked it up. I've also done the Find and Replace cos I had a character named Beatrice and Bea for short, decided Id change it and than changed it back from whatever name I'd picked, and it had changed Beautiful into Beatriceful.

[seun]

I have another one :)

I changed a character's name from Matt to Matty. Unfortunately, it had a small effect on the word 'matter'.

[Doctor Shifty]

I found the value of an independent editor this year, rather than trying to do all the stuff myself.

She picked up that the teenage MC could not afford to take his girlfriend to the movies that afternoon but a page later bought her a gift that could easily have cost more than two movie tickets. She asked her teenage kids how much this thing would cost and gave me a range of prices. It was easy to find another reason why they did not go to the movies, and the new reason also fitted the story better.

She also saw that early in the story the MC said he knew a bit of Bob Dylan but later in the story a song appears that he didn't know, ironically recorded by Dylan on a later album. Once again it was easy to change the emergence of the Dylan thing to better fit the MC and the story.

She picked up what most people would not have noticed, and there is no way I would have thought of checking those things up.

[Doctor Shifty]

Search and Replace is a powerful and powerfully dangerous tool.

I recently had to pass on the draft wedding service leaflet to the groom, who I worked with, from a friend, the minister doing the wedding. He'd obviously done a quick replace on an older wedding service, changing John to Kevin. Trouble was, there was now a reading from the gospel of Kevin. It was such a mis-placed word in that context that it was like it was in bold capitals and hit the eye as soon a the page was turned.

Luckily, the word processor I use has the option to track to the next occurence and either replace it or skip to the next one.

[gwendy85]

I keep writing SHOULDER when I should be writing SOLDIER. Perhaps I have too many bullet injuries (for my characters) in that area...

[smiley10000]

Search and Replace is a powerful and powerfully dangerous tool.

Not if used properly.

In Word:
If you are going to use the replace all function, FIRST click the button that says "more options". There is a box that says "find whole words only" select this then hit replace all.

Note: you will need to go one at a time through the remaining not whole words options to find all instances of: XXX's

Happy find and replacing!
:D 10000

[Ardellis]

I had two secondary characters who were cousins at the start of the story somehow become siblings by the middle of the draft. My husband has to point it out to me.

[Soccer Mom]

I was once very hungry while writing and thinking about what I would like to eat. When I reread the draft later, I noticed that instead of missing the "boat", someone had missed the "hamburger." Later in the same draft I had subconsciously written "fries."

Um--Hello, Dr. Freud!

[Susan Gable]

Not if used properly.

In Word:
If you are going to use the replace all function, FIRST click the button that says "more options". There is a box that says "find whole words only" select this then hit replace all.

Note: you will need to go one at a time through the remaining not whole words options to find all instances of: XXX's

Happy find and replacing!
:D 10000

Thank you! That's a handy little tip. I usually just refrain from find and replace all, so I can check each one and make sure it's not part of another word. This is will help a lot!

Susan G.

[soloset]

I'm jealous, I haven't any funny mistakes at all. Mine are usually very prosaic and almost always related to the timeline.

In one I caught yesterday, the heroine reads a reference to a death in an old article about a family wedding. Except that the dead guy is the father of a character who isn't born until three years after the wedding. Ooops.

And my characters keep spilling the beans about themselves. The killer's connection to the family must remain a secret until near the end of the story; it's a crucial piece of the puzzle that makes the rest of the pieces fall into place. So why, exactly thirty seconds after coming on stage, is the villain telling the heroine all about it?

I'm letting it stand for now, just in case my subconscious is smarter than I am. ;)

[CaroGirl]

In a short story I once had a character pop cookies into the oven, answer the door, and then yank the cookies out of the oven again, completely baked, about 5 seconds later. I got to have that pointed out to me by the editor who rejected the story. Oh well.

[Akiahara]

my main character jogged after her friend after being held down in a chair by a vampire.

oops.

at least i caught it a few minutes later.

[Old Hack]

A writer who is quite well known changed her MC's name from David to Jeff, then was asked by her agent who Michelangelo's Jeff was. Fabulous.

As for me, my writing is stuffed with errors. I can't count them, there are so many!

[Marlowe]

This one isn't a huge thing, but there's a big scene in my current novel set on an RV, and I mentioned characters looking into the rearview mirror a couple of times- somebody had to write in and tell me that RV's don't actually have rearview mirrors, which is something I would've realized if I'd thought for more than few seconds about it...

[azchick]

I have a bad habit of leaving more clues and tidbits in the begining, then having to go back and clear them up. My first draft had three clues that never fit into the overall puzzle, so I had to go back and fix it.

[DeadlyAccurate]

I can't think of any of the big ones right off the bat, but one I realized the other day was that I'd named a corporation in my book Anderson Smith. Anyone who's seen The Matrix will understand why that name seemed so familiar to me.

[Akiahara]

I can't think of any of the big ones right off the bat, but one I realized the other day was that I'd named a corporation in my book Anderson Smith. Anyone who's seen The Matrix will understand why that name seemed so familiar to me.
i think that's kinda fun. mr. anderson and mr. smith.

right on. :P

[Saundra Julian]

I changed the clothes of my MC from "flapper" to the more conservative styles of the late 20’s. So instead of complaining about her dress being so short, she remarked, “It’s so low-cut.”
Worked well, except I forgot to change a comment from the lady she was talking to and she said, “But, Goldie, you have such pretty knees.”

[Selcaby]

The back room in my characters' house is often referred to as "the front room". Oops. The reason is that I merged two characters so there aren't as many people living there as there used to be, so the house needed to have fewer bedrooms and I ended up redesigning the whole layout.

Come to think of it, I often find myself typing the name of one of the characters I took out, instead of her replacement. And in real life, nearly calling my friend, who has the same name as the character I took out, by the name of the new character.

[Higgins]

I've been doing a lot of editing lately and have picked up on a number of mistakes that slipped by me the first time.

I have forgotten about a character in the middle of a scene involving several characters.
I've had a character tap someone on the shoulder even though I placed them several feet apart two lines previously.
I've had a character shout during a tense scene in which they needed to be quiet.
And my personal favourite: a character finishes their cigeratte...and then carries on smoking.

Anyone got any other cock ups?

I've racked my brain, but I really cannot beat "eel-skin *****"...

[Saundra Julian]

LOL, that is a classic!

[Nangleator]

Reminds me of the old TV commercial about the bathroom cleaner that got out those "tough, baked-in stains" from the toilet.

:eek:

Never eating at your house, lady.

[Higgins]

Reminds me of the old TV commercial about the bathroom cleaner that got out those "tough, baked-in stains" from the toilet.

:eek:

Never eating at your house, lady.

Hmmm...maybe the methane ignites in the poop?

[icerose]

I have a bad habit of forgetting my MC's name and renaming her/him halfway through but forgetting to make it all the same until I read it again and stop myself.

I don't have anything quite like the eel-skin though. :flag:

[MMWyrm]

My big problems come with time lines. I regularly have something like "only 4 days left" and then my characters proceed to live through a week before getting to the end.