Crisis On Singular Earths
Jan. 7th, 2011 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinSo, I just got a question in my Formspring alerting me to a continuity error/plothole in Tales of MU... I've edited the previous chapter (445, when Callahan announces her absence) to close it up. As I said in my Formspring answer, this is the sort of thing I worry about with the time difference between real world and story time getting bigger, and one of the reasons I want/need to pick up the pace.
See, I wrote chapter 445 back in May of last year. At the time there were good reasons I wanted Callahan to be out of town for the weekend, reasons which still hold true. I also wanted the opportunity to skip a melee class so that I could get on to the weekend a little bit more quickly, so I had her trip starting on Thursday. In the intervening time, I forgot about the second part, and what's more I decided separately it was important to show the melee class so I could show Mackenzie's progress and have Callahan make her offer. So I had two sets of plans made seven months apart that came to contradictory conclusions, resulting in a conflict in the text.
When I'm not updating steadily, I spend a lot more time going back through the archives and looking at my rare and arcane notes to try to avoid things like this... "Wait, what did I say they were doing in the next class?" I won't be surprised if more such discontinuities pop up when I go through the chapters to collect them. Hopefully they'll all be things I can patch up with a slightly altered line here and there.
I'm perversely better at remembering things that are happening in my stories than I am at remembering things that happen to me in real life, but it's kind of a balancing act, as I don't feel the need to have every plot thread tied up neatly before the next one arrives, and I certainly don't think it's realistic to have the protagonist keeping everything that's happening in the front of her mind at all times... but if she's not thinking about something, there's a good chance that I'm not thinking of it, either.
Anyway, that's what happened with that.
See, I wrote chapter 445 back in May of last year. At the time there were good reasons I wanted Callahan to be out of town for the weekend, reasons which still hold true. I also wanted the opportunity to skip a melee class so that I could get on to the weekend a little bit more quickly, so I had her trip starting on Thursday. In the intervening time, I forgot about the second part, and what's more I decided separately it was important to show the melee class so I could show Mackenzie's progress and have Callahan make her offer. So I had two sets of plans made seven months apart that came to contradictory conclusions, resulting in a conflict in the text.
When I'm not updating steadily, I spend a lot more time going back through the archives and looking at my rare and arcane notes to try to avoid things like this... "Wait, what did I say they were doing in the next class?" I won't be surprised if more such discontinuities pop up when I go through the chapters to collect them. Hopefully they'll all be things I can patch up with a slightly altered line here and there.
I'm perversely better at remembering things that are happening in my stories than I am at remembering things that happen to me in real life, but it's kind of a balancing act, as I don't feel the need to have every plot thread tied up neatly before the next one arrives, and I certainly don't think it's realistic to have the protagonist keeping everything that's happening in the front of her mind at all times... but if she's not thinking about something, there's a good chance that I'm not thinking of it, either.
Anyway, that's what happened with that.
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no subject
on 2011-01-11 01:44 pm (UTC)Mackenzie's delving into local history isn't going to be left behind, in any event.