Writing Tips – Consistency
We have covered four important topics in our discussions about the art of being published; Editing, Criticism, the author's Willingness to act upon suggestions, and most recently, Surprises. A fair amount of territory to cover, to be sure. Consistency is our next topic, and it is a problem that can plague good writers—by hiding through their every read.
Small, and big flaws in narrative consistency can hide through several of the author's most careful reviews. For this reason, we urge that every narrative get a good viewing by a second, and even a third reader, who are not in the book to line edit. (We, honestly, do not recommend more than one line-editor for a book. That might create consistency problems…)
In the broadest terms, this topic is about balance—the correct balance of themes. Scary books should remain pleasantly frightening. Humorous books won't hold the reader if they turn sour. Romance requires a near perfect balance of Drama, Sci-Fi seems to love being paired with Adventure and even Horror themes. Done well, those themes will not collide, or tip the book too far in the wrong direction. Authors, and line-editors, can sometimes be too close to the text to see when the narrative is out of balance.
Readers don't usually overlook such things, because they are not working when they read. Quite often, we hear about some hopeful book that had a good beginning, but a lackluster ending. Or, a Sci-Fi so overloaded with Romance that both camps found fault with it. An out-of-balance book is not usually criticized for having too much of some theme. The usual complaint will be that the book lacked enough of some other element. A good beta reader—with no other task to perform beyond enjoying the story—will spot most broad consistency problems in any narrative.
What about the small consistency errors? Those are the ones, sometimes, so tiny that the best line-editor will struggle to capture them. Those will be typos, often; the author repeatedly refers to 1934, but typed 1943, once, instead; a character's name is misspelled a single time; an article of clothing changes color; a pen becomes a pencil; an open window is opened again; a closed door is shut… Or, those same types of flaws appear in the complex structure of the story; a character with a distinctive dialect fails to use that speech pattern every time they speak; an intimately described house or building is inexplicably altered in layout… It's even possible to have a character leave their auto somewhere to go riding with a friend, then appear in their own car again, without having them return to get it. Just as the mealy little typos tend to hide from every reader in the book—the terrible, plot-crashing flaws can hide—because the text around them is so brief. Just make a character turn the wrong way down an often-used hallway in a grand house, and it might be overlooked for a great while.
The film industry hires highly paid technicians for every movie project, called continuity editors, or script supervisors. They really do study every new camera setup, to make sure the audience never sees the clock-bogging gaps between moments of a film. However, there are some wonderful, infamous, moments in the brilliant Peter Jackson film, Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings. Gandalf has just pulled Sam through Frodo's window, and is holding him down on the parlor table, to scare him. In repeated cuts back to Sam's terrified expression—the books scattered about on the floor appear and disappear. Readers are as astute as moviegoers are. The author then must use the very same diligence to uncover all the little gaps in what they have written. This does take upfront planning, to ease the burden of back-end work.
Some authors never write without an outline. No one should, really. Some authors go so far as to create bios or family trees for their characters, timelines for the plot, and spreadsheets for the facts, diagrams and maps for the settings. For years (before technology), authors were some of the best researchers on the planet. Now, with so many wizardly online tools at our fingertips, it isn't necessary to travel to a distant land before writing about it. It is easier to write to great detail, without much effort in research. But, no author should approach their novel with a complete lack of any tools. At the least, that would put a terrible strain on the line-editor, who should be praising the author for the job well done. At the worst, the book won't make it to print.
Consistency problems do not always appear as we have described, waiting for a few edits to smooth them out. Some defy light editing. Some require a lot of work to repair. Readers get into a rhythm with the book they are reading. Just as we all enjoy certain types of music, and not others, we 'listen' to the narrative in books much the same way. For that reason, the design of the book needs to be balanced, from the cover, inward. It might surprise you to learn that publishers understand this, and will even design on which page—odd or even— a book's chapters end and begin. The look and feel of the book is tremendously important.
Chapter length, also, really matters and readers may lose their desired rhythm if they are confronted by a wildly varying chapter structure. The narrative should be balanced in such a way that readers are not forced to tag along through suddenly tedious pages, only because the author decided to demonstrate their ability to write details. Or, the opposite; writing in a single sentence chapter, for dramatic effect. Rather than enhancing the reader's experience, such structure elements may only draw attention to themselves.
Character development is another area that may defy simple editing techniques. There are countless books—bestsellers, even—with great lead characters… and wooden, two-dimensional supporting characters, because the author chose to describe them in uneven terms. This does not imply each character must be given an exact number of paragraphs to introduce them. We are urging attention to narrative balance, not narrative rigidity. Authors should apply their best efforts to describing settings, characters, speech, emotions, and actions with as much consistency as they are able.
Put in the simplest terms, consistency is: what you begin with, you conclude with.
Whether a story is lopsided, because of poorly stacked elements, or has a character removing boots that only a page before were trainers, consistency can be a book-crashing problem, and a serious chore to locate and eliminate. As close as their nose will always be to the text…we will always hold this opinion—the author is seldom the right person for that important job. The author needs the extra help of beta readers, to discover those problems, before the public gets a chance to point them out in a review.
