When you are writing over time and don't reread as you go along..

[Guest]

As I posted yesterday, I had completed the first draft of my 2nd novel. My wife, who is my first beta reader before anyone else sees it, immediately started to work on it. Man, how many errors she found! Not only mis-typos, but places where I changed my characters' names later and places where the action was out of sequence and needed to be moved. I love my wife! She is an educated reader.

She read up to page 173 yesterday. She did a few more pages today, but I took over and finished reading the first pass this afternoon. And I found a few more things that needed changing. That's why we go back through our work, right?

When you are writing over time and don't reread as you go along, you can forget details and names and parts of your own plot. I bet no one else has this problem. Right?

[Laura]

Yep. My editor found several instances of name changes. That’s what I get for project hopping.

[Zoe]

I note every new character down on my notice board and roughly their age when they come into the story so I can refer to it whenever needed. I find it very useful.

[John]

I just spent several hours editing a chapter because I wrote it over several different days, and thus lost continuity and it became repetitive. The struggle is real! But that’s why we edit.

[Hannah]

I am very much pen and paper before typing so I did outlines to keep track.

Now going through reading my drafts, I printed it because I prefer it that way, and I’m using sticky notes to mark anything of important (map or timeline wise) as well as keeping running notes for each character to make sure everything lined up.

[Lynne]

wrong! I have a great editor who checks my historical terminology, even. Not all of them do that, you know. In the latest masterpiece, I kept jumping from one name to another all the way through!

[Bernadette]

I've made a spreadsheet with one page for the names, relationships and physical attributes of each character (so I don't change their eye colour etc half way through) and another for their ages on a timeline of events, so in each of my series I can see at a glance how old each person would be. It's saved my bacon more often than I can count.

[Patrick]

That is why I can't write fiction. Instead, I imagine realities and live them... then write the story. It sounds like your wife is a real treasure for you. Much success to you both