Nano: Day 10 – Put the red pen down, and back away from the novel…
George reached into his pocket and pulled out…
“Pssst, I’m Sandra, not George”
…Sandra reached into her pocket and…
“My skirt doesn’t have any pockets, remember?”
…Sandra reached into her bag and pulled out a…
“I can’t carry a bag; I busted my shoulder pretty bad back in the second chap…”
Suddenly a car came out of nowhere and struck Sandra, killing her instantly. George reached into his pocket and pulled out…
I’m sure the above is familiar to at least some of you.
A character starts off with a different name, job, age or even gender! And then at some point, intentionally or otherwise, it changes. When this happens it can be annoying. A lot of the time you won’t even be aware its happening, maybe even going so far as to slip back into using the original name, job, gender without releasing your lapse.
This will happen to everyone taking part in nano.
I repeat. Everyone will make this mistake during nano!
It’s completely understandable. You’re writing a hell of a lot of words in a very small time period. You are bound to make mistakes. That’s what editing is for.
But remember, you’re not supposed to be editing yet. You edit AFTER November. Until then a simple note in the margin, or in the middle of the text will do.
For example I wrote about a character suddenly realising that in the conversation he just had, another character answered every question with another question. It sounded witty and tense at the time, the way they avoided his interrogation, BUT if I scroll up she doesn’t actually do this. She really does answer some of his questions.
Cue comment in CAPS LOCK and [square brackets]
[MAKE SURE SHE ANSWERS WITH MORE QUESTIONS IN ABOVE SCENE]
It’s an ugly fix, granted. But if I go back to edit now, I’m sure I’ll find a couple of other things that need tweaking. And then another thing. And then another thing.
You see how this works…
You need to resist the urge to edit when you should be writing. Words are more important at this stage.
You can’t edit a blank page people!
Oh, and be careful with the ‘Find and Replace’ tool. You might think it’s an easy fix to replace your character’s name RED, with FRANK just by using the old find and replace method, but then you suddenly have characters going FRANK in the face with embarrassment and driving dark FRANK cars whilst wearing slutty FRANK coloured lipstick.
Go forth and make mistakes, you have my blessing!
Ha ha! So true.
I did the find and replace error only yesterday but in a different way. Any minor characters that I haven't named yet are just XXX1 and XXX2 etc. Yesterday I named one of them and did the find and replace thing for XXX3…only to realise that I should have done it for XXX2!
I switched the spellchecker off on my computer to stop the dreaded red lines appearing.
My problem is that one of my minor characterrs is based on someone who really existed – and I keep using his real name!
LOL. What you've written is so true. I've got a book with chapter headings and notes to go back and alter something. I don't know why but I don't like seeing capitals in WIP. It must be some sort of phobia!