Writing Tips: Consistency

Writing Tips: Consistency

One of the most challenging – yet most fun – factors of writing Fantasy is Worldbuilding and Character building. Both of these require you to create entirely new, fictional entities from scratch. While this can be both challenging and fun, it comes with its own risks.

First, it’s important to take notes. Always, always, always. When I was writing Orcblood Legacy: Honor, I lost my notes along the way as I kept putting the book aside over the years. When I came back to it, I would try to recall what I wrote, or skim through the reading to get the necessary details. I’ll explain how well that worked below:

Crepusculus’ Lair Placement:

2012 (Start of Book): Eastern corner of the map
2013 (After dropping the book for a year): Western corner of the map
2014: Eastern corner of the map
2015: Eastern corner of the map (yay! still in the same spot)
2016: Center of map (What? Why?)
2017: Eastern corner of the map (This is getting a little old)
2018: Western corner of the map

After doing the diligent review, I realized that the Lair needed to be in the Western corner of the map. I had no idea how I managed to get it in the Center, let alone constantly returning it to the East (it made no logical sense to be East). 

This is where consistency comes into play. If I had not went through my review and followed the logic of where the Lair should be, it would have completely destroyed the whole story. I won’t go into details, but perhaps if you read the book you’ll understand what I mean. But, trust me, this book would have failed entirely if I had left the Lair in the East. You know how people constantly bring up plot holes on even famous works, such as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter? Where they’ll let the extent of the internet and all its inhabitants know that the single fact they mentioned uproots the entire story? Yeah, this would have been that.

Needless to say, sticking to your facts and keeping them straight are important. This goes past Worldbuilding and is really prominent in characters as well. Often a character that has a certain trait or appearance will change in your mind, or as you write them. I’ll give a few examples of things I struggled with throughout writing the story:

Inconsistencies of Characters: 
1. Cormac originally had hair, but a clean-shaven face. Now, he’s bald with a beard (which I prefer). Additionally, his eye-patch had shifted eyes a few times (maybe that eye was just a little tired and wanted some shut-eye, pun intended).
2. Elethain had black hair, but it was changed to be a golden white. 
3. Blood Color. This was a big one. I actually had to make a list (after completing the book and while writing a portion of Book Two, then going back and making sure Orcblood Legacy: Honor was consistent – it was not) of all the different blood colors of the races and creatures in Orcblood Legacy. Black, blue, purple, red, blackened-red, etc. Sometimes I would wound an enemy that had black blood and say the crimson painted the grass – which would not be true.

Consistency is key. Obviously, that’s the point of this post. However, my goal is to show just how easy it is to overlook some of the minor details. I certainly made many mistakes that were found later (which is why it is important to review your work). One thing to keep in mind, is that while they are easy to miss while you’re writing, your readers will not. You are writing over a long period of time, mostly. It is a long road to complete a book – one that will be done piece by piece. Details will be forgotten as you wait until your next writing time, or even six months later when your character(s) finally encounter the same minute detail, such as the color of an ogre’s blood. However, your readers are going through the book much more quickly, so the details are fresh in their mind. 

All in all, as a writer, you WILL make mistakes. You will. And that is okay. It’s better to catch them before print, of course, and that’s where review comes into play. But any details you can keep consistent as your writing just decreases the risk of letting out that one minor detail that can send your book from a fantastic story to a logically-flawed catastrophe. 

Get yourself a notebook, a whiteboard, or even open up Notepad on your computer and start documenting (I do all of the above and still will miss minor details if I’m not paying attention or reviewing my notes constantly). Don’t let your months (or years) of effort bringing your vision to life be cast aside by a single line of text that readers will use to haunt you forever.