Monday, February 13, 2012

Pet Peeves: Continuity and Logic Errors

Somewhere along the line, most writers are going to be trying to convince someone (or lots of someones) to buy their story. It may be an editor, it may be readers if you go the self-publishing route. There's lots of things you don't want to do to people you're trying to get to buy your story. Making them feel bored is obviously a big no-no. Repeated typographical or grammatical errors are another one.

Something that's subtler, but a real pet peeve of mine, are errors in continuity, facts, or logic.



"Continuity" is probably the least familiar term from that list. It refers to keeping everything consistent. If a character's wedding ring is gold in the first scene it doesn't become titanium half-way through the book. (Well, unless it's a different ring, of course...) Or, a character who has a lackadaisical manner to their speech and uses lots of slang doesn't start sounding live Jeeves the butler partway through the story. (Again, unless there's a reason for the change.) When continuity fails, it pulls the reader out of the story -- reminds them that they are reading -- and that makes the experience suffer.

The concept of a factual error is pretty straightforward. Saying that the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1800 is going to throw your readers for a major loop unless you're writing an alternate history story. One that was particularly jarring for me, so much so that I wrote a whole blog post about it on my short-lived earlier blog, was a factual error in the novel Let the Right One In. It's set in Sweden in the early 1980s and near the beginning of the book, there's a reference to a character owning a lot of Goosebumps books. One problem... The Goosebumps series didn't start until about 10 years later! I was so baffled by that reference that I went looking on the internet to see if maybe the American series was a recreation of a European series of stories from earlier decades. As far as I could tell then (and now) that wasn't the case and it was simply a mistake either on the part of the author or (more likely, I suspect) the translator. I read this book over two years ago and I still remember this. Maybe (OK, probably) that says something about me. Still, getting facts wrong in your story can make readers feel unhappy. So, best not to do that!

Logic errors are those times when you're reading a story and two and two adds up to three or five. These are the hardest of this group to describe and aren't usually the sort of thing that just jumps up and smacks you in the face. One example would be the "idiot plot" story where the story happening as the writer tells it depends on one or more characters acting like a blithering idiot. Say there's a heist story where the thieves' plan depends on getting a security guard away from their post for ten minutes. A simple false alarm for a fire probably isn't going to be enough for that. If you show the guard going off to investigate the alarm and not coming back for an excessively long time, there'd better be a reason. (You could have, for example, have previously established that the guard hated being at their station and would use any excuse to stay away for a few extra minutes. That's not a great example, but you get the idea.)

Ultimately, all of this comes down to keeping your reader immersed in the story and not reminding them that they're reading words on a page (or screen) that someone else wrote. Sure, you want them remembering your name, but you don't really want them thinking about it when they should be thinking about your characters and all the awful situations you're putting them in!

Do you have pet peeves when you're reading fiction that yank you out of the story?

15 comments:

  1. Sure but even Pulitzer winners can have factual errors in them. (And I know of one that has two factual errors at least in the hardcover. I always wonder if they bothered to change them or not for later editions.)

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    1. Thanks for stopping by!

      I'd guess there are also Pulitzer winners where the final copy had a (non-intentional) spelling or grammatical error, too. That wouldn't mean that people should do their best to avoid them.

      It's a fair point, though, that nothing's going to be perfect. If someone's waiting for the perfect novel to be completely satisfied, they'll have a long wait! :)

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  2. Especially in the case of self-published novels, I would say this is another excellent reason to get a professional editor to look things over (which one should be doing anyway, but I digress). Of course, even traditionally published novels have these issues, but I would at least feel better about putting something out there.

    I've done my fair share of research upon research, such as the American military, that in the end I feel fairly confident about things I've written. But man I just wait for the day when someone with real life experience goes "lol no" at what I wrote, ha.

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    1. Good comments, Hildred! Thanks for stopping by.

      That's something where finding someone you know personally who has insights into a topic can help. I know very little about, for example, firearms. But I know people who can reality-check something I wanted to write on that topic.

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  3. I dislike getting pulled out by awkward flow. And by inconsistent facts. Where the secondary character is 6'1" and aged 40, then suddenly 6'3" - Maybe they meant shoes?

    That and implausible circumstances (for me this often includes love triangles).

    Great post!

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    1. That's an interesting point about implausible circumstances... I'd like to think that many things which are implausible can be made believable-enough with good writing. But certainly if you're making readers say "Oh, come ON!" then you're not hitting the mark. :)

      Thanks for stopping by, KT!

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  4. I'm generally turned off by massive infodumps or "as you know, Bob" characters who exist only to deliver clunky exposition to the reader.

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    1. Good ones, Daniel! I think "As you know, Bob" is even more frustrating than a text infodump because it requires a conversation which is -- tying back to KT's comments -- implausible. There's no reason for Lisa to be reminding Bob how the flux inhibitor works considering they invented it together!

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  5. I think the most important way for an author to look at this is issue is to realize that while, sure, having incorrect facts may disconnect the reader, perhaps more important is the idea that knowing a lot of correct facts gives you more interesting tools for your story.

    False "facts" may sometimes drop somebody's suspension of disbelief, but interesting facts that enrich your story and give detail to it will always improve it.

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    1. Yes, indeed. That's a very good point! It helps makes settings and characters feel more alive when you can provide that kind of detail. Thanks for stopping by with your comment.

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  6. One could argue that any genre fiction set in the past is inherently "alternative history," since, technically speaking, none of the events mentioned are compatible with natural law and therefore necessarily imply a rewritten set. *I* wouldn't argue that unless I happened to be one of the writers that made such a chronological glitch.

    My pet peeve is bad romance dialogue / prose. Mervyn Peake is, in my mind, one of the best fantasy authors of the last century, but everything he wrote in the Titus Groan series related to romantic relationships might as well have been written by Stephanie Myers. I cringed. I winced. I ultimate skipped those parts to preserve my adoration of the rest.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by with your comments, Marzioli.

      Bad dialogue of any kind is another real "turn-off" for me. I love good dialogue, though, so it goes both ways.

      Dialogue is an interesting topic in general, because what makes for good dialogue in print isn't necessarily *that* close to how people actually talk...

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  7. Hi there :o)

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    1. Thanks for the heads-up! I will see about stopping by to check this out.

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  8. A nice list you have here! I totally agree with most of your points, it really annoys me! Idiot plot comes up quite often when I read fiction and your description of it is perfect. By the way, I wrote a post about my own fiction pet peeves on my blog so I hope you will read and comment with your own opinion telling me what you think! http://nynyonlinex.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/fiction-pet-peeves/

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