{"id":157,"date":"2013-10-29T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/blog\/2013\/10\/29\/tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing_29-3\/"},"modified":"2015-11-25T12:22:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T19:22:16","slug":"tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing_29-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/tactical-tuesday-advice-for-self-editing_29-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Tactical Tuesday: Advice for Self-Editing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nSelf-editing
\nfor plot holes might be the most difficult task an author undertakes. Why?
\nBecause in an author\u2019s mind, the story is all laid out. The characters are in
\nplace. Their relationships are cemented, and the plot is solid in the author\u2019s
\nmind. In other words, author\u2019s get so firmly entrenched in their plot that the
\nholes don\u2019t show up.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nWhat I
\nthought I would do this week is to share with you examples of some of the plot
\nholes and other mistakes I\u2019ve made in my works in progress. <\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nIdentity Errors: <\/b>I recently found a
\nplot hole large enough to drive a tractor trailer through in a work of mine
\nthat I have labored on for thirty-five years\u2014yes, thirty-five years (I thought
\nit was twenty-five, but apparently I\u2019m ten years older than I feel). When I
\nstumbled across it, I marveled at how it had gotten past critique partners and
\nme for so long. The problem was in the identity of one of my major characters.
\nOthers were not supposed to suspect who she was, but she had the same unusual
\nlast name as another character who was related to her. Oops.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nAnother
\ntype of identity error I faced in the past was using a woman\u2019s married name
\nbefore she was married. This is easy to do because we know the past, present,
\nand future of our characters.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nDoes the System Really Work Like That?<\/b>
\nRecently, my editor caught an error with a prison scene in one of my works in
\nprogress. She asked me if the system really worked liked that in the state in
\nwhich my villain was in prison. My only reply to that was, \u201cGreat catch.\u201d I was
\nworking on what I knew of a local jail system and not a state run prison
\nsystem. A little research told me I was wrong, and a change in a couple of
\nsentences resolved the problem.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nThis was
\na great reminder to me to never take procedure for granted. Some things can be
\ndone differently. Research might reveal choices, or it might indicate that
\nthere is only one procedure. Authors should not risk the ire of an informed
\nreader by making up their own process.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nRealistic Character Arcs:<\/b> The same
\neditor mentioned above also called me on the arc of a pretty belligerent
\ncharacter who seemed to become angelic overnight. When I reviewed the
\nmanuscript, I found that she had a right to question the character\u2019s arc.
\nTweaking one scene made that change more realistic. Manuscripts should be
\nreviewed with an eye toward locating and remedying any implausible character
\nchanges.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nTimeline Issues<\/b>: Only in daytime soap
\noperas where children are born one week and turn twenty-one the next are
\ntimelines not an issue. I\u2019ve run across this problem a few times in my works in
\nprogress. A good practice is to keep track of timelines as the story develops.
\nBack track and make sure that a logical timeframe has been followed. Check your
\ncharacter\u2019s birth dates. Do they match up with such things as technology? For
\nexample: were cell phones in use when the character was a certain age depicted
\nin the book? This is important in contemporary and historical novels.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nEven
\nthe smallest of plot holes can derail a plot. The identity error I mentioned
\nabove is a major problem for my novel, but I\u2019ve been able to fix it with a
\nminor tweak. The other instances mentioned seem like smaller details, but to a
\nreader, they might make or break the plot. <\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nThe
\nbest practice for seeking out and plugging that hole in your manuscript is to
\nset the story aside for a while. Letting the story cool for a while, stepping
\nback from what you know, and letting a little of that knowledge seep away, and
\nthen coming back to it, helps to pinpoint a lot of the problems. <\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nBetter
\nyet, put your work into the hands of a beta reader, an editor, or a critique
\npartner who will look at the story as a whole, and ask them to look for any
\nmajor areas where the plot doesn\u2019t come quite together.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nHappy
\nediting.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Self-editing for plot holes might be the most difficult task an author undertakes. Why? Because in an author\u2019s mind, the story is all laid out. The characters are in place. Their relationships are cemented, and the plot is solid in the author\u2019s mind. In other words, author\u2019s get so firmly entrenched in their plot that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[504],"tags":[21,92,18,22,135,136,137,104,70],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editing-writing-advice","tag-editing-advice","tag-editing-helps","tag-editing-tips","tag-editor-tips","tag-editors-tips","tag-editors","tag-plot","tag-plotting","tag-self-editing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}