Editing and Publishing by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

I am beginning to hate digital content online. The mistakes I see the online stories are glaring, obvious, and jarring.

Case in point, I read a story on Facebook that seemed compelling, but it had a massive mistake. In the story, a small child swallowed something which was caught in her throat. In the early paragraphs the main character, who was the father, noted that his wife was not wearing her wedding ring, but it brushed it off because she hadn’t been wearing it for months because she lost it.

Later in the story, the author reveals that object stuck in his daughter’s throat is HIS wedding ring which had been missing for months.

Do you see the error?

Now I know since the first statement is near the beginning of the story and the last several pages later most people would either brush the error as misremembered or not even notice the inconsistency at all. The problem would be I’m not most people. If I’ve read something, I remember it. I can’t quote exactly, but I remember it.

That is why I have so much trouble with these online stories, but lately I’ve even found continuity errors in published books! Books I enjoyed, except for the continuity errors, which I honestly tried to ignore.

We can start with the series I am currently reading. I found it on Amazon, a sweet romance. I love sweet romances. This is an author I’ve never read before. She is a wonderful author, I love her stories, except for the continuity errors. Most of which are from one book to the next.

In one book of the series, the bride of the oldest son was living with the matriarch in the old family home and helping on the family ranch while the oldest son finished his enlistment. In the very next book, said daughter-in-law is barely even present in the story, and at one point the matriarch is home alone, with no mention of where, well any of the daughters or daughters-in-law are at that time. Some were clearly at work, but, again, one worked at the ranch where the home was.

That is not all, in one book the youngest daughter and her new husband were leaving for a year tour/honeymoon in Europe. Yet in the next two books, only weeks or months later, they are still around. They practically eloped because he had to get on his tour immediately, yet months later they had not left.

That is in a series from one book to the next. And while I enjoy the stories, those errors bug me, big time.

But that is not the only continuity errors I found. In a single book the last name of a minor family in the storyline was on one occasion changed to another name, and on a couple of other occasions the first names of two of those family members were also changed.

Now I know how an error like this can occur. It has happened in the editing stage for both Konnie and me. We changed the character’s name for whatever reason and missed a few places where they needed changed.

This happens, but this kind of error that line edits are supposed to catch. This is a published book!

I want to make this clear that all these errors are editing mistakes, not writing mistakes. The writing is solid, the story compelling. The editing leaves something to be desired.

And it is not just continuity errors. In some Facebook stories I’ve seen stories where some words are only partially there. Not missing entirely, not misspelled, or the wrong spelling for a word that sounds the same, but means different things. Which are mistakes I have made when I’m typing fast. I’m talking about typos where the complete word is not even there! Unless of course there is a word that is just “ing.”

I find it most disheartening that a multi-published author couldn’t maintain the continuity of her work from one book to the next.

I mean I’ve spent most of my life outraged that all the books in the Boxcar Children series completely ignore the continuity of the series after book nineteen. However, after that point, the original author did not write the additional books. It is still inexcusable, but different people wrote them. Except to have a single author make these kinds of errors? I wonder if I’m the only one who cares about continuity, though I know I can’t be. I can’t be the only one who remembers everything they read, and I most certainly am not the only one on the spectrum.

All I can say is, “Do better people!”

By the way, I have found typos in the local newspaper as well.

Anyway, happy writing, everyone!