Study Your Manuscript For Inconsistencies

Many of the opinions I express in these blogs are just that – opinions. Mine are no more valuable than anyone else’s, unless they are more useful to you than others’ opinions. I hope that’s the case because my goal in these blogs is to assist people who are trying to write and/or sell their first novel.

I learned a lot from writing my first novel – Bamboo Harvester – and it would make me very happy if some people could benefit from what I gleaned along the way. 

One of my opinions that I am most confident about is this: the longer your novel, the more likely you will have inconsistencies you are not aware of. Now, your main character may not have blonde hair in Chapter 1 and black hair in Chapter 20, and the house she lives in may not be a mansion in Chapter 2 and a ranch in Chapter 19, but it’s very possible you have words spelled one way in one chapter and a different way in another.

The biggest culprit when it comes to these types of inconsistencies is the hyphen. As an example, if you use a phrase such as “nitty-gritty,” make sure you don’t hyphenate it on one page and spell it out as two words on another. There are countless phrases that should be hyphenated, especially when used as adjectival phrases. But the real key is to be consistent throughout your manuscript.

So, how do you know whether or not a phrase should be hyphenated? There are differences of opinion here, but it’s important to be consistent. And that means utilizing the same authoritative source throughout the course of editing your novel.

Here’s what I do each time I have a question about whether to hyphenate a phrase. I conduct a Google search and, in this case, type in “nitty,” “gritty” and “Merriam” (as in Merriam Webster). What you’ll see for this example is that the phrase should be hyphenated, regardless of whether it’s used as a noun or an adjectival phrase. 

Of course, hyphenated phrases are only one example of items that can be inconsistently used in your novel. Some words can be spelled a couple of different ways and still be considered correct, but you should pick one spelling and stick with it. A few examples are adviser and advisor, donut and doughnut, and theater and theatre.

Now, it’s possible that readers might not notice if you use “ax” in one chapter and “axe” in another, but a red flag might be raised if you describe an object as blue in one chapter and green in another. And if you write that a man has short hair in one chapter, he shouldn’t have long hair in a later chapter, unless you explain that he let it grow.

The same is true with characters’ personality traits. Readers want to get to know your characters, and if one of them is even-keeled throughout the book, she probably shouldn’t fly off the handle near the end. Other characters should not go from shy to brash or intelligent to ignorant, unless you explain why these transformations are taking place.

At least one time you should read your entire novel while looking for these types of inconsistencies, changing them when you find them. Here’s one way to do that: if you’ve described a character’s four-door Pontiac as black on first reference, type “Pontiac” or “car” into the “Search in Document” bar at the top right of your document to easily find other references to the vehicle. This will ensure that you haven’t referred to it as a brown, two-door ride in another place in your novel.

Remember, consistency is the key to credibility.