Readers hate being interrupted when entrenched in a book.
They hate it when the dog is whining for a walk. Or when the neighbor starts drilling holes in the wall. Or . . .
. . . when a writer carelessly causes a hiccup in the story.
Yes, writers often interrupt the reading experience by not following a strict idea track or logical chronology. This results in what we call “continuity issues.”
In my decade of editing, I have found that continuity is difficult for many writers. I’ve encountered everything from misplaced chapters to paragraphs that read as though they had just tumbled out of a dryer.
Continuity issues have disastrous consequences for your book, from confusing your reader to nullifying the impact of your writing.
In this blog, you’ll learn where continuity issues arise, so you’ll be able to spot and fix them.
The Road Analogy: Writing without Potholes
Imagine taking your family on a road trip to a nature reserve a hundred miles away. The main roads you take are new and smooth: you can sit comfortably and have no trouble following the kids’ conversations in the back—or their bickering. But sooner or later, you’ll encounter a dirt road, full of potholes and bumps. The car jumps this way and that so noisily that even the fiercest shouting fails to carry a sensible message your way.
What causes this bumpiness? The problem is that the dirt making up the road isn’t evenly distributed. In some places, there’s too much; in other places, too little.
I see the same bumpiness in many of the manuscripts I work on. And there is a solution. Let’s check out what you can do to give your book a smooth reading experience.
Potholes in Your Prose
A pothole in your writing is missing information. One sentence takes a leap to the next, leaving something unexplained between period and capital. It can be a dent or a bathtub-size hole. The bigger the hole, the worse the confusion.
Example
Here’s an example from my own journal (which I cut up to demonstrate the principle):
Somewhere between two and four in the morning, the little man starts squirming in between our pillows. He stuffs his hands into his mouth and whimpers to inform us he’s past due. My wife gets up, sighs. She drags her exhausted body to the living room. While she latches the baby onto the organic latte machine, I turn around and pray for a little more sleep.
You see the pothole? The baby is lying in between me and my wife. My wife leaves the room, apparently without the baby. But then she latches him on—so the baby was with her after all. It’s also unclear where I am in the last sentence.
One way to fix the continuity would be:
My wife gets up, sighs. I place the baby in her arms, and she drags her exhausted body to the living room where I help her get comfortable on the couch . . .
See how it makes more sense now? Readers can follow the action from place to place without confusion about how the situation evolves.
Proportion
Not everything demands an explanation. But when you find something does, adding one short clause or phrase is usually enough to avoid confusion.
There’s the risk of overexplaining. Did you care on which elbow I was leaning when I picked up the baby? That the door to the left of our bed led to a narrow hallway flanked by bookshelves on one side and picture frames on the other? Or that I had to switch on two lights on my way to the living room?
Probably not. Continuity issues arise only when information is missing that’s important for a proper understanding of the story. Adding too many unnecessary details launches you into another problem: disproportionality.
While self-editing, always follow every movement, and be on the lookout for missing information. But always keep it in proportion.
Bumps in Your Prose
Readers encounter bumps in your writing when you provide information that shouldn’t be there, obstructing the flow of prose and logic.
Let’s return to our example (additions underlined).
Somewhere between two and four in the morning, the little man begins to squirm in between our pillows. He stuffs his hands into his mouth and whimpers to inform us he’s past due. I had read on babysleepingsite.com that babies of up to four months still need to be fed two or three times per night. This will only really become less after seven months or up. If it takes much longer, it is recommended to consult a doctor. My wife slowly gets up, sighs. I place the baby in her arms, and she moves her exhausted body to the living room where I help her get comfortable on the couch. While she latches the baby onto the organic latte machine, I turn around and pray for a little more sleep.
Though possibly interesting to some, the added information interrupts the story flow and lacks relevance in this narrative. If the readers want to learn about feeding schedules, they can read a book about that.
It boils down to focus: What belongs in your story and what doesn’t?
Do you want help finding the focus of your story? Book a free coaching call.
Bumps and Potholes Together: Misplaced Information
Even if the information on feeding schedules is relevant to the story, it doesn’t belong in the narrative flow; it belongs somewhere else. Probably, the information is either repeated or missing elsewhere. I see this regularly when editing: the excess in one place is exactly what’s needed to fill a pothole in another.
Bumps and potholes in the literary dirt road are the result of a careless structuring of information. If the example above were a three-plus-two explainer (a five-part article switching between narrative and explanatory digressions), the information about feeding schedules would belong in a digression. The solution would be to copy-paste the sentence into the right place and smooth out the transitions.
If you can’t find a reasonable location for the information, you probably don’t need it.
Bumps and Potholes in Narrative: Chronology
Lengthy scenes can also have bumps that should fill potholes further down the narrative stream—or the other way around. Pieces of past and future creep into the timeline for no obvious reason. Every time past or future events interfere with chronology, it slows the reader down. It takes him out of the story’s present and trains his focus on happenings outside the timeline he is immersed in, lessening the reading experience and, therefore, the impact of your story.
Of course, you can use interior monologue—you describe what’s happening in your viewpoint character’s head as he remembers things. But in that case, the act of remembering is performed in the present—the continuity isn’t broken.
Always look for anachronistic events—and if you find a slice of past or future in your scene, check if it needs to be cut. Or, if not, whether you can use a narrative device such as interior monologue or dialogue to restore continuity.
Editors Even Out the Bumps and Potholes in the Literary Road
Is your story full of bumps and potholes? I can help you even them out and get your chronology straight. Your story will be more impactful and enticing.
Schedule a discovery call or send me a message below.