by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
Some of you may not know this because I do have a culinary mystery series and was on a food blog for a long time…but I don’t consider myself a good cook.
My problem is that I’m not consistent. And my inconsistency in the kitchen has a lot to do with focus (or lack of it). I’ll cook something that everyone in my family likes and then cook it the next month (differently) and everyone will be forcing it down.
When I first started writing, I didn’t find consistency important. If I’d continued on this track, it would have meant for some really uneven writing in later books. I wasn’t jotting down small facts for later books in the series, for instance. I wasn’t necessarily consistent with characterization, although I managed to smooth that out in later books.
Recipe for consistency in my books:
First off, I keep a story bible. Anytime that I throw out any details about a recurring character or setting, I make sure to keep track of it. Otherwise, it’s all too easy to mess up in later books and ruin that continuity. That’s sure to pull readers right out of a story when they spot it.
I make sure that characters behave in ways that are consistent with who they are. If they don’t, there need to be good mitigating circumstances to explain it. If I change who a character is to make the story work, I’m cheating the reader.
I ensure that the style is consistent. When I worked with Penguin, they would create style sheets for my series to make sure that if I’ve chosen a group to be called the Cut-Ups, that they aren’t called the Cut-ups in other books.
I’m consistent in terms of what I’m delivering in my chosen genre. I’m not throwing in any surprising gore or endangering children because that’s not what readers have come to expect from me or from cozy mysteries, generally.
I make sure settings and characters are consistently familiar to readers, but described in different ways (no copy-pasted descriptions) for the books.
For further reading:
Making a Series Bible Using Excel by Heidi Hormel on the IWSG site
How to Create a Series Bible for Your Fiction by Lorna Faith
A Free Consistency Checker (for Style) as a Google Docs Add-On
Keep Characters Consistent by Shay Goodman
How do you ensure consistency in your writing?
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