When The Plot Of A Story Gets A Few Things Wrong

 Fiction writing only works when the plot of a story makes perfect sense.

“The king died, and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. E. M. Forster

It’s an old quote, but I was reminded of it this week. I am in the process of finalising a new manuscript, which will hopefully be ready to publish soon. A short story is easy to track, but the plot of a novel is a complex mixture of many threads.

Having done all the right things, such as getting my beta readers to go to work, and sending me their feedback, as well as a full edit by my editor, the manuscript was getting very close to being ready.

So over the last couple of weeks, I have been straining my old eyes to complete a couple of final reads, looking for those small annoying faults, like misplaced commas, errant formatting, typos, and silly repetition.

Due to the excellent work during the editing stage, there were not a lot of faults, so I was delighted that the end of the process was close. Until that is, a glaring sequence of events error hit me in the face about halfway through what I thought was going to be my final read. It is the kind of problem that usually hits first draft fiction writing.

What was the problem?

In chapter twelve, one of the main characters is in a situation of being thirsty and cursing at not having any beer in the refrigerator. However, I suddenly remembered that earlier on in the story there was a mention about beer.

I searched and found the passage in an earlier chapter. In that chapter, my character drinks a beer, then a second – from two six-packs a friend gave him. Another search for a mention of beer found a paragraph in a much later chapter, where he takes the remaining beer from his refrigerator.

The problem here is that I wrote these three passages months apart, and as the cans of beer were such a minor detail and quite irrelevant to the plot structure, it was easy to read through the error without noticing. But, for a reader, this type of blunder with minor plot points can be very annoying.

Fiction writing is about the minute details

I recall in almost all of my previous books; I found a similar silly sequence and character errors.

One was that a character’s eye colour changed, and another was a child’s age being far too old for the age of the parent. During the final stages of writing the manuscript, I had to change all the dates and ages because I had the climax of the story set six years too early.

I have read some books, in the last few years in particular, that have had small plot problems similar to those I have mentioned, and it is an annoyance that distracts from the enjoyment of the story.

While there is an abundance of advice for authors about checking grammar, spelling, and typos when preparing a manuscript for publishing, perhaps it’s worth adding one more item to review. Be sure that the story, and all of the minor details it contains, make perfect and logical sense.