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[RokofAges75]

I'm sure I do, but inconsistencie s with characters and plot usually aren't my problem - I have a pretty good memory for details, and I do a lot of outlining, rereading, and fact-checking, which helps with that.

What annoys me about my older stories are things I could have done a much better job at researching in order to write accurately and did not.  One of my early fanfics was a story about Brian getting addicted to painkillers, and being a naive 15-year-old at the time, pre-AJ's rehab, all I really knew about drugs and addiction were what I'd learned in DARE and 9th grade health class LOL.  Needless to say, that story is embarrassingly bad.  Even with Broken, I put a lot of effort into researching Nick's medical issues and, other than giving him a type of cancer that is more common in children, did a pretty solid job of it, but I dropped the ball on Claire's side of things.  This is why I don't write anything without looking it up nowadays and probably spend more time "researching" than I spend actually writing LOL.

[Pengi]

I've found some incosistencies going back through, but I reread the last 2 chapters every time I sit down to write a new chapter before starting so I do an okay job remembering plot bits and little details in my stories that I bring back up and use later in the plot. I plant a lot of these along the way.

I also research things pretty heavy before I use them in a plot, or I've got personal experience with the topic on hand, or something that I'm basing my story on. For example, Brian's sickness in Something Beautiful was the same as my mother's and even though I edited out almost all the medical-related scenes that I'd written for the story in favor of it being more about the road trip than the sickness (SB was sooo different before I started posting it I swear it was lol), it carried a certain amount of authenticity simply by being something I knew about.

But yes I have problems with inconsistencie s more in the fact that I'll come up with a REALLY STELLAR idea and then I can't use it because somewhere it contradicts something I've already posted. (cough, Time Watcher has this problem, cough... Which is why I can't finish it yet because I need to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B without contradictions, or find a Point C I like better than Point B).

[mare]

I usually go back and reread the last chapter I write before going on to try to prevent inconsistencie s, especially in my action/ adventure ones like Lurks & Whatever the Night which have so many plot twists & turns going on.

With the latter one though, I caught two huge mistakes long after I posted it. One I caught a long time ago and that was a scene where a barn exploded & then a few chapters later there they are in the barn lol the other I just found since Julie is reading it, after she mentioned Shea I had to go back and read it and sure enough I had changed the location if the tear without any explanation at all!! lmao

I give anyone who has read this story credit for not asking me wtf happened to the stadium? I know I would have asked! I find the biggest mistakes I make, go back to the names again! I tend to forget what my smaller characters names are and I have to go back and search so I can remember and not randomly start calling them something else lol which I'm sure I've probably done at one point.

[myconfession]

Karah - I didn't know you used Charlie (Charlotte) too. Which story was she in?

LOL Yep, for "Turn Right." She's a NASCAR driver. The guys are picked as the celebrity spokesmen for NASCAR for the year (like Kelly Clarkson was a few years ago), and they have the film a commercial with the driver... they don't realize Charlie is a girl. LOL

I almost used the name Andy, but went with Charlotte because it's the home of NASCAR lol

[myconfession]

Tonight's question:

Have you ever written a story and then found a lot of inconsistencie s in either the plot or a character after it has been posted? I ask because of finding a few glaring errors in my last one lol

I'm usually pretty good at remembering, especially for small details that might not seem like a big deal at first, but plays a bigger part in the story later.  I also tend to make notes sometimes too and go back to it every so often.

[RokofAges75]

I usually go back and reread the last chapter I write before going on to try to prevent inconsistencie s, especially in my action/ adventure ones like Lurks & Whatever the Night which have so many plot twists & turns going on.

With the latter one though, I caught two huge mistakes long after I posted it. One I caught a long time ago and that was a scene where a barn exploded & then a few chapters later there they are in the barn lol the other I just found since Julie is reading it, after she mentioned Shea I had to go back and read it and sure enough I had changed the location if the tear without any explanation at all!! lmao

I give anyone who has read this story credit for not asking me wtf happened to the stadium? I know I would have asked! I find the biggest mistakes I make, go back to the names again! I tend to forget what my smaller characters names are and I have to go back and search so I can remember and not randomly start calling them something else lol which I'm sure I've probably done at one point.

I wondered about the stadium/museum thing, but they did say the tear could be somewhere NEAR Shea Stadium, as in somewhere outside it, so I thought, "Well, maybe the museum is in that same area."  I think I went to that museum in 2008, but I don't know NYC well enough to know where Shea Stadium is relative to the museum and didn't care enough to look it up, so I just went with it LOL.  I did wonder how they had figured out it was at the museum, though.

I don't think I even noticed the barn thing, but skipping between past and present so much made it harder to keep track of stuff like that, so you probably did yourself a favor there.

[mare]

That and the long gap between the Shea & the museum chapter although for all I know, I may have explained it in the alternative ending and don't even remember lol FAIL!!

[RokofAges75]

LOL It's okay.  Even Harry Potter has inconsistencie s, but if it's a good enough story, no one really cares!

[Carter-Orange]

I have a major inconsistency in one of my romance stories, but it's too late to change it now, lol.  These days I tend to read back on the previous chapter, and I'll also read through if I can't remember something from early on in the story.

[RokofAges75]

After what Steph just said, here's a follow-up question:  Does anyone go back to old stories and revise to correct their inconsistencie s?  I don't mean quick fixes like correcting typos, but revisions that require you to do some actual rewriting.

And going along with that, have you or would you ever rewrite an old story from scratch just to make it better?

As a reader, how would you feel if the author of one of your favorite stories rewrote or changed it?

[FrickingKaos]

There is someone I am friends with who seems to rewrite her story all the time....and now she is changing the characters to include her friends. If you're gonna rewrite it, do it for yourself and not to make your friends happy.

I am rewriting my clone series for the reasons I stated earlier but I am leaving the original stories posted so people can still read them. I am adding things to You Give Love A Bad Name but not rewriting the whole story, just to clear up errors that were pointed out. For me going back to edit after it was written is okay.

[Purpura Lipstick]

I acually rewrote one of my older stories because when I had the issue with the provider of my friend's site that hosted mine, got mad at her he deleted her site with no real warning.  It was after my computer's hard drive crashed so I lost a lot of stuff.  Messing With Magic was lost so I decided to rewrite it from memory so I could post it on AC.

I do remember recently going through Fighting Fate and having to change the color of the girl's eyes cause I had them two different colors. HEH.  That didn't require a major rewrite but it needed to be corrected. 

I have thought about rewriting More Than That.  It is one of my first fanfics written and I've grown so much I would love to give that story a "better shot" but at the same time I hate to mess with my "classics". 

[mare]

I haven't ever thought about going back and rewriting anything. Even with the mistakes, most have been around and read by now with those mistakes so I really feel no urgency to fix them. Maybe if I were to post it somewhere new where people were going to be reading it for the first time, I may go back and fix some mistakes. I would never completely rewrite a story unless I was changing it to an OF.

As far as reading, I wouldn't go back and read a reworked version of someone's older story. If the plot didn't appeal to me the first time, it wouldn't the second or on the flip side, if I enjoyed it as us once why bother reading it again? lol

[Sakabelle]

I had considered going back and re-writing In Pieces, or at least fixing some parts that were wrong. Like the concert they go to being at the MN State Fair instead of at the Target Center like it is in the story.

I have actually had it happen where I go back to read something, only to discover it was completely different than what it was the first time I read it! The writing had definitely improved... but it wasn't the story I had loved originally anymore. If she had re-written it and left the original there, I honestly probably would have read both, and I still read the re-worked version anyway... but it just wasn't the same. The nostalgia factor was gone. It was like watching a re-make of a movie. Those are fine, because the original movie still exists. I don't mind re-makes honestly, just keep the original there.

And holy crap, this is so weird because they announced today they're remaking Sailor Moon LOL. And I'm SO EXCITED. But it's the same deal, if they were to re-make that and destroy all copies of the original series, I'd be really upset because though I'm sure this re-make will be a thousand times better, obviously the original has a huge nostalgia factor for me and I love it to pieces. So there you go! So I guess my take on it is, go ahead, remake it, but leave the original there too!

[FrickingKaos]

If they left the original version up, I'd read both to see how the two compare. I just don't like it when someone rewrites like every few months and acts like that was the original story all along.