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 Continuity...
1. The state or quality of being continuous.
2. An uninterrupted succession or flow; a coherent whole.
Continuity is key. Even if you try to do something different every day, everything connects to something that you have done at some point in the past. You, them, everyone has some sort of connection... and basically that's reality. And, when you try and write fiction, you have to make sure the continuity is as close to perfect as possible.
I was watching Six Feet Under Season 2 tonight and there was a scene that could have never happened. Nate has a flashback to the prior Thanksgiving which was the last time he supposedly saw his father before his untimely death on Christmas Eve. Nate was sitting with his sister Claire talking with his father, but in the first episode, when Claire had to pick up Nate at the airport, she barely knew who he was because she hadn't seen him in so long. Supposedly he left home just after she was born and had been in Seattle for a few years before that day. Now, I understand the need for a scene showing the last time he spoke to his father, but it doesn't connect to the dynamic of the relationship that was built in the first season between him and Claire. The story lost it's continuity and the flashback scene lost all impact it could have had...
I've been stuck on Chapter 17 of my novel for about three weeks now and can't get past it. I even tried to skip it and just start 18, but it was something more. I've looked at so many things and nothing could get me past that point, and it finally hit me tonight while I was BBQing. I destroyed the continuity of something minor at this point, but something major down the road (Books 2 & 3). Everyone keeps telling me to just get this book done, but I havbe to keep not only the story in mind, but the entire universe of the characters and the future that is to come. Basically, continuity that hasn't happened has to be adhered to.
No one has picked up on the mistake yet, but it's there and now that I know, I have to fix it, but I'm not sure how. I need one situation to happen to build up not only two characters, but also to create something down the line as well as being a cornerstone to the relationship between the two, adn it has to happen when it did. But...I also need Bryson to have had a different life that hasn't been delved into as of yet, but has been hinted at even if only in one quick sentance 
How to do it is going to be the trick, and is also the key to the first three novels. If it happens the way it has, Bryson changes and may be viewed in a light I don't want, but if I change something, then one of two significant events and characters changes.
Can I just ignore it like they did on Six Feet Under... or like they do in the movies all the time? Salma Hayak tells Matthew Perry she is pregnant and he downs an entire glass of water, only to put the empty glass on the counter in front of him. He responds and Salma reaches to pick up the glass and takes a long drink of the water that wasn't there two seconds earlier. Maybe no one will notice... but I noticed the water in Fools Rush In, and I know there will be that one reader who reads it, gets mad and thinks I don't know what I'm doing.
F@#$ing continuity... maybe I'll just start writing absurdist novels instead.
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| | Posted 7/17/2004 3:56 PM - 1 view - 2 comments
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