Cozy Mysteries discussion

Whether you're fighting deadlines or holiday crowds or you're on a cleaning marathon getting ready for guests, take a break and share a little silliness!

Just this morning, I realized I killed off a character and then had him talking three scenes later!

So, to all my fellow writers here: what silly mistakes have you made while working on a book or story draft?

I'm writing my second book now. Don't want to give anything away, but on the 7th draft, I realized that I had submersed my protag head-to-toe in water, fully clothed. Then had her hang out all day in a closed room being questioned by the police without ever drying off. AND not mentioning that she'd appreciate a towel. ;-)

I can't wait to hear more...these are funny! :)

I block most of mine out. but I have had people join a group AFTER they have participated in the group conversation.

My favorite was changing the name of the town between the first and second chapters of The Ninja Librarian. I never even noticed until about the second round of revisions.

I contacted an author once to let her know about a weird error in my copy of the book. I didn't know how to contact the publisher. Incredibly, 70 pages of the book, repeated! I was missing a whole section, but the first section was repeated. She actually collected copies of her books with errors in them and this was a first for her. So she sent me an autographed copy to replace mine and I sent her the messed up one for her collection.

ஐ Briansgirl (Book Sale Queen)ஐ wrote: "I contacted an author once to let her know about a weird error in my copy of the book. I didn't know how to contact the publisher. Incredibly, 70 pages of the book, repeated! I was missing a whole ..."

Wow! That could have been a nightmare for the author. Love how she turned it into a special moment for you!

ஐ Briansgirl (Book Sale Queen)ஐ wrote: "I contacted an author once to let her know about a weird error in my copy of the book. I didn't know how to contact the publisher. Incredibly, 70 pages of the book, repeated! I was missing a whole ..."

I have an old hard cover copy of God Save the Queen! by Dorothy Cannell that has two pages somewhere in the middle printed backwards - so all the writing is a mirror image of 'normal'. I love that copy for some reason. :)

In my novel, House of Redemption, I had my character, Dee, with her hands deep in sudsy water washing dishing. I had forgotten that this would be impossible since her hand was bandaged from multiple slices. I caught that on my final edit - 7 sounds about right.
Also, when I went to upload it for the Kindle - that was when I discovered a full page missing. Didn't see it at first as everything was aligned so pretty. I have no idea why Word decided to delete that section.

Susan wrote: "Whether you're fighting deadlines or holiday crowds or you're on a cleaning marathon getting ready for guests, take a break and share a little silliness!

Just this morning, I realized I killed off..."

roflmao!!!! I'm not an Author but I read a really good book that gave three different shades for the guys hair.

Pam wrote: "roflmao!!!! I'm not an Author but I read a really good book that gave three different shades for the guys hair."

Glad I made you laugh, Pam! I'd like to think we catch most of our mistakes before we go to print, but sometimes the weirdest things slip past us--and our editors!

A lot of books written today about the 50's and 60's talk about cell phones, answering machines, etc., which did not exist or were used in limited ways not accessible to the general public. Hate that!

These are all things spellcheck can't correct. :)

Sorry I'm late to this thread. (I was under deadline.) I was going through page proofs for my upcoming April release, and suddenly realized I stink at vehicles. (And apparently so do my critique partners and editors.) I had cars morphing into vans changing into trucks and back again, and one of my characters drove a new truck of a kind not manufactured since the 1950s. I used to be so much more critical about book editing problems until I saw how easily these things can get by you...
Funniest thing I've seen in a published book is people ordering and paying for their food at a fast food counter, eating, and then a waitress coming by and presenting them with a bill. I'd avoid that restaurant...

LOL, Barbara! I get around the car thing by making my protag as vague about cars as I am :) Though she (and I) can tell the difference between a sedan and a pickup :D

But that restaurant. . . yeah, avoid that one!

I agree about the restaurant but the rest is so easily done! My protag slipped of the pram 'break' instead of 'brake' and no-one picked it up until a random reviewer reading my book commented on it! (And I'd read that darned page about 50 times!)

Well, I put a rose "peddle" instead of a rose petal in a new book. Thankfully someone caught that. I really do know the difference. LOL

English was always my best subject at school, but I swear that, since my stroke, I've got dyslexic fingers.

Not sure that that explains, 'stop medalling in my affairs', or the Mr Bracket that metamorphosed into Mr Bartlett, half through. Ooops.

Oh goodness. I had to stop back by to let you all know I just removed a "toe-headed toddler" from the novel I'm editing. So glad I caught that one. Poor kid!

Lynda, I had a character whose name waffled back and forth between two versions for a long time. So Mr. Bracket/Bartlett makes sense to me!

And Barbara--that's funny! I'm getting visuals here. . .

All things a spell-checker program would miss. :)

Oh, yeah! Though I did finally realize that I could add character names to my spell-checker, so that they'll on,y get highlighted when I misspell them. Very helpful when using made-up names and difficult-to-spell place names (Pismawallops Island, anyone?).

Barbara wrote: "Oh goodness. I had to stop back by to let you all know I just removed a "toe-headed toddler" from the novel I'm editing. So glad I caught that one. Poor kid!"

I laughed out loud when I read this. Imagine if this were an illustrated thread!

Thank you for the chuckles this morning...I definitely needed them!

Susan - an illustrated thread, now that would be funny!

Can't match the toe-headed kid, but I just caught (in about the 10th draft) the police chief being surprised when the MC tells him something they had discussed at some length two chapters before.

On reflection, this is a thread I added in my last edit. Now I don't feel quite so bad. Still: proof that every time you make changes, you have to edit three more times to fix the errors you introduce!

And this isn't a mistake, but the fun of editing: coming on comments in the margin (my own, even!) that highlight a sentence and just say "fix this!"

lol, Rebecca. Glad to know I'm not the only one who does that.

When I'm reading through my MS, I often find ##more here, or ##check facts. It's supposed to stop me breaking the flow. Sometimes it works. :)

I received my ms back from an editor pointing out the fact that my cold character shuttered. That wasn't near as bad as the sad character whose continance fell. I still LOL.

Ooo. Watch for that falling continence!

Isn't this editing lark fun!

I've just come across a woman with a well shaped head (perhaps she knows the toe-headed boy) who lives in a flat with a pair of marching sofas!

Tee hee.

Marching sofas! Makes it hard to sit down....

They are trying to keep from ending up over-stuffed.

In one book I read the author relocated Lake Michigan from the western shores of Michigan to the eastern shore. Same author wrote about watching the sun set on Lake St. Claire....when the hero and heroine were in Michigan. The only way to watch the sunset on Lake St. Claire is if you were in Canada. As far as I know she never corrected the geographic errors in later editions of the book.

I have a good friend who will go unnamed here; in his book on a theological topic, everyone missed a typo until he found in the final printed copy a reference to the "diving God." That made me feel better when my academic book was printed with a few mistakes.

even God likes to swim! LOL

What a fun thread!

I was just reminded of a book I copy-edited for a small press. A sentence went something like: The island was a wild and dangerous place, the cook had said as he stirred the soup, fill with villains and pirates.

Needless to say, that did not make it in the final edition.

Must have been a yummy soup.

Obviously one of the Cannibal Islands.

I did it! I've mastered teleportation. Or cloning, maybe. Main character sees the police chief drive off just before she goes into a building. Guess who's already inside?

Maybe I should be writing sci-fi?

Just fixed that one...

More groan-inducing typos found today:

"...is a darn site better than..."

"It's a prefect likeness."

Dammit! I'm sure the blighters breed each time I close the file. ;)

I have to admit that the mistakes people are fessing up to are pretty entertaining. I've made so many that I can't remember them all, but I think I caught them before publication. I sure hope so. : )

Lynda wrote: "lol, Rebecca. Glad to know I'm not the only one who does that.

When I'm reading through my MS, I often find ##more here, or ##check facts. It's supposed to stop me breaking the flow. Sometimes it..."

In the past, I liked to use a series of three characters to mark a comment so I wouldn't break the flow. I chose a letter key I could hit quickly and wasn't often used in many words. And there I went for years, until one day I inadvertently sent off a manuscript with an XXX still in place! The editor was not amused.

I've since switched to *** but it's not nearly so much fun... ;)

Susan wrote: "Lynda wrote: "lol, Rebecca. Glad to know I'm not the only one who does that.

When I'm reading through my MS, I often find ##more here, or ##check facts. It's supposed to stop me breaking the flow..."
Susan that's brilliant made my day :) xxxx

Hmm. I use square brackets, but they are even easier to miss! Or else I scribble a note on a piece of paper, referencing the page number. I then lose the paper, and/or am unable to interpret my note when I return.

I spend more time worrying about POV and tenses, that I get all messed up. POV is much better now, but tenses! Yikes!

My latest was having a reader point out that characters (including the narrator) didn't refer to other characters in a consistent way--sometimes first name, sometimes last, with or without title. Some of that can make sense, but it was totally random. I'm busy fixing it now. In the process, I've discovered two cases of misspelling a character's name.

In one book I recently read, I found that a character chose a seat apposite. Also, one person was supposed to partition someone (or a group, I forget)....

When I taught, my students' bloopers were sometimes dandies, but that would be changing the subject of this thread.

Rebecca wrote: "My latest was having a reader point out that characters (including the narrator) didn't refer to other characters in a consistent way--sometimes first name, sometimes last, with or without title. ..."

I hope that was a beta reader who caught that for you, Rebecca!

At least you didn't change a character's name twice on a single page, as I did in yesterday's draft.

Hmmm...maybe that's a clue I need to rename this guy. After all, if I can't keep it straight from one paragraph to the next, I doubt my readers will find him memorable!

I always wonder how authors keep all of their characters straight! I'm reading a book now (not a mystery) and there are so many people and I'm not sure how they all connect, at least not yet!

That's a good point, Susan! And yes, it was a beta-reader, or at least a reader of an ARC, with time to fix it still. I have straightened it out, mostly.