Recently, somewhere on facebook, someone asked about the importance of “accuracy” in a novel.
I can only say this about that: I have heard that my struggle to suspend my readers’ disbelief is set way back by me writing anything along the lines of, in Chapter 1, "From his left hand, his pinky and his ring finger had been removed," but during chapter 21 saying, “Waiting so long for the police to arrive, the big pistol made his right arm ache so badly, his nose began to itch so maddeningly that he had to be satisfied with picking it with his pinky.” Now, let’s say that somewhere else in the same story, I have gotten away with saying the circumference of the Earth is twenty-some thousand miles. And even when I said, “He filled-up his car with gas,” my readers still read on happily, but suddenly, in chapter 21 with my nose-pick thing, I am nothing but a plain old mistake-making mortal. 🤪 In fact, my Publisher and his cohort of professional editors also gets reviled and my readers are complaining about, “...the increasing lack of quality nowadays.”.
But, you know what? I, personally, think that if the story were all that great in the first place, nobody would ever even notice Chapter 21, or if they did spot my glitch, they would put me on their personal list of sequels to watch for anyhow.
Being practical, though, me assiduously never gun-decking anything, I am led here to what is known as a “blinding flash of the obvious.”
In the sequel I am currently developing, I now realize I am faced with a maze of possible Chapter 21s to sort out. If, as I had worked through my two stories, I had methodically noted-down specific details I used early-on, I would have a simple time of the now chaotically disorganized revision I am up against.
Of course, this confession proves conclusively that as an artist, I always start from bad planning and disorganization.