Other Sorts of Consistency

The last couple of posts I looked at consistency with POV, but there are other sorts of consistency.  Pretty obvious is consistency of characterisation details - if their eyes are blue on p4, then they need to be blue on p6.  Watch out for words like delicate or swarthy which indicate a particular physical look.  

The same is true for locations.  Watch out if you've done a lot of editing because bits can be left behind without your noticing.  For example, in one of my books I started with a farmhouse kitchen location. Later I changed it to a modern house with a sleek designer kitchen.  I remembered to alter most of the details except the oak beams that were left in the ceiling (luckily my agent spotted them). 

Then there is character consistency.  If a character is  coward all along, they can't suddenly be brave unless you show why.  I was reading a post from Kate Walker that said the one of the main stumbling blocks for romantic manuscripts was when characters who had been at loggerheads with each other throughout the ms suddenly declared their love, leaving the reader feeling there was no basis for such a sudden change.  So characters can change, but the reasons why have to be shown and the change has to be plausible ie consistent with their range. A timid person might conquer their fear and give a public speech, but they won't suddenly transform into a life-and-soul-of-the-party type in the rest of their life.  

There needs to be consistency within structure too.  A bit like the first post on POV, you can do what you like in terms of setting a pattern with the structure, but then you need to stick to it.  So you could, for example, alternate between locations or times, or have diary entries or whatever you liked, but having set a pattern the reader would expect you to follow it.  If you suddenly change it needs to be explained.  At the end of Luke Rhinehart's The Dice Man the means of delivering the story has to change, but I still had a slight feeling of disappointment.  

If there appears to be no pattern the reader will trust that by the end of the book you will have revealed that there actually was a pattern after all - Kate Atkinson does this brilliantly in her recent Jackson Brodie novels from Case Histories onwards. (Having said that, with Started Early, Took My Dog I'm still confused about where the stake-out at the beginning of the story fitted in. And who was the little girl in the end?)

Consistency within genre follows on from structure.  If you start out as a techno-thriller, the reader will be disappointed/baffled if you end up with a historical romance.  Or vice versa. That's obviously an extreme example, but there are many sub-genres even within literary fiction.  It's one of the reasons why you should be reading lots so you automatically recognise consistency within the area you're writing.  

Be consistent is a rule, but at least you get to set what the rules of consistency are.

Lessons from Robin Hood 1

I was so looking forward to seeing the new Robin Hood film. Gladiator, with the same star and director, had been one of my favourite films of the past decade. A Knight’s Tale, with the same screenwriter, had been another. (Will in Nice Girls Do was very much based on Heath Ledger playing the main character.) It was, for me, a dream team. How could it fail…?

Lessons from Robin Hood: Character consistency

The film opens with a battle siege and one Robin Longstride. He’s an archer, he’s brave, and is the leader among his immediate group of friends and fellow archers – who number three. After the first battle we see him playing the old cup and ball trick on the other soldiers, drawing them in with a nice line in banter. One of them accuses him of cheating, but it looks as if he hasn’t (he could, of course, have got lucky…) and a fight ensues. King Richard breaks up the fight, and asks his opinion of the crusades, and Robin answers honestly. So we’ve established he leads among a small group, he’s verbally articulate, can be tricky and has an eye for the main chance but is essentially honest. This is all important character stuff.

Fast forward. In Nottingham our hero has morphed from Mr Jovial into Mr Brooding. Okay, so Russell Crowe does a mean line in brooding, but it’s not what was established earlier. In fact, relatively little of that initial character seems to survive apart from the leadership skills, and even that has grown to unbelievable proportions – it’s one thing to be the leader in a gang of three mates, another to lead an army. His character in Gladiator had been in charge of the entire Roman army, so it’s consistent that he could command a smaller group of men without blinking an eyelid. It simply doesn’t work the other way.

For characters to work they need to be consistent. Sometimes you don’t win them all – one reviewer for A Single to Rome complained that it was inconsistent for Natalie to give up her swanky lifestyle so easily, when I hoped I’d established that the swanky lifestyle was never the real Natalie, she’d moved away from who she really was and, by the end, was returning.

That’s not to say characters don’t change. They do, in fact, they must. But it must be consistent with who they have been. A shy character may learn to speak up for themselves, but it’s unlikely they’d suddenly become the life and soul of the party. Anna, in Nice Girls Do, tries this, and manages for a while (fuelled on coke) but it wrecks her health and happiness, and she reverts to her old self, albeit a more confident version.

We make our judgements on character by what people do, their actions and reactions. You can, as writer, manipulate characters so they become more consistent – for example, Robin could have shown surprise at his new leadership skills, relished the challenge, then enjoyed his success. That would be consistent. Suddenly waking up one morning as a great leader of men, isn’t. And I don't care if Russell Crowe says he's going to beat me up - at least it would be consistent.

Next event - CHESTERFIELD! 10th June, at the library at 7.30 as part of the Derbyshire Lit Fest. (Details on p 49 of the brochure). And then it's Birmingham on the 23rd.