Countdown to Consistency

I have a Countdown Teapot.  For those who don't know it (you fools! or sensible people for having proper jobs and not wasting time watching daytime TV) Countdown is a words and numbers game on Channel 4 at 3.10pm.  A few years ago I auditioned for it, along with my friend Caroline.  

The audition process roughly followed the game, but with 10 people playing each time.  We were given 9 letters and had to find a word containing the most letters in the next 30 seconds.  Ready? The first set of letters were: TICPAETOT. Tick tick tick...

30 seconds later we went round the table each saying our highest scoring word.  My heart was pounding as I declared a 9 letter word.  I was so excited I felt sick, especially as no one else declared a 9.  There was so much adrenaline flowing in my system that I genuinely thought I might have heart failure as I said "petticoat".  

And that was my high point.  My brain was completely scrambled by my initial success and I couldn't focus on anything.  I failed the audition, as did Caroline.  But you were allowed 3 goes at auditioning.  We went again and the same thing happened.  One high score, then nothing.  This time Caroline got through.  She went on the programme, and won her teapot.  I wasn't going to bother to try again (and really, was my heart going to take the strain?) but in the end I did apply.  

By the  time my third and final audition came up a lot had changed in my life and I wasn't watching Countdown as much so I wasn't as worked up about it.  Also Caroline had worked out the secret to passing the audition.  She told me that they were looking for someone who was consistent and therefore wouldn't be embarrassing on the programme.   It was better to always score a 7 or a 6 than get a wide range of 9s and 5s even though the average might be the same.

Reader, I won it. I succeeded in the audition by aiming for 7 letter words not 9 letter ones, went on the programme and won a teapot.  

And the point of all this rambling is that consistency is important also in writing.  It's no good having flashes of brilliance if there are also chunks of lumpen prose.  In fact, if anything it's worse because the flashes of brilliance highlight just how chunky and lumpen the rest is.  All the writing needs to be of the same standard, which obviously should be as high as you can make it.  

So, if you know that dialogue is your weak point, then you have to try to improve it. If feedback tells you your problem is in too much description then you have to learn to wield the axe. Page 1 should be as good as page 5, or page 55.  Or, to extend the metaphor to another TV gameshow, your writing is only as good as The Weakest Link.  

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.

When My Editor Said No

Last night I watched It's Complicated with Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. It's fun but I thought there was a better film lurking in there. The problem (for me) was the inconsistent tone.

Meryl Streep is a terrific (if slightly annoying) actress. She has huge depth and brings reality to her roles. I believed that I was watching a real person, not an actress playing a character. So it was unfortunate that Alec Baldwin is a different kind of actor. He's pretty much WYSIWYG. I like what he does, but it didn't sit well with Meryl's style. I never believed that these two people had ever been a couple. The tone was wrong. Were we watching a realistic drama or a superficial but fun rom-com?

I've done this myself. In the first draft of Another Woman's Husband I made the blackest moment very black indeed. I wanted the main character to suffer and boy, did she suffer. She got drunk and was sick in a car park, and then...well, you'll never know because my editor said No. It's the only time she's made such a categoric statement. No, she said. The tone is wrong.

I don't think it was the vomiting that did it. After all, in It's Complicated Meryl also gets drunk and is sick into a drawer. But the tone in the film is light-hearted and the scene is played for laughs. The tone in that first draft was too realistic and therefore rather sordid. I could have lightened it up, played down the realism, but I decided to scrap the scene altogether* and have a re-think.

Tone has to be consistent. I think that's why we wince at Candid Camera types of programmes which feature people coming off their bikes and instead of flying into a pool of mud (funny) land on their noses (ouch and not so funny). Gritty drama, black comedy, rom coms - they can all be good. Put put the two together, cast Meryl and Alec and the result is not so successful.

(*Actually, I didn't scrap it, I've carefully saved it and if I ever write a gritty literary novel, by jingo, there's going to be a car park vomiting scene in it.)

At last! I've got my finger out and have committed to running some day courses:

Writing a Novel - 31st July in Bath and 18th September in Truro

Getting a Novel Published - 1st August in Bath and 19th September in Truro

Contact me on sarah@sarahduncan.co.uk for more info...