How to avoid continuity errors in writing: a checklist

To avoid continuity errors in writing, keep a short ledger of every fact that changes in your story, such as an injury, a new job or a building that burns, and note the scene where each one becomes true. Before you revise a scene, read the ledger only up to that scene, so you check it against what was true at that point.

Most continuity errors aren’t facts you forgot. They’re facts you remembered at the wrong point in the book. Here is the ledger, a checklist to run on a draft, and a way to revise that catches what rereading misses.

What is a continuity error?

A continuity error is a detail that contradicts something the story has already established. A character’s eyes change color. A café that shut at nine is serving coffee at ten. A man whose arm was broken on Tuesday carries crates on Thursday.

Readers rarely stop at the first one. They stop when a second one makes them wonder whether anyone is keeping track.

Plot holes vs continuity errors: what’s the difference?

A continuity error is a slip in the record: the story said one thing and later said another. It’s usually fixed by changing a word or a line.

A plot hole is a gap in the logic: the story needs something to happen that nothing on the page allows. If Lisa finds the key to the depot without ever learning where it was kept, that’s a plot hole. If she keeps the key in her coat in chapter three and in her bag in chapter four, that’s a continuity error.

The two often meet. A continuity error you fix by moving a scene can open a plot hole, because the scene that used to explain something now comes after the thing it explained. So check both whenever you reorder.

Why do continuity errors happen in novels?

Mostly because a draft isn’t written in order, and memory doesn’t keep dates.

You write chapter seven, then go back and add a scene in chapter four. In your head, Tom’s broken arm is “something that happened”. You don’t feel that it happened in Scene 14, so the new Scene 12 lets him use it. The fact was right. The timing was wrong.

The same thing happens with anything that changes over the course of the story:

• Bodies: injuries, illness, a haircut, a pregnancy, a death.
• Status: a job, a promotion, a firing, an arrest, a marriage.
• Places: a shop that closes, a house that burns, a road that floods.
• Things: who holds the letter, the key or the money.
• Relationships: who has quarrelled, who owes whom, who knows the secret.

Traits that never change, like Lisa’s height or the city’s harbor, cause fewer errors. The ones that change are the trouble, because each one is true on some pages and false on others.

How do you keep track of facts that change?

Keep a change ledger. It isn’t a character profile. A profile says who Tom is. The ledger says what happened to him, and where.

Each line has three parts: the scene it starts in, who or what it’s about, and the new fact as one plain sentence.

From	Who or what	New fact
Scene 3	Café Mercer	Shutters at nine, whatever the sign says.
Scene 9	Tom	Moves from nights to days at the depot.
Scene 14	Tom	Left arm in a cast after the fall on the loading ramp.
Scene 17	The depot	Burns down. Only the office wall still stands.
Scene 21	Tom	Cast off. Arm still stiff in the cold.

Three rules keep it useful.

1. Write the change, not the history. “Left arm in a cast” is a line. “Tom has had a hard year” isn’t.
2. Every fact gets a scene. If you can’t say where it becomes true, you’ll eventually use it in the wrong place.
3. Endings are changes too. The cast coming off in Scene 21 needs its own line. Otherwise the arm stays broken forever in your notes.

Scene numbers counted through the whole book are easier to compare than “chapter 3, scene 2”. If you already track who appears in each scene, this ledger sits beside that map. (That map is in how to keep track of characters in a novel.)

How do you keep a novel’s timeline consistent?

Give every scene a time stamp, even a vague one: “Day 4, evening” or “the second week of October”. Then check three things.

• Gaps add up. “Three days later” in chapter two, plus “the next morning” twice, plus “a week on” has to land on the same day the calendar says.
• Healing and travel take time. If Tom’s cast comes off in Scene 21, the time stamps between Scene 14 and Scene 21 have to allow six weeks or so. If they cover five days, change one or the other.
• Weather and light agree. A wet October in a harbor city has short afternoons. A scene where Lisa walks home “in the last of the light” at eight in the evening has slipped into June.

A continuity checklist for revising a draft

Run this on one chapter at a time, once the ledger exists.

1. Read the ledger up to the start of the chapter. Stop there. Anything below that line hasn’t happened yet.
2. List who’s present in each scene, and check each person against their ledger lines. Can they do what the scene asks of their bodies, jobs and relationships at this point?
3. Check every place. Is it open, standing, flooded, burned, at this point in the book?
4. Follow every object. Who held the key last? If it changes hands off the page, write the line where it does.
5. Check the time stamps against the gaps and the healing time.
6. Add new lines to the ledger for anything that changes in this chapter.
7. When you move a scene, move its ledger lines with it, and recheck the scenes it now sits between.

A before-and-after example

Before, in a scene the writer added late to chapter four:

Tom swung the crate onto the trolley and wheeled it out into the rain. “Nights again,” he said. “They never learn.”

Checked against the ledger up to Scene 12, two lines apply and one disagrees. Tom moved to days in Scene 9, so “nights again” is wrong. The cast isn’t on yet (it comes in Scene 14), so the crate is fine.

After:

Tom swung the crate onto the trolley and wheeled it out into the rain. “Days suit me,” he said, not sounding as if they did.

That’s why step 1 stops at the chapter. A writer who had read the whole ledger first might have “fixed” the crate as well, with a broken arm on their mind, and written in an error that wasn’t there.

How does ProseSpun keep facts in the right place?

ProseSpun, a writing app for people with more story than sentences, keeps a version of this ledger for you, built from the prose you’ve written.

Changes pinned to a scene. After you save a scene, ProseSpun reads it and proposes the changes it finds to the story’s cards: an injury, a new job, a place destroyed, a thing changing hands. Each one belongs to the scene it happened in. Because it’s tied to the scene rather than a page number, moving the scene moves the fact with it.

You decide what goes in. The changes wait in the deck, a sheet at the foot of the scene that shows one card at a time. A change is a State row with its kind (Injury, Status, Location, Possession and so on), the earlier state, if there was one, struck and the new one underlined, and one line under it: From this scene on. Earlier scenes keep what was true then. You answer Keep or Skip.

Facts as of the scene you’re in. When you ask for a sentence in Scene 12, the card facts that go with the request are the ones you kept from Scene 12 and earlier. Tom’s cast from Scene 14 isn’t among them. Changes you haven’t answered yet aren’t sent with any request. The story’s summary still covers the whole book; it’s the facts about each card that are taken as of the scene.

The history on the card. Each card’s page has a Through the story section: one entry for each scene the card is in, with what happened there. Changes still waiting for you are marked in the deck. That’s the ledger, read one card at a time.

ProseSpun doesn’t mark contradictions in your own sentences. Rereading is still your job; the record means you reread against the right facts. More on how this fits with cards and summaries in a novel is bigger than any model’s memory, and on cards themselves in how to make a story bible.

Related reading: How to outline a novel and How to write a character arc.

Frequently asked questions

How do I check my novel for continuity errors?

Make a list of every fact that changes in the story and the scene where it changes. Then revise one chapter at a time, reading the list only up to the start of that chapter, and check each person, place and object in it against what was true at that point.

What are the most common continuity errors in novels?

Injuries that heal too fast or never heal, objects that jump between hands or pockets, places that are open, closed or standing at the wrong time, and timelines whose “three days later” doesn’t add up. Physical details like eye color and names spelled two ways are common too, and a simple character sheet catches those.

Should I fix continuity errors while drafting or in revision?

In revision, mostly. Stopping to check every detail while drafting slows the draft down, and many details will change anyway. Add ledger lines as you go, since that takes a few seconds, and do the checking in a separate pass.

Is a continuity error the same as a plot hole?

No. A continuity error is a detail that contradicts something established earlier, and it’s usually fixed with a small edit. A plot hole is a gap in cause and effect, where the story needs something the page never set up, and fixing it can mean a new scene.

Write a few scenes, keep the changes ProseSpun proposes, and open a card’s page to read its history.