Novel Bloopers

[DamaNegra]

I just wrote:

"He found himself in a stoutly built room with no windows or walls."

Yeah, the room was so strong it was made of air!

So, what are your novel bloopers?

[Devil Ledbetter]

I just wrote:

"He found himself in a stoutly built room with no windows or walls."

Yeah, the room was so strong it was made of air!

So, what are your novel bloopers?I'm sure I have some, but that one had me :roll:.

[sunna]

I had a scene in a forest in my last WIP; there were a lot of birch trees in it, and they were significant for a magical reason, so they got mentioned a lot. I wrote most of it in a very bad mood, though, owing to an argument with my sister.

Pretty predictable, actually. Every mention of a birch tree was bitch tree, a bitch bow, bitch bark, he leaned against a nearby bitch... it made for some interesting reading later. :)

[kristie911]

I don't make mistakes.










Okay, maybe I make so many, I can't pick just one! :D

[Madican]

I wrote a couple pages during a time when I was debating the MC's name. I picked one and wrote it.

Few weeks later I forgot I had picked one and reopened the document to write a few more pages. The result was that my MC changed names halfway through the short story.

[akiwiguy]

I have of course started going down a path in erotic stuff where I suddenly think... "hang about, are they now facing me, upside down, right-side up? I seem to have worked my way into a bit of an anatomically impossible spot here!' LOL

[Chumplet]

My male MC scraped some leftover eggs into the dogs' bowels.

[scully931]

I am sad because it took me a minute to realize what was wrong with that sentence. :Shrug:

[Pila]

Whoever made the layout of QWERTY keyboards were pretty rotten for placing the 'I' next to the 'U' and the 'C' key next to the 'X.'

On bad days, duck and sec turn into some pretty naughty words =)

I believe that I am the queen of freudian slips.

[maxmordon]

I had a colonel that magically became general and then colonel in just a few hours

[Jersey Chick]

I was in the middle of a love scene in an erotic romance I was writing and I realized that my characters couldn't possibly be doing what they were doing - unless they were freakishly flexible. And multitalented.

I'm sure there are a lot more, but that's the only one I can think of right now :D

[maddythemad]

Whoever made the layout of QWERTY keyboards were pretty rotten for placing the 'I' next to the 'U' and the 'C' key next to the 'X.'

On bad days, duck and sec turn into some pretty naughty words =)

I believe that I am the queen of freudian slips.

Don't forget D next to F. :D

[AnneMarble]

I don't remember the exact wording. The character was supposed to throw a soda can into a trash can in the kitchen, but it turned into something like "He walked into the kitchen and threw the kitchen into the trash can."
:Wha:

In my latest novel, I kept giving lines of dialogue to Queen Zakira in the scene just before she showed up in the story. It's a damn shame I had to take those lines out because they were good. :D

[sneakers145]

I've done the name switch thing several times (Jenny became Amy then Jenny again). It's my characters' faults, really. If they would just tell me their names from the get-go, things like this wouldn't happen.

[PeeDee]

In episode 3 of my robot series (spoiler!), one of the Robots loses an arm, and it's a big deal. In episode four, he's waving it around willy-nilly. ONe of the many scenes I scrapped in episode four. Thank goodness I caught it.

I remember in a novel I started working on, several years ago, I killed someone, then came back to writing it after a few days, forgot all about that scene, and kept on writing him.

Every now and then, when I'm really tired, I'll write something absolutely mindless like he stood up and got to his feet. Because clearly, he stood up on his hands and then got his feet under him.

Honestly, writers.... Not too bright sometimes. :)

[glassquill]

I made my MC's biological mother much younger than she is. :tongue Good thing I caught that in time.

[wayndom]

I was just doing a rewrite of my latest novel when I realized I had alternating chapters covering two different characters...and they were completely out of synch! I had a chapter taking place in the middle of the day, followed by a chapter taking place in the middle of the night, then back to the first character, who's still eating lunch!

Then I remembered that when I was writing the first draft, I switched scenes just to give myself a break, without concern for when the alternate scene was taking place, thinking I'd put them in order later. Thank gawd I didn't send it to an agent in that condition...

[wayndom]

I made my MC's biological mother much younger than she is. :tongue Good thing I caught that in time.

That reminds me of a documentary I saw about artificial intelligence. A computer guy was explaining that in the early days, they thought it would be easy to teach a computer to learn from new info, but the computers kept making ridiculous mistakes. His big example: they learned that regardless of how much they told the computer about the way humans reproduce, the computer was never able to grasp why a father can't be younger than his son. Ultimately, they just entered the info: "A father cannot be younger than his son." I don't know if they included, "except in science-fiction."

[glassquill]

That reminds me of a documentary I saw about artificial intelligence. A computer guy was explaining that in the early days, they thought it would be easy to teach a computer to learn from new info, but the computers kept making ridiculous mistakes. His big example: they learned that regardless of how much they told the computer about the way humans reproduce, the computer was never able to grasp why a father can't be younger than his son. Ultimately, they just entered the info: "A father cannot be younger than his son." I don't know if they included, "except in science-fiction."

I would think fathers are easier to explain than mothers. :D When the age difference is about ten years, what you get is :Wha:.

[PeeDee]

That reminds me of a documentary I saw about artificial intelligence. A computer guy was explaining that in the early days, they thought it would be easy to teach a computer to learn from new info, but the computers kept making ridiculous mistakes. His big example: they learned that regardless of how much they told the computer about the way humans reproduce, the computer was never able to grasp why a father can't be younger than his son. Ultimately, they just entered the info: "A father cannot be younger than his son." I don't know if they included, "except in science-fiction."

How really fascinating. Now I want to know more. (The last thing I need is an "oooh, that's interesting" tangent, damn it. But still. Now I have one.)

[AnneMarble]

That reminds me of a documentary I saw about artificial intelligence. A computer guy was explaining that in the early days, they thought it would be easy to teach a computer to learn from new info, but the computers kept making ridiculous mistakes. His big example: they learned that regardless of how much they told the computer about the way humans reproduce, the computer was never able to grasp why a father can't be younger than his son. Ultimately, they just entered the info: "A father cannot be younger than his son." I don't know if they included, "except in science-fiction."
A few years ago, I bought a family tree program in the bargain software section and started entering the family tree, based on my mothers' notes. I finally gave up in frustration when I ended up with one of my descendants giving birth to his own mother, or something whacky like that. And no matter what I did, he kept turning up in weird places. Sort of like that David Gerrold character in "The Man Who Folded Himself" who went back in time and met different versions of himself. Or maybe my ancestor was Virginia Woolf's Orlando! :eek:

[Pila]

Don't forget D next to F. :D


Hahaha, however could I forget that one?

I have arthritis (at 17 I'm basically already a 60 year old woman!) so I only type with my left hand and then the forefinger on my right hand, and while I type just as fast as anybody else (180 wpm on my good days) I'm always making a ton of crazy mistakes.

[Will Lavender]

Hahaha, however could I forget that one?

I have arthritis (at 17 I'm basically already a 60 year old woman!) so I only type with my left hand and then the forefinger on my right hand, and while I type just as fast as anybody else (180 wpm on my good days) I'm always making a ton of crazy mistakes.

You type 180 words per minute? With one and a half hands?! Holy jeez can this be right? I type about 110+ and I'm very fast. (Perhaps, though, those mistakes are happening because you're going too fast?)

This is a threadjack...but 180? That's spectacular.

[Pila]

You type 180 words per minute? With one and a half hands?! Holy jeez can this be right? I type about 110+ and I'm very fast. (Perhaps, though, those mistakes are happening because you're going too fast?)

This is a threadjack...but 180? That's spectacular.


Yep. I can't do it constantly but if I have the sentence planned out in my head that's how quickly I can get it out. I took a keyboarding class three years ago in my freshmen year of highschool and the program we use measured our WPM and that's how I scored =) My CONSTANT wpm is 110-130ish.

The mistakes are mainly on the right side of the keyboard, becuase that's the side I only use one finger on and sometime it gets a bit misplaced :D

[wayndom]

I had a colonel that magically became general and then colonel in just a few hours

Sounds like he was put in charge of Iraq, then told the president things didn't look good...

[nevada]

One time i had a character go to bed Sunday night. When he woke up it was sunday and he went happily about his sunday routine. It was not sci fi, so I couldnt keep it. lol Nobody picked up the mistake until my mom read it.

[Xx|e|ph|e|me|r|al|xX]

I type weird things all the time that I don't catch until I re-read, but I can't remember any. XD When I'm tired, usually...

Something like I mean to type "being" and I type "bing". That kind of thing. xD And I read it later..."I feel like you're bing condescending!" "My bing what?"

I love this thread.

[Cranky]

A recent mistake I made I didn't catch until I posted an excerpt here. In it, I had a paper cup that was empty but still managed to be half-full of water and cigar ends.

Big stupid on my part. LOL. (Yeah, big, not "bit")

[TurkeyLurkey]

I had just finished a FD of a YA where my MC's name was Brie.
I am currently 8k words into the new MG I started, and I STILL call my new MC Brie! I am thinking of creating an auto correct in Word to automatically change the word Brie to Chanel. *Sigh*

I am certain I have made other mistakes, I just cant remember them off hand.

[Zoombie]

I've done the bowl bowel thing way way too many times.

That and constellations and constipations.

That one, I blame on caffeine.

[job]

Ah ... the famous glass of brandy that gets poured and sipped on and carried around the room and then finished and set down and then looked into and it's half full ...

(That one ... the never-empty brandy glass of the gods.).

[avid-dreamer]

I actually sent my Gothic romance novel into my agent with the hero entering the room "naked from the waist down". I was mortified when my husband pointed that out to me!!!:snoopy:

[DamaNegra]

Don't forget D next to F. :D

That would be hilarious when two characters are in the middle of a battle and they try and duck under a table.

"They ducked under the table" doesn't quite have the same ring to it if you accidentally press f instead of d :D

[Stijn Hommes]

The very first thing I wrote (as a hobby - not school) was set in the middle of winter with quite some inches of snow. One character suffered hypotermia, he was wounded too. The shorts he wore helped the hypothermia along nicely, but I never managed to explain his fashion sense...

[seun]

One of my personal favourites was mistyping the word counting. I lost the O :D

[Tracy]

How funny!

And how good to realise I'm not the only one who does the magic always-full glass. Or, alternatively, the infinite capacity glass - you know the one where, even though the character hasn't taken a sip out of it yet, the host still manages to pour in more.

My favourite mistake was this: I had a character in my first novel called Phil. He was the baddie. But the hero's name was Patrick, and the editor asked me to change Phil's name in order that we wouldn't have names starting with the same initial. I decided to call him Darren instead, and just did a quick search-and-replace. Those things are dangerous! I should have used the "whole word" facility, but because I didn't I ended up with a passing mention of that well known American city Darrenadelphia. Still cracks me up.

[Just Mike]

Halfway through a story, I realized I needed another character to fill in a plot hole. So I added the fellow into the scenes where his expertise was required, then made myself a note to go back into the beginning and insert him earlier so he wouldn't appear out of left field.

I forgot to do the continuity implant, and on my first read through the "complete" first draft, this dude suddenly pops in, talks about things that never happened, saves the day, then dies.

This is your deus ex machina: this is your deus ex machina on drugs.

[Manderley]

My male MC scraped some leftover eggs into the dogs' bowels.

That's dark!
Would fit well in a horror story about a pethating madman...

[seun]

My favourite mistake was this: I had a character in my first novel called Phil. He was the baddie. But the hero's name was Patrick, and the editor asked me to change Phil's name in order that we wouldn't have names starting with the same initial. I decided to call him Darren instead, and just did a quick search-and-replace. Those things are dangerous!

I once changed a Matt to Matty. Only problem was search and replace turned all uses of matter to mattyer. I'm pretty sure that's not a word.

Another good one of mine was a long gunfight with several people. Not one of them reloaded. My girlfriend asked me if they were using Hollywood action film guns that never need reloading. :)

[Garpy]

'...my hands are ties...'

Was a recent blooper.

[ccarver30]

I write "her" instead of "he" a lot!!

[Enraptured]

I once described a character as "dead" instead of "dazed."

I also ended up with this typo: "Dimply, she knew she had to break herself out of this fuzzy trance she was in."

[DeleyanLee]

In my first novel, all the horses were kept in padlocks.

I guess they were really really tiny horses to fit through the keyholes, eh?

[maestrowork]

I set my novel at least 200 miles too far south until I did more research on the initial Japanese invasion.

And this one:

"the hospital is situated near the slumps..." Didn't catch it until after the book went to print. :o

[KTC]

I try to stay away from the slumps...so I would never go to that hopital.

[seun]

And this one:

"the hospital is situated near the slumps..." Didn't catch it until after the book went to print. :o

Could have been worse. Could have been set near the Flumps.


(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flumps for those who don't know what I'm talking about).

[heyjude]

"Wall to ceiling windows" was my most recent. Yeesh.

Flumps... Is that near the seven hump wumps?

[Anonymisty]

My protag had to take off her boots to escape from a dangerous situation, and left them behind. She ran all the way to town, where she sat down and removed her boots. Again.

*headdesk*

[Vomaxx]

I forgot that I had sent a character on a trip, so he appeared in the next chapter as though he had not left. I had two characters talking outside a building without apparently ever having left the room where we last saw them. It's sometimes hard to remember where everyone is.

[Sassee]

In my current WIP it's early March. Now, granted, in Missouri we can sometimes have the odd warm day (may get into the high 60s) but at some point I had Kate running around in shorts and a tank top. At least later on I realized it shoulda been cold and she was freezing when the sun went down... but still... can ya tell I was writing that part mid summer? ;)

[Kate Thornton]

I blogged about disconnects in WIPS today - these are great ones. I think the dog's bowels is maybe the best!

[Kaytie]

I'm pretty good at continuity at this point but sometimes, when I'm really focused and writing fast, I start to spell words by sound. Not phonetically, but homonymally. :) Way instead of weigh, for example.

It's quite weird, and potentially dangerous (in a completely non-lethal and non-threatening way) since spell check doesn't catch homonyms.

[maestrowork]

I misspell words all the time in first draft. I think my latest was really funny:

"The men cuddled into a tight circle at the center of the square, around a wooden platform raised above their heads."

Of course, I meant "huddled."

[Stew21]

My MC bent down to tie his shoe while his pissed off girlfriend was standing in front of him talking to him. One moment he was staring at her feet, making a point that he would not look at her, the next - still without looking up, he referenced the scowl on her face.


he must have been wearing shoe mirrors?

[Kate Thornton]

he must have been wearing shoe mirrors?
No wonder she was mad!

[dclary]

I have of course started going down a path in erotic stuff where I suddenly think... "hang about, are they now facing me, upside down, right-side up? I seem to have worked my way into a bit of an anatomically impossible spot here!' LOL

These are the worst kind of problems to have.

[KTC]

two of my characters once took a dip in the spool.

[Stijn Hommes]

Mur Lafferty talked about search and replace mixups on ISBW once. changing someone's name from Jack to Clever Jack is fine, but it has a weird effect on the 'jacket' he's wearing...

[Writer14]

I don't know how I managed this one but,

' She turned around and reached from the paper on the table. Of of, of course she'd left her application out. '

Hm...I have no idea how I could have possibly typed three of's but...they were there. I just erased the entire sentence from my WiP :-)

[Soccer Mom]

Just about a week ago, I discovered that I had written "a forest of trees".

Doh! As opposed to those forests without trees, I guess.


Sheesh!

[Ravenlocks]

I had my characters arrive somewhere in the middle of a sub-zero Russian-style winter and then take a boat across the river, which magically wasn't frozen.

:|

[Vorteil]

A few years ago, I bought a family tree program in the bargain software section and started entering the family tree, based on my mothers' notes. I finally gave up in frustration when I ended up with one of my descendants giving birth to his own mother, or something whacky like that. And no matter what I did, he kept turning up in weird places. Sort of like that David Gerrold character in "The Man Who Folded Himself" who went back in time and met different versions of himself. Or maybe my ancestor was Virginia Woolf's Orlando! :eek:
:roll:

In a story I recently wrote I kept losing track of how much the characters knew about this one man...one day they'd find out his name, the next day they wouldn't know, and the day after they'd have all this randon information on him that they never actually found anywhere. Every time I tried to fix it things got worse so I ended up writing "plothole here" in big letters in certain sections. It was annoying.

[Deirdre]

Every time I tried to fix it things got worse so I ended up writing "plothole here" in big letters in certain sections. It was annoying.
:roll::roll:

[Deirdre]

Just about a week ago, I discovered that I had written "a forest of trees".

Doh! As opposed to those forests without trees, I guess.
It could have been a forest of moths.

[Madican]

Ah, found another one. A really stupid one. I had the MC walk in from the north and take a seat in the big black comfy chair. Save document and log off.

Log back on the next day. MC walks in and sits on the couch with his girlfriend. Save, log off.

Log back on the next day. MC walks in and sits in the sunny alcove.

I repeated this about three more times. Either my MC kept coming in and walking out or he had a lot of identical twins with the same name.

[Chasing the Horizon]

When I was editing yesterday I had a scene with three of my characters sitting at a bar. The bartender comes over, magically serves them drinks (without taking an order, mind you), then two paragraphs later, serves them drinks for the first time again. I know the first time he came over he was supposed to be taking the order, but that's totally not what I wrote.

I sent one of my secondary characters on a trip, then he magically appeared out of nowhere two chapters later and helped search an island, then disappeared again.

One of the ships in my completed novel was first said to be 130' long, then later was 300' long, and finally was 230' long during the final battle. Maybe it's like an old fashioned table with leaves they can take in and out to change the length? :D

I've loved reading this thread. These are hilarious :)

[MMWyrm]

I write at night, and when my mind is getting ready to shut down, it picks a word and starts repeating it. Last night, the word was 'stones.'

Not only did I have a lady walking out the door in her 'rustling sulks,' but her 'satin stones tapped out an ominous melody on the stones' as she left. Then my MC 'sank down onto the stones with her head in her hands.'

[maestrowork]

Not only did I have a lady walking out the door in her 'rustling sulks,' but her 'satin stones tapped out an ominous melody on the stones' as she left. Then my MC 'sank down onto the stones with her head in her hands.'

I'd read this.

[Michael Dracon]

One of the ships in my completed novel was first said to be 130' long, then later was 300' long, and finally was 230' long during the final battle. Maybe it's like an old fashioned table with leaves they can take in and out to change the length? :D

You're not the only one who managed to do this. In Star Trek: First Contact the Enterprise-E is stated to have 24 decks by Picard, then a few minutes later Worf states that Borg are in control of decks 26 up 11. To make matters worst in Star Trek: Nemesis the ship suddenly has someone board the ship on deck 29 and then he also manage to fall down several decks from that point :Wha:

Those decks probably came out of a plothole or something:roll:



As for my own WIP: I haven't written that much yet, but I already made an interesting mistake. One of the MCs melted a shackle of a chain to enter a restricted area. When she leaves she manages to lock the chain again. It took me a while to realize that a broken chain cannot lock a fence. It took me even longer to realize that she never even touched the lock itself in the first place when she entered...:o

[celeber]

I've had the opposite problem of an earlier poster.
I had bowl shattering terror, I still blame it on the settings in word. Either that, or I was really craving some cereal.

[Alia]

(Said Darin) "It will heal, but I must go after Neil."

And I'm a poet and I didn't even...

[HourglassMemory]

I think that I correct the errors too fast to even think of it as a funny grammatical construction.

However, many times I'm writing a serious scene and I just make something stupid happen.
Then it's backspace, backspace, backspace.

[carleen]

My male MC scraped some leftover eggs into the dogs' bowels.

I do the bowl/bowel thing all the time! My characters also loose things, instead of lose them.

[StoryG27]

I don't have any specific examples in front of me, but I'm terrible about mixing up letters.

I've had characters sing their name on the from, instead of sign their name on the form.

I've had upset characters who need to clam down (instead of calm down).

I can't think of all of the goofs I've done, but those are just a few examples.

[MMWyrm]

I'd read this.

Well, thanks. You must be easily pleased. ;)

[LilliCray]

In at least two instances that I've managed to catch so far in my really crappy first WiP (wow, that sounds incorrect!), I was thinking in. Fragments. Blah.

Seriously- I was describing a runic phoenix rising from the lava pool at the base of a cliff... and somehow it never managed to rise. I just got to the part where the runes were drifting off of it and then a sneaky little period snaked its way in. Sigh...

I've also written very very veryveryveryvery crappy sentences... I'd give an example but there's too many to choose one.

Not very funny, I know... I'm a thread depressing... person-like... thing. Bleargh... there goes my little half-thoughts... again.

[Wraith]

These are so funny! I also get words mixed up, especially when my mind's already going over the next sentence. A recent one was, 'He jumped off the barrel and came to the barrel' (instead of travelers). That whole scene already got axed, but I had a good chuckle out of it.