Andrew Norriss
Andrew Norriss: 3. Consistency and logic
Some time after the second or third draft, when the narrative has shaken down to something that is no longer likely to change too dramatically, I take a careful look at consistency and logic.
Firstly, I’m looking for the obvious things - like making sure the characters have the same names throughout, that the distance they walk from one place to another is the same each time they do it, and that if one thing happens on a Wednesday, the day after is not the weekend - because these are the little inconsistencies that have the power to destroy the credibility of my story.
But there’s another sort of inconsistency, which Anne Fine once characterised as the ‘Why don’t they call the police?’ question. My characters have to behave logically. If they are normal, sensible people, they need to do normal, sensible things. I may want my heroine to wind up, on her own, in the home of the suspected serial killer… but is she really stupid enough to have gone there alone? As Anne Fine says, wouldn’t she have had the brains to pick up a phone first and call the police?
I need to find a reason why she didn’t, and it has to be a convincing reason. It needs to be something better than the heroine taking out her mobile and finding there’s no signal. If I want her in the madman’s house so that I can have my dramatic confrontation, then I have to think of something better than that. Usually it means planting something earlier in the story, and it always means working out not only what your main characters do, but the things they could have done and why they didn’t.
Andrew Norriss
