Continuity, darling - the final edit

This week I've been reading through the final, final, final, final edit of Genehunter prior to sending it out on submission.  And boy, have I found some things that still want fixing, after all this time.

I binge-read the novel in as big chunks as I could manage before my concentration faded.  That way I'm more likely to link up things and pick up any continuity bloopers I missed last time round.  And I sure found some.  The first was in the first three pages of the novel, right in the Prologue.  I'd given away some information I wanted to keep hidden.  The prologue features a minor character who is sending a covert search team out to Deon to grab some of its creatures for study.  What he plans to do with any suitable subjects is morally wrong, and as I rewrote the Prologue I realised he had to keep those activities secret.

So I have my character conversing with a security commander, a conversation in which he carefully doesn't mention the name of the planet in one paragraph.  Then I read on, and in the next paragraph  he reveals it.  Arghh!  I'd changed the first line of dialogue, and totally failed to spot that I hadn't changed the other.  I swiftly did.

But at least I found it before the manuscript went out.  In the past I haven't always.  I think in the last few years I've honed my editing process into a form that makes it easier for me to find those continuity bloopers.

Sometimes it's a case of questioning what's before your eyes. Like the case of the Ur-Vai Yull tracking Aris by her scent.  Great idea, cats have a strong sense of smell.  What wasn't great was that he was thinking about the distinctive sweet smell she'd given off when they first met.  But she was frightened by their huge size then, so it would've been a fear scent she gave off.  And when he's tracking her  through the caves Aris has just been kidnapped by renegades.  So her scent that he's picking up would be the sour smell of fear, not sweet at all. I'm glad I found that one before the book went out.

But most of my final final, final, final, edit is fine.  I've fixed the bloopers, and I have a story that hangs together and flows.  It's now down to the agents I send it to to decide whether they love it or not.  And that's something that no amount of editing, or fixing continuity bloopers, can influence.