By Elaine Viets

    So there I was reading my favorite blockbuster novelist, a writer with a shelf full of awards, kudos from critiques, a movie and more, when I was stopped by a stupid mistake. The angst-ridden hero tossed his clothes down the laundry shoot.
    Well, chute. What happened to this normally careful and precise author? Where were his editor and copyeditor?
    No, I’m not giving you this writer’s name. These mistakes happen to us all. Keep reading and I’ll tell you how I embarrassed myself in front of three hundred thousand readers.
    Let’s just say that homonyms happen.
    Here are a few common mistakes that make you look like an amateur. And no gloating, please. The next brain freeze could be yours.

 
– It’s bloody embarrassing when mystery writers have police and forensic experts talk about blood splatter. It’s spatter. Get the L out of there.

– Watch those bears. Grizzly murders are cringeworthy, unless the person was killed by a bear. Grizzly is another treacherous homonym.

– Triple threat. “Peaked,” “piqued” and “peeked” give writers three ways to go wrong. How often have you encountered versions of “this peaks my curiosity”? I didn’t want to see it, but I’d already “piqued” at the page and knew I wasn’t getting a “peek” literary experience.
 
– Twisted. Beer drinkers know that Heineken does not have a twist-off cap, but many writers don’t. Your character needs a church key for those green bottles.  

— Jack’s possessive. Jack Daniel’s always has an apostrophe. I had a sobering discussion with a copyeditor who wanted to remove the apostrophe, but that’s when hanging around bars paid off. I knew Mr. Daniel was possessive about his Tennessee whiskey.

– How to drive readers crazy: Get car details wrong.  In 1968, hippies did not open the hood of their VW Beetles and check the engine. Beetles back then had rear-mounted, air-cooled engines. Check car details on the Internet.

– All wet. No, you do not “wet” your appetite. You sharpen it. Put that H to work.

— Lift that bale. No, you don’t tow the line. It’s not a rope. Webster says when you “toe the line” you “conform rigorously to a rule or standard.”

– Watch those foreign words and phrases. When I was a newspaper reporter, I wrote about a waiter who wore “liederhosen” at a German restaurant. Amazing, a reader told me. A man with singing leather pants. I should have had the waiter wearing lederhosen – leather britches.
    That extra “i” made a fool out of me.

By Elaine Viets

    White meat. When I was growing up, that was the best part of the turkey – and the most unattainable.
    In German-American families, children were seen but not heard, and the choicest pieces of Thanksgiving turkey were reserved for the adults. Grandpa carved the turkey because he was the head of the family, but he had a subversive streak. Grandpa would “accidentally” drop little slices of white meat on the kitchen table for us grand kids while he carved.
    But not too many. That delicacy was reserved for my mom and my aunt. My dad and my uncle got the turkey legs, Grandpa ate the wings and thighs and Grandma ate the pope’s nose – the tail. She’d grown up poor and “got used to eating it,” she said.
    But Grandma was determined that her grandchildren would know the finer things, including white meat on Thanksgiving. One year in the 1960s, when I was ten and still eating at the children’s table, she bought a Butterball turkey.

    The big-breasted bird was the talk of the family.
    When we visited her the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we went downstairs to the basement freezer to admire the prize. The burly top-heavy bird nested amid bags of the frozen peas.
    “Look at the size of that breast,” Grandma said. She never used that b-word  except to describe fowl anatomy.
    Butterballs boasted more white meat than any other turkey, according to the ads, and we didn’t know about animal rights back then.
    At three o’clock that glorious Thanksgiving, Grandma triumphantly pulled her roasted Butterball turkey out of the oven: a busty golden brown bird.

While the turkey cooled, she put the finishing touches on the rest of the holiday feast: giblet gravy, stuffing, cranberry relish, lima beans in cheese sauce, and Parker House rolls. A stick of real butter was enshrined in a cut-glass dish. Mom brought the screw-top bottle of Mogen David wine out of the fridge and poured everyone a thimbleful.
    The table sparkled with the best crystal and dishes, seen only on holidays. Even the kids’ card table got a real tablecloth.
    Grandpa started carving. First the legs were set aside on the platter. Next he sliced into the golden breast meat. “Oops, I dropped a piece,” he said, and placed a thick slice on the Formica-topped kitchen table. As the oldest, I grabbed it. (Hey, rank has its privileges, even among kids.) Yum. This was the tenderest white meat I’d ever eaten, a sweet promise of the adult privileges waiting for me.
    “Me, Grandpa!”“Me!” my brothers and cousins cried as Grandpa gleefully dropped slice after succulent slice of white meat and we kids scrambled for them like hungry pigeons.
    He was still giggling and giving us white meat when Grandma said, “Papa, how’s the turkey coming?”
    Uh-oh.
    Suddenly we noticed the turkey breast was as bony as a fashion model’s carcass. All the white meat was gone, except for a few scraps.
          Guilty, greasy-fingered grand kids slipped away.
    Now I can eat all the white meat I want, but it never tastes quite as good.
    So what lesson does this teach about writing?
    (A) Be on the look out when something special lands front of you – and use it.
    (B) Nothing. Have a happy Thanksgiving with delicious memories.

Elephants, it is said, never forget anything.

 
Readers, not so much.

I’m reminded of this memory gap frequently in my critique group. I’ll be reading a scene from chapter eight of someone’s draft, and suddenly a minor-sounding character pops up from out of nowhere to contribute a bit of dialogue. There’s no description that reminds me who this character is, or where he came from. There’s just a bit of dialogue, and a name. I have no clue who this character is.

Oh, I introduced that character four chapters ago, the writer says, a tad defensively, in response to my sheepish request for a reminder. How could I have forgotten?

I’ve forgotten your character, I want to scream at the writer during these moments, because A) You failed to introduce the character originally in a memorable way, and B) You didn’t re-establish him later in an effective manner. 

A Universal Truth of Writing: It’s Never the Reader’s Fault!

It doesn’t work to ignore a character for several chapters, or even one scene, and then sling him back upon the unsuspecting reader without proper re-introduction. To a reader, this type of assault feels a bit like a zombie attack from outer space. Readers need to be reminded about what your character’s been doing the entire time you’ve been focusing attention elsewhere.

Within a scene, the re-introduction of a character who’s been missing in action can be done with a single sentence. For example, let’s say you have a scene with three characters, and two of them have been having a heated argument. Now let’s say you need to re-introduce Character #3, who hasn’t said anything so far in the scene. This is one way you might do it:

Bertram, who’d been listening to us from his unsteady perch on the broken stool, cut in to deliver a verdict. “You’re both wrong,” he said.

If your character’s been missing in action for entire chapters, you’ll need to do a bit more work to re-introduce him. One thing you could do would be to show other characters reacting to your MIA’s re-arrival in the scene.

Best Practice Suggestions: 
Don’t lose your reader by ambushing him with improperly introduced details or characters from previous sections.  
Do re-establish characters from earlier sections with gentle reminders that help readers stay oriented in the story flow.

How do you re-introduce MIA characters in your work? Have you ever had to go back a few pages to remind yourself who a character is?