Your Approach to Continuity

[powerplantanimations]

What's your guy's approach to continuity in your story?

I know that there's three types of people when writing. Ones who OBSESS over every detail, people who have a hard time keeping track of stuff, or people who purposely change details in order to justify the story (I call these guys the Kojimas :v).

Personally, there's no wrong way of doing things. I can understand if someone has a difficult time keeping track of continuity (Toriyama) and I learned to respect people who purposely change details to justify a sick story.

That said, I'm the type who OBSESSES over every detail. I have this love for stories that needlessly bring up small little details. Not a huge Venture Bros. fan, but MAN the continuity in that show was god tier.

I also have this belief that if I keep doing stuff like this, it'll motivate people to pay close attention. One thing I love doing is when a character defeats an enemy I'm like "OKAY, OKAY. WHAT CAN I USE IN MY STORY TO DO A COOL CALLBACK?!?".

For example:

Later... (might wanna click these two pictures to expand lol):

What about you guys?:

Read That Stick Figure Isekai | Tapas Web Comics

[JaveCraze]

I made my MC a reader of fantasy so it'd make a LITTLE sense that they aren't completely frazzled, but little things like a character knowing things that they shouldn't sort of annoys me.. So I keep track of those things. I think the story's pretty consistent, but I think some things might 'come out of nowhere' for the audience because they aren't very foreshadowed. Meh. I'm not one for retcons, but I think some twists that'll come up will definitely recontextualizes things.

[nathanKmcwilliams]

All of the above.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

Sometimes I made it clear that small things happening in the background should have the development or conclusion (e.g if in the beginning of the conversation a guy was opening a can of beer, then halfway through I must portray him drinking and such)

I also try to make sure all things hinted/presented as a mystery will have its resolution and pay-off.

The other hand I occasionally forgot which part of the character's body is injured, that I need to recheck if I make them use that part accidentally.

I am glad for online platform because you can stealth edit and retcon all you want gaslighting your readers in the process

[Kalebell]

I make short stories so the need for continuity is kinda nonexistent, but its all set in the same world basically. When I write regular stories I think continuity is something that is important because it can make people more attached to what is happening. I also obsessed over tiny details when writing novels because I don't want anything to not make sense.

[smokesalty]

I'd say I care a lot about continuity, but if it's a really miniscule thing that nobody but me will notice, I don't bother with it.

I have a timeline of the background lore of how the cult came to be, but it rarely ever gets brought up in the story. I have an idea of when and how old certain characters were when they joined, but i doubt the readers are really gonna be like "omg! They look to old to be in this part of the timeline!" (mainly cos I don't give enough info on the timeline to cause contradictions )

But in terms of continuity in the story and characters, it's very important to me. A character cannot just change motivations or do something out of character- it needs to make sense to the story. I plan beforehand specifically to not need to change details

[TheLemmaLlama]

I like to think I'm the kind of person who doesn't stress about small, irrelevant details, but then again, I went back to draw a tree that has no plot significance because in previous panels, there was a shadow on the nearby table and the tree needs to be there in order to cast it :P

I care a lot about continuity for bigger stuff though. I hate it when a character learns a lesson then promptly forgets about it in a later episode for no apparent reason, or when something big and earth-shaking happens but everything goes back to normal as if it never happened :'D I guess I'm not above retconning things if I do happen to write myself into a corner, but I like to lower the chances of that happening by keeping things mysterious and only revealing what's needed for the plot to make sense, leaving myself to fudge the rest of it as required

[BoomerZ]

My entire comic is planned out so I know the beats to hit for the arc of the story, leading to an overall conclusion. Things happening at the beginning has effect on things coming later on. So there is a lot of set-up, but allows a pay-off later on that I think makes the reader say "oh yeah, I remember that."

[system]

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