Ask Slashdot: Maintaining Continuity In Your Creative Works? 95
imac.usr writes: I recently rewatched the Stonecutters episode of The Simpsons and laughed as always at the scene where Homer pulls into his parking space — right next to his house. It's such a great little comic moment. This time, though, it occurred to me that someone probably wrote in to complain that the power plant was normally in a completely different part of town, no doubt adding "I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder." And that got me to wondering: how do creators of serial media — books, web comics, TV shows, even movie serials — record their various continuities? Is there a story bible with the information, or a database of people/places/things, or even something scribbled on a 3x5 card. I know Slashdot is full of artists who must deal with this issue on a regular basis, so I'd be interested in hearing any perspectives on how (or even if) you manage it.
Write yourself in as a character... (Score:3)
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Stephen King found himself in such a pickle to explain several continuity errors in his Dark Tower series
Wow. That's kind of hard for me to believe, considering the story centers around the destruction of the multiverse with alternate realities, and that continuity itself was being destroyed.
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I think that in most cases, most people don't even care. I think I heard something like the South Park creators didn't even have any idea what the town's layout looked like until they actually had to draw it out for the Stick of Truth game.
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I think that in most cases, most people don't even care. I think I heard something like the South Park creators didn't even have any idea what the town's layout looked like until they actually had to draw it out for the Stick of Truth game.
Yeah, it's an odd thing. I'm always seeing continuity errors that I find obvious. Others might either say Hey that's right, but more often they just get irritated. Probably part memory, part pattern recognition.
When I would shoot video - one more oddball part of my career - I'd scrutinize the scene and sometimes review the other videos to avoid it. And if not certain, we'd take multiple shots with different stuff changed. All that for something that most people either miss or don't care about, like you sa
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I just look at it the way I look at TV shows/movies where shit happens that just doesn't look realistic at all.
Basically, I just dismiss it as creative license. I only get annoyed when they do it so fucking badly that it's super distracting from the story.
For example, that show Under the Dome, I was watching how that Barbie guy used a goofy little Windows Phone (a blatant in-show product placement ad, by the way) to make an improvised bomb by using its timer with a blasting cap wired to the headphone jack,
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With CSI and NCIS they actually have to build inaccuracy in so people don't go out and try and repeat crimes. Everything else can use a little creative license, like deliberately inaccurate IP addresses and stuff like that.
Like good god the inaccuracies with CSI:Cyber had me making the same kind of face Doctors make when watching medical drama's (My sister's a doctor.) We all enjoy it until something is just too stupid that it's painful.
For example with CSI:Cyber, they made frequent use of stolen HTML scrip
COI awareness without idiocy (Score:2)
What would have been a non-idiotic way to protest conflicts of interest among video game reviewers?
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The problem is that GamerGate is two different movements each choosing to use the label:
One movement is a so-called egalitarian movement that wants to see women (and to a lesser extent, minorities) treated with the same respect in games and in the gaming community as males receive, who place themselves at odds with what they perceive as chauvinistic or worse mainstream gaming culture and gaming news media. This movement is rabidly opposed by some members of the gaming community, or at least by people who cl
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One thing that is easily overlooked by viewers of a long-running show, is that the writers for such a universe have a LOT more information to digest -- because in addition to all the finished episodes the viewer has seen, they have also gone over hundreds or even thousands of other (proposed) stor
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It really depends. In Simpons, there's no timewise continuity - the whole town's been nuked multiple times. Instead, the basic elements are the characters and the conceptual realm they inhabit. Those might be refined over time, but Mr. Burn's never going to clean up his act permanently, Bart's never going to grow up, etc. The show doesn't take place in spacetime, it takes place in the realm of myth. And the same is true for most ongoing series - for e
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Continuity is overrated.
When Robert Aspirin put together the Thieves World collaboration, he do a pre-emptive weaseling on continuity by explaining that different people had different memories and different agendas.
Which was actually a sharp idea, since that's exactly what happens in real life. Even our own memories are prone to distortion. The brain handles a lot of its memory functions not by playing back fixed detailed recordings, but by reconstruction.
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He died? Hey, it's a fair guess in that series!
previously on Slashdot (Score:1)
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If only that were the worst offense he'd committed.
Sad that one's Magnum Opus should be so directionless.
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Write according to the list of existing rules, and choose to break them strategically.
Something the Simpsons does a lot. They frequently break continuity on purpose, just to stick it to fans who pay too much attention. For example having a door that both goes the the basement and is a closet, or moving the where the door to the basement is, to make it impossible to make an accurate map of the house. Some of the same writers on the other hand spent a lot of time making sure the stars go by in the right direction on the ship in Futurama, as they were trying to make the layout of the ship th
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Some of the same writers on the other hand spent a lot of time making sure the stars go by in the right direction on the ship in Futurama, as they were trying to make the layout of the ship there a little more sensible, most of the time.
Despite the ship be nonsensical. FYI, it's not just the stars that move. The ship moves the entire universe!
Card Index (Score:3)
I vaguely remember seeing a behind-the-scenes thing many moons ago about a UK soap - might have been EastEnders - and it was all notebooks and card indexes.
Oh, and the Homer thing might have been a joke. Some companies give the closest parking spaces as an incentive to the best employees. Homer was lucky he didn't have to drive away from the plant.
a father-son moment (Score:2)
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If they didn't do it, that would make your game too easy.
If you look in imdb, even big budget movies with people paid full time to make sure continuity is maintained manage to have a dozen of mistakes.
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http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/P... [wikia.com]
Sarah suggests they should just leave in the TARDIS, because they know that the world did not end in 1911. The Doctor demonstrates otherwise by moving the TARDIS forward in time to 1980. There, the TARDIS doors open onto a blasted wilderness,
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Dr. Who universe is very complex, so most issues get explained away.
However they often are full of Easter eggs of the past shows. From doctor 11 showing an out of date library card from the 1960s with doctor 1 face.
But they don't always (but sometimes they do) explain the change in the quality of effects over the years.
Re: It seems most do not (Score:2)
I thought the whole point of Dr. Who was that the writers get to just make stuff up, no matter how implausible, and the fans get to spend the whole week finding ways to rationalize it all away. Then, next week, something implausible, compared to the previous implausibilities, occurs and the fans get to work even harder, rationalizing all that away and trying to force it all into some semblance of a continuous discontiguous narrative.
This gets repeated over and over in an exponentially increasing swirl of co
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Continuity value comes up only after we moved to a world of real time access of shows.
The original Star Trek and Early TNG were meant to be seen weekly. So a lot of the events in the past most people didn't notice much, as red shirt Joe, wasn't the focus of the show just a body to get killed off, so he can be there the next week and most people wouldn't know or care, because he is there just to push some buttons while an other star is off on an away team.
Then with personal video recording to binge streaming
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Script Supervisor (Score:5, Interesting)
In film, there's a person who's entire job is making sure that there is continuity from scene to scene (and from titles to credits). Sometimes they're called "continuity supervisor" but that's becoming less common. Usually, they're known as "script supervisor".
So if a character is wearing a hoodie zipped with the hood up in the closeup, the script supervisor makes sure that in the long shot of the character walking away he still has his hoodie zipped with the hood up. Since almost all movies are shot out of sequence, this becomes very important, and the script supervisor has to note all props, so if there's a glass filled 3/4 on a table where two characters are dining, the glass is still 3/4 full in the reaction shot, even though the reaction shot might be shot weeks or months later. Along with the lighting director, they match shadows and along with the costume director, match clothing.
If you ever want to see what a movie looks like when there is no script supervisor (or the script supervisor is stoned), watch Plan 9 From Outer Space by the great Ed Wood. Errors in continuity cause a very disorienting experience for the viewer. It's a fun movie, especially when you see a car pull up in a graveyard in broad daylight and then there's a cut to people exiting the car and it's the middle of the night. You probably have already heard the stories. Bela Lugosi died during filming, so they shot some scenes with someone who was several inches taller and years younger, except he held his cape in front of his face, Dracula style.
Some film makers have used continuity breaks to great effect. For example, the 1940s art film "Meshes of the Afternoon" by Maya Deren is hallucinogenic in its continuity breaks. This film has influenced generations of filmmakers, including current guys like Darren Aronofsky, David Lynch and even more mainstream filmmakers. Also, a generation of Japanese horror directors pay tribute to Maya Deren and her shocking breaks from continuity.
Here, go watch Meshes of the Afternoon right now and see what I mean. It's only like 10 minutes long, so relax a bit and watch the whole thing. It's very trippy. The music is also very very good.
https://youtu.be/YSY0TA-ttMA [youtu.be]
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Normally I might feel the need to berate you for not answering the question of how, because any number of searches would have returned "continuity" and related terms.
So, while I still had the thought, I feel enlightened (though I knew 2/3 of what you wrote, there's always more to know)
I always wondered how, but assumed that everyone has their own system, most will say notebooks or index cards, and some reference to OneNote and similar. Never thought asking here would return actual how.
Re:Script Supervisor (Score:5, Informative)
Well, my info on that is a little dated. I've been on three film sets where the budget was big enough for a script supervisor. The first was in the mid-80s, and it was all done by marking up one copy of the script by hand as shooting was going on and another while watching the dailies (the director and editor and script supervisor will watch quickly-developed film later that night).
The second was in the mid-90s, and there were video cameras running while the film was being shot. This way, script supervisors wouldn't have to wait for the dailies to get bicycled back from the lab (they call any transporting fresh film "bicycling").
The third was in 2003 and instead of video being shot on 3/4" tape, it was being shot with decent Sony cameras. There would be video of the set before the actors showed up (to note the shadows, placement of curtains and any other things that could possibly change). Laptops were used to review footage, but it was still being shot on tape (Hi-8 was what I saw, but hands were already talking about hard drive recording).
Now? Who knows. Maybe they have micro-drones flying around recording everything, and streaming the images to someone's Apple Watch or Oculus.
TV shows work the same way. Though I did see an episode of Arrow where in one scene Diggs' tie was loosened and in the over the shoulder, you could see it was nicely knotted in place. If you watch enough films, you'll notice lots of little continuity breaks that get left in. Maybe it was picked up in editing and the actor had already grown a beard for a new role and they didn't want (or couldn't afford) to re-shoot. Oh yeah, and my wife noticed that Oliver Queen's beard stubble sometimes changes length when he changes into his Arrow suit and back again. But my wife tends to notice Oliver Queen for some reason. I don't know what she sees in him when she has me.
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I'm pretty sure that doesn't happen. I've only seen a bit of that show, but a lie detector would show that I'm not lying. Aside from questionable accuracy, the lie detector would suggest that your wife is probably either more or less attuned to the visual radiation emitted by your display. Eyeballs are not created equal, nor are visual processing sections of the brain, after all. Try changing the display temperature,
Policd Squad/Naked Gun (Score:2)
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If you want to look at a scene that plays with continuity: Find the scene where the cops (Leslie Nielson & co) are in the cruiser. The conversation is entirely blase. The thing to look for is the donuts and the coffee cups - they migrate around, get refilled, change color. It must have driven the continuity people nuts, it was intentionally screwing with the one subject they work very hard at getting right.
I believe that the continuity people would be aware that it was what is called a "joke".
Script Supervisor (on movies) (Score:3, Informative)
Movies have a Script Supervisor whose job is to keep track of things like that. Since most movies are not shot in chronological order, in many locations and over the course of several weeks or months or sometimes even years, this is a bigger challenge than it appears at first glance.
The invention of the digital still camera was a godsend for these folks; they used to go through ungodly quantities of Polaroid film. Now they can keep it all on their computer.
Hmmm. (Score:2)
My day job is a web comic [urnash.com]. All of my story notes live largely in Evernote. I mostly try to avoid doing lengthy sagas that need to really worry about continuity.
I believe Marvel and DC employ archivists; part of their job is to be a resource on continuity. Part of the job of a comic's editor is also to catch continuity glitches.
"Bibles" (Score:1)
For some series and serials, if you want to write in that "universe" you have to abide by the "Bible."
Back in the day these were printed manuals saying what you could and could not put in your story. I assume they are available in non-dead-tree form these days.
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In one videogame studio I've worked at, the game designers used an internal Wiki to keep track of the both the game lore as well as planned game design elements. It's a great way to summarize people, places, things, and major events for quick reference, and of course, for cross-referencing related topics. I'm not sure what other studios use, but I'd presume an online bible like this is especially useful for RPGs, with their sprawling stories and large numbers of characters.
What's interesting is that post-r
On this topic - anything like 'Word' with tabs? (Score:2)
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...would LOVE to have 'tabs' for several different categories, and be able to flip through those, rather than scroll down several pages in the Doc.
OneNote.
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...would LOVE to have 'tabs' for several different categories, and be able to flip through those, rather than scroll down several pages in the Doc.
OneNote.
Rank heresy. This is /. The correct answer is Emacs org-mode.
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The desktop versions of OneNote (included with Microsoft Office since at least 2007), like all Office products, can save or load from any accessible storage media, including cloud storage services (like OneDrive or Google Drive.)
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Google Keep, maybe?
It doesn't have tags but it seems made for short amounts of text and you can use tagging (labels) to create categories.
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Third party meatbag fact checkers, typically. (Score:2)
For the purpose of ensuring consistency, the author (whose concentration within the story is typically on what is coming and where characters and the story arc are going to be) is usually not the best person to ensure that current or recent story updates are consistent with existing material they have already written for that universe. For that task, third party human fact-checkers are best (readers of the existing works who have the attention to detail and the fanatical sense of ownership of the author's c
RPG Campaign (Score:1)
I've found creating various files with all of the lore (helpfully named as Lore - .txt) has helped me immensely with just creating a basic RPG campaign in a personalized world. There is a LOT of writing involved, and sometimes I'll find that what I want to add doesn't match what I've already put in, so my choice is either to scrap re-write the lore or fit the encounter to match the current lore.
The good part about it is simply that I have the lore written down so that I can reference it at any time. The bad
Nitpicks reflect less-than-compelling stories. (Score:3, Insightful)
This time, though, it occurred to me that someone probably wrote in to complain that the power plant was normally in a completely different part of town, no doubt adding "I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder."
Nobody has actually complained* about that because... wait for it... that episode was really good. In fact there is a special reason why they got away with that particular gag: If they had shown you an accurate portrayal of Homer's drive to work it would have taken much longer than the window of time available to make that joke funny. In other words, they didn't show you that Homer lives next door to the power plant, they just showed you that his time was wasted in a visual way.
I'm not saying you don't need to pay attention to continuity. In fact, I can tell you a simple way to avoid a good deal of continuity issues: Avoid declaring anything about a character that isn't important to the plot. Dave Lister, for example, has had his appendix out twice. They used it early on as a gag because they needed a life event that can only happen once. The second time it was to show off that a new character had benevolent intentions towards them. Did it make sense to use it the first time? Yes. The second time... Um, no, they ended up locking him into a detail for just a throwaway gag. They did, however, establish he was an orphan and that was so important that it rang several times through the entire run of the series. You won't find any lines about him knowing his biological parents** for exactly that reason. Don't say your character has a brother or sister if you never intend to meet them or at least write them in again. We hear about Rimmer's brothers all the time, for example, but have no idea if Kochanski or the Cat are only-childs. Etc. We know about Rimmer's brothers because their treatment of him as a kid has had consequences on his character. It's built in to his character that his brothers tormented him, were smarter and more successful than him, and that they were more loved by his parents than he was. Because of this nobody is going to write a Red Dwarf script where Rimmer is an only child.
That said, don't worry so much about continuity. Make your story work. If you start hearing nitpicks about your character being left-handed instead of right-handed in one episode, it's not because continuity is such an ugly sin, it's because your story isn't entertaining and the nitpicks start becoming a lot more observable.
Oh... that and assholes like me look for problems like that just so we can point them out in order to look smarter. Don't worry about us, though, we paid for the DVD's and/or books because we wanted to go overboard researching it. ;)
* Not one person saw that and said "I won't watch that show anymore."
** Yes, I know there's a problem with that statement, no I don't want to go into it.
Retcontinuity (Score:2)
"Continuity in creative works" (Score:2)
Hire fans (Score:2)
Sometime software can help (Score:3, Informative)
There are some software solutions out there that in addition to actually store your writing, have functions that help to store your research, character bios, locations etc... Some are gear more towards writing novels and others can cover a wide gamut.
I've used Liquid Story Binder (which doesn't seem to be actively updated any more) and Scrivener. They both have ways to keep your facts straight.
You don't necessarily need to use software that's specifically created for this. I've also used mind mapping tools (Mindjet MindManager, MindGenius, FreeMind (open source)) when I am starting out with some ideas. Other tools that I have used includes MS OneNote (free), Evernote (on-line), AllMyNotes, Right Note, myBase and Ultra Recall.
Interestingly, even with access to these these tools, I still use Notepad++, or vi a lot of the time to store some info in txt files.
Even with any of these tools, you should always double check and use people to verify that you didn't mess up.
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I've used Liquid Story Binder (which doesn't seem to be actively updated any more) and Scrivener. They both have ways to keep your facts straight.
I'd also add yWriter [spacejock.com] to that list: it's free and is written by an actual published fiction writer/computer programmer. Also, it runs in WINE [spacejock.com].
Stargate SG-1 (Score:1)
On Stargate SG-1 they did have a bible, just a book of facts about everything they had to stick with and would continually review and update. I heard that pretty early on, about 1999. I figure a written journal style book would become difficult to manage as things go on, so it wouldn't surprise me if people are using something a little more searchable these days.
Plan in advance (Score:2)
Some authors and show writers have most of the story planned in advance. JMS had the Babylon 5 Universe planned out for at least 1 000 years in the past and 1 000 000 years in the future (and also had a series bible). JKRowling had the 7 years of Harry Potter planned out, and even had the last chapter of book 7 written and locked away for years. I think even for LOST, they had a couple of seasons planned out before season 1 was finished (although I seem to remember that half way through season 1 they rea
Watching for continuity is a new thing (Score:2)
Have you ever looked at older shows? Sitcoms especially? Nobody gave half a shit about continuity until the later 1990s. Take any comedy show from the 50s to the 90s and note how none of them cares about any kind of continuity between episodes. And it's not even just sacrificing continuity for a gag, it was simply a non-issue. Minor characters being played by different actors (or the opposite, the same actor playing completely different minor roles), characters getting and losing relatives as it fits the (c
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Seriously, Springfield is where 5 states come together in a 5-sided point accumulation, and a bullet in a straight line goes through 4 of them. Continuity? Sheesh.
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Continuity is something that only popped up very recently when viewers started to want such a thing. And it's still a rather small (but very vocal) minority that cares about such things, at least in shows where it simply does not matter.
Is that a function of the way we consume our media these days? Back in the 50s-90s people watched shows on broadcast; the series-binge is only a recent phenomenon corresponding with torrents and then streaming services.
Reading, notes, and an editor (Score:2)
I employ three tactics to maintain continuity in my writing:
When I feel uninspired, I read what I've already written. That way it stays in my mind.
I keep fairly detailed notes with one or two lines per chapter. That way at least I know where to look for a reference.
I have an editor that catches the continuity errors that slip through the cracks. I perform the same service for his writing, though I wouldn't call it a symmetric relationship considering I've written about ten times the
Story Bible (Score:1)
The package for selling a series typically consists of a treatment/pitch document, a pilot script and a story bible. The story bible typically contains the layout of the characters and main story lines for the first season and often has synopses of a;; the first season shows.
A series has a master producer called a Show Runner. If that guy or gal is concerned with continuity across episodes and seasons then continuity happens. If they are not then the only continuity you can count upon is adherence to the st
Star Wars (Score:2)
Continuity and researchers of fiction (Score:1)
Three examples come to mind: Star Trek, lady mystery author, Game of Thrones.
The guy who was the Science Consultant for Star Trek had a two part job. One was to get the "real"science right (or close enough). The other was to make sure the fictional particles and weapons and such were consistent with previous appearances.
Says my wife: a certain prolific/productive/hack writer of series detective fiction hired a family member to record and organize various facts about people and events and such in her det
How about some common ones ... (Score:3)
I've read a number of comments about all the movies that let you know you're in Paris by the fact that you can see the Eiffel Tower through a window. After a while, some viewers start to realize that in the movie's world, the Eiffel Tower is visible from every window in Paris. So is there really a regulation in Paris saying that windows are illegal on the other sides of buildings?
Other readers can probably list a number of other such landmarks that they've spotted. The Golden Gate Bridge is another, so SF apparently has a similar construction regulation.
build a scale model (Score:2)
If you want continuity of location, build a scale model or keep a current drawing of the town. That being said, the episode of Simpsons you mention is done for the comedic effect. Simpsons is a show set in a generic town of Springfield which can be any of the dozens of Springfields and the comedic value comes before plot continuity. In South Park, Kenny dies in every almost every episode. It's funny. For the most part there is no explanation of how he magically reappears again. No one cares. Simpsons,
Editors (Score:1)
private wiki (Score:1)
I don't make movies or TV or even serial art, but I used to write a lot and would always want to maintain internal consistency between stories set in the same, usually, science-fictional universe. I started using a private wiki to do that with, based on TiddlyWiki, which is self-contained, basically one page, and doesn't need a database behind it. I wrote about it on my blog here: A Personal Wiki [jkhoffman.com].
As an example of what one might put into a wiki like that, I put a bunch of the Traveller RPG "Library Data" fr
Cows say (Score:1)