Lost characters!

So, in my last post I told you that I had finished my novel. Well, in this post, I am going to share with you a very amusing story about that novel. It was a couple of days and around ten pages before I was done when I noticed that I had a big problem. A little back story first.

When I started the book, I was keeping track of all of my characters that I was using on a little piece of paper. I wrote down their names as they entered the story, and I crossed them off if they left the story. Well, when I went on vacation in the middle of August I took that list with me, just in case I had time to write on the trip. I didn't have any time to write, so bringing the paper was pointless, but I always like to be prepared. When I got home after the vacation about a month later, and was ready to start writing again, I realized that I was missing that piece of paper. I searched through all of my stuff, but it turned up nothing. I guess from then on I would have to wing it. No big deal--or so it would seem.

I was getting close to finishing, and I wanted to bring a character that I had used in the beginning back into the story, well since I didn't have the piece of paper that had my characters, I had to scroll back through my story to find the character. Along the way I noticed something, something very important. I had four characters missing!!! I was tantalizingly close to finishing my novel and then this comes out of nowhere! Frustrated, I searched through my story to find where I had lost my characters. Two of the characters were easy to remedy, they were close to being pointless, so I opted to eliminate them entirely from the story. A simple solution. The other two characters were a bit more challenging. They disappeared later in the story and I had issues finding them. I figured out that one of them had been sent somewhere, and that I could just say that he was going to stay there. Another simple solution. The final character was the worst. I ended up finding where he had disappeared from my writing, and I now had to add him to where he was supposed to be for the next 40 pages! Slowly, I ended up getting him where he was supposed to be, and I could finish the final pages of my book.

I told a few people about my writing misstep, and, upon hearing it, found it highly amusing. The moral of this story? Be sure to write your ideas down, and don't lose them! Or, just have a photographic memory, like my character Krista! I hope your writing doesn't have some of the same snags as mine! Until next time readers!