Had to scrap 3 chapters when my beta reader pointed out my timeline made zero sense

I spent 6 months building this intricate fantasy plot with a 30 day journey, but my beta reader from Ohio noticed characters were traveling at horse speeds while I kept describing them on foot. That's when I realized I never actually mapped distances on my fake continent, I just wrote what felt dramatic instead of what worked logically. Has anyone else had a reader catch a huge structural flaw you totally missed?

3 comments

3 Comments

jennifer20427d ago

Oh absolutely, I trashed an entire subplot once because my beta reader, who is a birdwatcher, pointed out I had migratory birds heading north in December. Map it all out, seriously. Grab some graph paper or even just a napkin and draw your continent with rough distances, then do the math on travel times based on whatever transportation you're using. It kills me when I see authors write "a week's journey" but then have characters crossing a mountain range in two days, that's just magic at that point. And don't forget to factor in weather and fatigue, your characters should slow down after a hard fight or a storm, not just bounce back at maximum speed.

wendyprice27d ago

The one time I tried to be clever with travel, I had my characters cross a desert and casually mentioned sandstorms but forgot that sandstorms can basically shred your face off and ruin all your supplies. Had to rewrite a whole chapter because my fact-checker friend was like "cool so they'd be dead by page 200." I still cringe thinking about that. And honestly, the bird thing is hilarious, the beta readers always catch the weirdest stuff. I once had a map where I put a river running east to west across a whole continent and someone pointed out that's basically impossible without some serious elevation changes. Now I just use real world geography as a template and tweak it, saves me from making too many dumb mistakes.

elliot_patel27d ago

Oh MAN, I feel this SO hard @wendyprice. I had a similar facepalm moment when I wrote about a desert crossing and forgot that camels need way more water than I thought, so my characters would have died of dehydration before they even hit the sand dunes. It's brutal when you think you've got it all figured out and then someone points out a basic fact that just WRECKS your whole timeline. Your point about rivers is spot on too, I never even thought about that east-west thing until a geography nerd friend explained it to me over coffee. Now I keep a little notebook where I jot down dumb mistakes other writers have made so I can avoid them myself. And honestly, the bird thing is GOLD, because readers will catch stuff you'd never notice in a million years.