Daily Things Authors Forget

     



  What do you mean authors forget? AUTHORS FORGET THINGS?

Okay, but actually - everyone knows this by now. While writing a book, you need to get to the point of the plot. Which usually means some pretty realistic things get forgotten...things that usually happen daily, or are just normal responses to things. Let's take a look at a few, shall we? 

(What, you didn't think you'd get through one of my posts without a list, did you?)

1. Bathroom breaks - although you don't have to full out depict your characters announcing they must relieve themselves, please, for my sanity, give them some time every day where you could plausibly see them going to the washroom. If your co-ed group is traveling through flat plains (devoid of bushes or trees) for a full day or more, it's going to get awkward. Inevitably. Otherwise, you're literally just saying your characters don't have bladders or digestive tracts and that's just weird.

2. Food - people eat a lot. Kids eat a lot. Teens eat a lot. I eat a lot. I'm hungry. Seriously, if kids eat these tiny bits of food and then rush off into the night to fight who-the-heck, I'm not going to believe it. Another interesting fact: maybe some people lose their appetites in public or while stress, but ohoho, not everyone. I can literally eat a horse in public. I'm the kid hanging around the buffet table. Nerves make me munch. Plus, if your character isn't eating a lot due to stress (or just being weird and not eating) they're probably going to feel faint or hungry after fighting people, or running, or walking, or literally doing anything. 

3. Periods - I wrote another post about this (haven't yet posted it...) You can't have a lady go on a four-month trip without having at LEAST three times where this lady needs to take a detour. Especially when they're like 'oh, yes, we've been out in the wilderness with nothing but our talent in spearfishing for 2 years' and I'm sitting wondering how the heck they found the fabric to sub for pads. Seriously. A healthy woman can bleed 80ml of blood in one cycle. Let's hope she isn't a heavy bleeder or is literally starving herself to stop the bloodflow (very very bad to do, btw) 

4. Water - I find unless characters are in the desert no mention of water is brought up. Are all characters just severely dehydrated? Is this what I'm being told? Like, your character can't actually live off of nothing but grog. Unless they're literally, like, a dwarf or something and that is what they live off of. Make sure your old towns, traveling characters, and literally anyone that you're following their life, have some access to water that you can see them getting to. Again, you can't have someone walking through riverless plains for 2 weeks without any water source, or bad things will happen just like a desert.

5. Physical abilities - walking all day hurts. I've done it before, delivering flyers. At first, at 7-8:00ish it was fine, but then around 2:00 I was done with walking. Like, so done. And then by 5:00 my feet were in utter pain and I had a horrific sunburn. Why do characters never get sunburns? Especially in medieval set books...do British people just not get sunburns? Not only walking all day, but also just running, jumping, lifting yourself, swimming...some random things that your average Joe sometimes can't do...or they might be able to do it, just not very well. I 'can' run, but after half a minute I'm pretty much pooched and will be down to more of a responsible jog. Now, that's not saying that if I had the motivation (aka, bloodthirsty Cerberus, as an example) that I wouldn't be able to run longer. Just some food for thought, though.

6. Sleeping in - if your characters live before the age of alarm clocks and they're 'waking up before the sunrise' I will literally slap you. It didn't matter how hard I tried as a kid. Without an alarm clock, waking up was a no go. No comprendo. Absolument pas. *other probably incorrect ways to say no or not understood in other languages*. Unless you usually wake up before the sun, I don't know how it's possible to just...wake up. I don't know, maybe it's just me? But without a reason of how your character woke up... I'm going to be confused.

      Now, the real question in this post: will I ever tire of Avatar gifs? Obviously, the answer is no, but it's a pretty serious question. 

Okay, okay, but seriously, what makes a book good isn't how 'realistic' it is, but sometimes when I have to pause in the middle of the book to be confused as to where they're getting their bathroom breaks, it can pull me right out of the story. And then I'm looking for things to not line up correctly. (I'm really sorry if the pricklesnake gif is distracting you, cause it's distracting me while writing...if you don't know what I mean by pricklesnake, you have a show to watch. This👏 is👏 important👏.

       If you've made it this far through the post, thanks! I really appreciate it. If I'm being honest, I usually end up skimming a lot of posts that are too long or whatever..But anyway, I think you probably have better things to do (*ahem* that WIP writing project?) other than read my rants online...so I'm going to stop talking now.