For a Blog Me MAYbe writing post, I am going to share a little a PSA about the (purported) timesaver that is Find and Replace.
Maybe you've decided, in the midst of rewriting your book, that a character's name needs to change. It happens--alliteration starts to annoy the crap out of you, or you realize two characters have the same one, or you simply have lightning-bolt inspiration for a better name.
And perhaps you decide that reading through the entire MS and manually changing the name is a waste of your time. Plus, you'll probably miss the reference in at least a couple of places, and then things will get really confusing for a reader. So you decide to use "Find and Replace" to swap names.
If you are changing Penelope to Leah, this is probably fine.
If you are changing Ned to Heathcliff, this is probably not a good idea. If the name can be a part of any other word, proceed with caution unless you want to find many, many instances like this:
It dawned on her that he was right. --> It dawheathcliff on her that he was right.
Mrs. Tripp owned the cupcakery. --> Mrs. Tripp owheathcliff the cupcakery.
Technology = not always making life easier.
What mistakes have you made thanks to MS Word/Scrivener, etc.? What changes do you insist on making yourself, the old-fashioned way, thanks to snafus like this?
9 comments:
Ha! I made this mistake awhile back! A father's name in my WiP changed from Tom to Jake, and after finding and replacing, I ended up with lots of Jakeorrows instead of tomorrows. I got to go back to find and replace all of those next. :)
Great tip, Rebecca!
Jakeorrows FTW!
I *think* if you add spaces in the Find and Replace it might fix this issue--but I'll just DIY in the future, to be safe.
Yes...have done this too (Mark to Marc: there are more words with "mark" in them than you'd think)...though I didn't even discover find/replace until I'd already changed a lot of names manually in my first book.
Yes, I've done this! So annoying!
That happened to me last spring when I was starting to convert and reformat the files of my first Russian novel a decade after finishing it. I wrote the original sections of the first 7 chapters when I wasn't the most knowledgeable Russophile yet (I was only 13 when I started it in '93), and so one of the secondary characters hadn't had her nickname changed yet in the earliest sections. Her full name is Aleksandra, but I'd idiotically called her Al. I know, what an authentic Russian name! When doing the find/change from Al to Alya, it got all my other words with "al" in them as well. Luckily, I use accent marks in my Russian names, so I was better-able to snuff out the offending words, like Ályaready and Ályall.
Good tip!
Jakeorows! Good one! Yes, I find the happy medium for me is using find and replace, but doing it one by one-- I don't have to do the hunting, but I can pick/choose on a case by case basis and skip all the "tomorrows", if you will.
SUCH a good tip. I think adding a space is the key. And also adding a ' at the end for times you may have made it possessive.
Thanks for sharing this, too! I haven't had this happen yet, but it's good to know!
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