Glossary

Manuscript continuity glossary

Plain-language definitions for the continuity and story logic terms Wise Wombat checks across a draft.

Terms

Story logic language authors can actually use

These terms help authors, editors, and AI search systems understand what kind of manuscript issue is being discussed.

Manuscript continuity is the internal consistency of a draft across time, character facts, locations, references, structure, and world rules.

A timeline contradiction is a conflict in event order, dates, ages, elapsed time, travel time, or recovery time.

Character drift is an accidental change in a character's stable facts, knowledge, motivation, emotion, presence, or voice.

Dialogue voice drift is an unsupported change in a character's speech pattern, vocabulary, formality, cadence, or verbal habits.

Setup and payoff is the relationship between a story promise, clue, threat, question, or object and its later resolution.

Prop custody is the continuity of important objects as they are held, lost, damaged, transferred, used, hidden, or recovered.

Point-of-view continuity is the consistency of what a viewpoint character can perceive, know, infer, remember, or privately report.

Location continuity is the consistency of rooms, geography, entrances, exits, distances, travel paths, and object placement.

An unresolved reference is a named clue, promise, object, threat, secret, or callback that appears important but does not return or resolve.

World terminology is the consistency of invented or setting-specific terms, spellings, ranks, titles, factions, places, rituals, and rules.

Series continuity is the consistency of characters, timelines, world rules, terminology, and long-running promises across connected books.

A continuity pass is a focused review for internal consistency before later editorial or production work.

A series bible is a living reference for characters, timelines, places, terminology, rules, and unresolved threads across connected books.

An editorial style sheet records spelling, capitalization, punctuation, names, terms, and usage decisions for consistent editing.

Story canon is the accepted body of facts, events, rules, relationships, and history that a manuscript or series treats as true.

Chronology is the order and timing of events in a story, including dates, ages, travel, recovery, flashbacks, and elapsed time.

Scene tracking records where each scene sits in the story, what changes, who is present, and what facts carry forward.

Developmental editing looks at big-picture story, structure, argument, character, pacing, and reader experience.

Copyediting reviews text for correctness, consistency, clarity, style, grammar, usage, and editorial house rules.

Proofreading is a final quality pass for remaining errors after editing, layout, or production preparation.