Readers invest in characters by tracking who they are and what they know. Accidental drift can make a character feel inconsistent rather than complex.
Glossary term
Character drift
Character drift is an accidental change in a character's stable facts, knowledge, motivation, emotion, presence, or voice.
Definition
What character drift means
Character drift happens when revision changes a person on the page without enough story cause. The drift may be factual, emotional, relational, motivational, or vocal.
A character who does not know a secret in chapter 8 suddenly refers to it in chapter 10, although nobody has told them yet.
Wise Wombat checks character facts, knowledge, presence, names and titles, motivation, emotional state, relationships, and dialogue voice.
Related
Related continuity terms
These terms often appear together during manuscript revision.