What's your worst writing goof?

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oggbashan said:

My usual flaw is to get a character's name wrong at least once.

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That's one of my big stumbling blocks, too. Fortunately, my editor catches most of them. ("Who's Maria? And what happened to Marie?")

There was a time when I rushed a story because of a contest deadline and didn't run it past her first. When the story was published, a sharp-eyed reader wrote "Interesting how ten women in swimsuits became fifteen nude women..."

CoffeeWithMonkeys said:

I had a friend proofread a story for me once, luckily, because she found where I had typed something like
he thrust his huge coke in me
Yeah I typed coke instead of cock. I still giggle at that typo.

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That's a good one. Thanks for the chuckle.

The Third Hand

I once wrote a story and in the description of who was doing what to who accidentally gave one of the characters three hands.

Fortunately, one of my beta-readers caught it and walked me through placing my hands like the character was in the story - and I suddenly realized that the character had a hand, an other hand, and an other other hand, all in action at once.

Paul_Chance said:

I once wrote a story and in the description of who was doing what to who accidentally gave one of the characters three hands.

Fortunately, one of my beta-readers caught it and walked me through placing my hands like the character was in the story - and I suddenly realized that the character had a hand, an other hand, and an other other hand, all in action at once.

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I had stories where a third hand would have been, uh, handy.

Paul_Chance said:

I once wrote a story and in the description of who was doing what to who accidentally gave one of the characters three hands.

Fortunately, one of my beta-readers caught it and walked me through placing my hands like the character was in the story - and I suddenly realized that the character had a hand, an other hand, and an other other hand, all in action at once.

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One author built a career on something like that: https://www.christinadodd.com/christina-dodd-and-the-infamous-three-armed-cover/

My first submission was one massive typo. At the time I hadn't written anything in years. I have a bad habit of writing outlines in the present tense and the actual story in past. I was so nervous submitting for the first time and kept rewriting that finally I copied and pasted the outline and the draft together and submitted it.
For whatever reason when I tried to edit it, I didn't notice. Others sure did.
It turned out to be really good for me as it led to me giving myself a whole refresher course on writing and grammar, along with making me an absolute madman when it came to editing my own stuff.
I still manage at least two typos per story, however.

CoffeeWithMonkeys said:

I had a friend proofread a story for me once, luckily, because she found where I had typed something like
he thrust his huge coke in me
Yeah I typed coke instead of cock. I still giggle at that typo.

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Shades of Fatty Arbuckle!

Frankly, my biggest goof was (and remains) turning on the computer. Every other error, good, embarrassing incident and slip has been due to that.

Even a trout wouldn’t get into trouble if she’d keep her mouth shut...

How to avoid goofs: Sustain severe eye damage, so close inspection of every keystroke is needed. Goofs result from skimming.

Hypoxia said:

How to avoid goofs: Sustain severe eye damage, so close inspection of every keystroke is needed. Goofs result from skimming.

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