h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It helps, in theory, to do your planning well in advance.

So if you want your murderer to be Lady Agatha with the heavy table lamp in the library, you give Lady Agatha a motive, and you plant a table lamp on the desk.

But some of the writers I've come across don't plan in that much detail. They might have decided that Lady Agatha has never forgiven the victim for making her father bankrupt twenty years ago, but they haven't put a desk in the library, let alone a lamp.

So they rewrite and rewrite . And they go back and read through their stories and make sure they're consistent. So that they haven't got the lamp being a standard lamp in chapter 2 and a desk lamp in chapter 20.

If you want to be a writer, you have to put the work in.

I agree.

It's a good idea to hang Chekhov's gun over the mantel in time for the event.

And aren't we glad for the search function in Word? That way, we can go back and make sure that table lamp is consistent.