Consistency in novels: Wait, he had what in his hand?

I'm sure that at some time in your writing career you have found yourself double checking facts about one of your characters. For me it was a character named Marcus in my current novel. I was merrily writing along about this brown eyed fellow when I referred back to around chapter four for some reason, I was on chapter 15 or 16 at the time. Oh dear, in the first four or five chapters of the novel, Marcus had been described as having blue eyes. ooops.

Most writers get the knack of keeping a physical description of their characters so they don't have things like that happening, I know I have started a file for these fellows I had thought I knew so very well. There is another trouble point, however, in stories. If you are a Star Trek fan then you might have seen the changing glasses. In one of the movies (Search for Spock) Kirk and McCoy are talking in a lounge type place and during the course of their conversation the levels of the drinks in their glasses keeps going up and down.

In writing this happens when you have a character stand up, lets call him Jeff, then after a fair amount of talking to the other character in the scene '... Jeff stood and headed for the door.' Wait... wasn't he already standing? He stood up three paragraphs ago?

Or a character sets something down and later on it shows back up in his hand needing to be set down again. Unless it is magically spelled to keep returning to his hand, there is something missing here.

Now yes, you can say that you just did not cover Jeff sitting back down while he was talking, or you did not show the other person picking the item back up, but there is still a little bump in the continuity that will have your reader jarred as they are sailing through the world of make believe and the last thing you want is a bump in that road. So, look through your story when you revise it and watch for those mental bumps in the trail you have built. Some are harmless and can stay, but if you find yourself asking "When'd she pick that back up?" then your readers will probably be asking it as well.