I love outtakes and bloopers. When the mess-in-progress is not cooperating, I need a good laugh. It also helps to remind me that other creative people make mistakes, too.
Surfing around on Youtube, I found some good bloopers from the 1995 Pride & Prejudice and the 2006 Jane Eyre. Note that horses play a major role in each set.
As to bloopers in romance novels, some that I remember are also horse-related. The mare that turned into a gelding in the course of a ride. The phaeton, a type of 4-wheeled carriage, that turned into a curricle, which has two wheels. (Admitted, a lot of readers wouldn’t know that.) The funniest blooper I can recall is where the hero referred to his “bullocks” instead of “bollocks”.
This is what copy editors are for, but they do miss stuff sometimes.
Ditto for cover artists. You may already have heard of the legendary cover for Christina Dodd’s 1993 release, Castles in the Air. The rest of the story is here on her website.
As for bloopers I’ve made, I hope most were caught by me or my critique partners, like the scene where a gun mysteriously jumped from one character’s hands to another’s. I’d accidentally deleted the sentence with the handover. Another sort-of blooper is a sex scene in which I had the hero remove most of the heroine’s clothing, except I forgot about her boots. Once I realized, I let it be. Maybe that’s how they wanted it.
What are some of your favorite bloopers, whether on film or in books?
Elena
www.elenagreene.com
SO enjoyed this! the plane going over was a favorite but the three armed story was super! Hysterical. Made my day…wish I could sit and read tons more…
Glad you enjoyed this, Mary!
Love those outtakes! My worst bloopers are changing people’s eye color! And their ages. I have too many versions of some stories and I have to keep checking the timeline!
I have a similar one in confusing the names of secondary characters and/or places, turning a Mary into a Maria or something-field into something-ton. It’s on my proofreading checklist. I also keep files with story timelines and character background timelines that I check if I want to say something happened X years ago.
I still always worry that I missed something!
My worst blooper was mistyping the date for Waterloo at the very very very beginning of Chivalrous Captain, Rebel Mistress -JULY 18, 1815 instead of JUNE 18, 1815. I knew the difference, but mistyped and no one noticed — except Kathleen, one sharp-eyed reader of the NA release. Luckily she told me and we fixed it for the UK version!
That’s the definition of a blooper to me–something that just happens to someone who usually gets it right! I bet most readers wouldn’t have noticed, even ones who knew the correct date. I think sometimes our minds auto-correct things like that, so we miss them.