As far as my knowledge is concerned, though writing a novel can be hugely complex and mistakes can creep in there too, these sorts of continuity mistakes are very easily done. There is a lot to keep track while writing a novel. One has to keep track of the plots, any subplots, ensure clues are dropped where necessary, be concerned about the character arc and development, straighten the timeline and keep track of the important props. It is very hard to pick on these mistakes as everyone has the tendency to read what is expected to be read. The problem is that, the readers come to the novel without any pre-conceived ideas, and see genuinely what is there, mistakes and that’s the end. And continuity mistakes can therefore spoil the pleasure of making the story.
Let me be frank that one solution to the problem is to be super-organized in order to have right information to hand. A novel is very much complex to construct with both science and art in it, no matter how it is thought, and needs to be handled as such. For being organized, one can use index cards or post-it cards. Both these options are much better that keeping details into the head and can even get lost or out of order or get shuffled as remembering certain aspects of the story is time-consuming. Therefore a modern approach would be using a book writing software.
I recommend everyone to log on to http://winston-street.com/ to explore further details on writing softwares.
