For those of you unfamiliar with the term, “Retcon” means Retroactive Continuity. It is the alteration of previously established facts, usually in a long-running comic book series or TV show, but it can happen in book series also. Or worst of all, within a single novel.

Retcon can take the form of additions to the backstory, subtraction from it, or alteration of specific facts.

The most egregious example of alteration retcon that we can think of right now: Greedo shooting first. By changing the sequence of events in the Mos Eisley cantina, George Lucas hoped (presumably) to make Han Solo a more sympathetic or heroic character. Instead, he gutted Han’s entire character arc. Never forget: Han shot first!

Retconning early in the editing process is a necessary evil. If you do your job right, no one will ever be the wiser. Kent and Jen are at the point in their editing process where they’re reading through the first draft and making notes about things to change and improve. A first draft is, by its very nature, rough. There will be things that the author changed on purpose partway through, and there will be other inconsistencies that were inadvertent, especially when you have two authors working together. Whether or not you changed Bob’s eyes from blue to brown on purpose, now is the time to go through and make everything line up.

In our current case, it’s a little more involved than eye color. We have an elaborate setting that is based, in part, on a real location. In our brilliance, we visited this real-world location when we were thisclose to finished with the first draft, instead of at the beginning. Couple our more intimate knowledge of the location with the fact that we now know what areas our characters will visit, and what actions they will perform there, and we are faced with quite the editing task.

Jen fired up PhotoShop and updated the map and the floorplan to reflect the changes to the layout. We discussed at length which doors are always kept locked, and developed a backstory to account for why any particular door is or isn’t. We simplified certain things and complexified others, all with the goal of having a world that makes sense for the story we have chosen to tell. We went through the whole manuscript and marked all the passages that feature description of this location, and we are now faced with the unenviable task of retconning all of it into one big ball of consistency.

Hold us.