Stats, Skills, and the Invisible Architecture of a Character

Recently, as I have been reading books and listening to audiobooks I have found random inconsistencies. Now, these aren't story-breaking inconsistencies but they did break my immersion in the story. As I have been writing my own book I have thought about this and I think that I have found where this issue comes from. Authors write roughly a chapter at a time and most don't even write every day. Readers on the other hand are reading multiple chapters at a time so the color of your character's pants is fresh in their mind where you forgot what exactly you said the color of their pants was and to find out you would need to reread the whole chapter.

Like I said this example is a small almost irrelevant issue. Who really cares what color their pants were as long as the big stuff is the same? And I agree. The problem arises when this happens with bigger things such as a stat or skill or level inconsistency. That begins to muddy the waters for the reader or listener and can be incredibly jarring because they aren't reading or listening anymore but trying to decipher which is actually true.

Writing all this stuff down is the best way so far to mitigate that and although it is extra work as you write, I believe that it will help output better writing which is what our readers and listeners deserve.