I'm reading contest entries this afternoon (yes, they're waaaayyy late, I know), and I found myself writing the following, then I had to go take my kid someplace. As I drove, I thought about what I'd written, and I realized that I'd never thought about it that way before, and it seemed fairly profound, so I thought I'd share it.

Historical entry page 7:

Ben took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. He preferred the backwoods of the colonies to this dangerous jungle of London’s upper society. At least there, he could shoot his predators.

{{This is good, but totally out of character for who he’s been presented as so far.

Up until now, nothing has been mentioned of ‘backwoods’ or ‘shooting’, so I-as-reader assumed he was American upper-crust. If he’s not, it needs to be mentioned waaaaay before this.

Don’t make the reader go back and re-evaluate the characters!!  It annoys them!

You need to build the character from one point to the next, not contradict the character from one point to the next.

The reader’s assumptions about the character are often based on the words that aren't on the page even more than the words that are on the page.

If he’s not American upper-crust, then he’d be doing a lot of thinking of how he should act and re-act. If living the life of the British upper-crust comes naturally, then he wouldn't need to think about how to act or re-act, so he wouldn’t be thinking about it, so the words wouldn’t be on the page.

Can see how the reader’s assumptions are often made by the words that are not on the page.}}

We-as-writers spend tons and tons of time working and tweaking the words that are on the page....  How much time do we spend on the implications of the words that aren't on the page?