I’m not sure I could find a better way to make a mess of a draft than by renaming all the characters–and messing up search and replace.
First, in my haste, I forgot to check “whole words only” and “keep case”. For most names that wasn’t a big deal–but Aster and Owl, among others, caused some trouble. Spilling your bGeral of soup isn’t exactly a disMeima, but it is a pain to clean up.
I fixed that by scanning the draft for misspelled words and then searching for every new one I found. I think I got most of them. It’s taken me until chapter 5 to find a disMeima that I missed.
But I just found a new problem: This scene *used* to star Marsh and Wolf. Now it stars Rimon, Geros, and Hel. Uh-oh. I’d changed Marsh to Hel, then decided I didn’t like it and changed Hel to Rimon. Anyone want to guess why that went slightly wrong?
(I know you can’t stand the suspense.)
Remembering to check “whole words only” meant I missed the possessives. At least that was an easy fix. Their poor son doesn’t need three parents.