Perils of writing stories

I am not a particularly good proofreader (as my stories probably testify), but if I had a dollar for every wrong name I have spotted in here, I would have been rich! I have also seen a few instances of first and third person confusion, and I have always thought that it is due to people changing their minds during the writing processes and then forgetting to substitute the new pronouns everywhere. I have changed my mind about the point of view myself a few times, and cannot guarantee that I have managed to carry out all changes.

I am very careful about proofreading, and yet still had the embarrassment of a character name-change mid story which was spotted by a reader and commented on. OK, the characters were actors and so already had two names, but to have three is beyond, as Lady Bracknell might say, carelessness.

Proofreading, and other errors might be handled by our Librarian, Ms. Flopsy in her study.

It's never occurred to me to think of the "unseen" or 'omniscient' 3rd person narrator as a character. I've always assumed it was simply the author's voice. But authors inevitably have their perspectives on things, revealing values and attitudes by the language they use, so in that sense perhaps they are a kind of character.

I can see how easily one could slip from an 'over-the-shoulder' passage in a 3rd person narrative (where the omniscient narrator gets inside a character's head, presenting their thoughts and feelings) into inadvertently using "I" for that character. I've seen it done deliberately too, and made to work.

For me it's the total opposite – even when I am using an omniscient narrator, I have to figure out who he is, because he is never just me, but has his own voice, his own attitudes, and his on view of the world. Even when I am writing administrative documents, I have to find a voice first. I don't think I have a "natural" voice that is just mine...

The voice of the omniscient narrator is an interesting one. As an author one can mould the entire feel of the piece by choosing that voice. For example, the Maiden stories have a narrator who is constantly making puns and silly asides to the reader, acting as a counter balance to the excessively serious way in which the protagonist views herself.

I think such outrageous errors merits calling in Miss Thrashbottom to do the necessary

As opb mentioned, I think writer's changing from first person during a story is a matter of finding one's inner voice. I don't believe it is necessarily wrong, to change from one perspective to another in a story, as it describes how you want a scene to be read.

However, I am reading between the lines of your question, and feel you may be trying to describe another instance, which brings into question your inability to write a story completely from the first person perspective. Perhaps because you felt you might be ridiculed for your own thoughts. Perhaps because the instance being written about became too close to your personal thoughts, so you felt the need to distance yourself from describing further. Perhaps it felt like you were revealing too much of your own soul. All of which are similar to each other; in that you feel exposed, and therefore become defensive.

If that is the case, yes, I have written a couple of stories that started out in the first person, and changed in perspective when I felt too vulnerable. One story, I have not been able to finish. The other I have written and rewritten several times, and finally feel better for finally finishing it, in the first person perspective.

As far as changing names, I've done this and still do. In fact, one story I wrote I felt enamored with one name, but I couldn't place whether I should use it for the main character or a secondary character. In one version of the story that went by an editor, both characters had the same name. For the record, it was not a character(s) who was based on a real life person as some writers do. I simply saw the characters as both being strong minded but while one was more naive and innocent, the other was negative and schooled in street smarts. Opposite sides of the same coin, as it were, which is probably why I started using the same name for both characters.

As for vulnerability, I can see what Lonewulf is getting at, but because I'm writing under a pseudonym, and it's highly unlikely anyone I know will ever identify who I am here, I don't feel very vulnerable about revealing any inner secret. The only caution I'd offer the reader is not to read too much into my inner secrets, because I don't write entirely as myself, but often as just one bit of myself (exaggerated), or as a viewpoint I find interesting. An author is also an actor, and may write from a viewpoint that is not his own, just as an actor can get into a character's head, be that character convincingly for a play or film, without actually being that person in real life - it would be wrong to assume they share some characteristic with the character, just because they're good at acting.
I do mess up names occasionally. I've got one already in black and white, fixed for posterity, where I mixed up once at the start of the one that I set in a wardrobe with too old academics - I hadn't entirely sorted out which name to use for which old bloke when I began writing. Ever since then, I try to decide on a simple name that appeals to me, and stick to it, and then potentially change the name by search and replace (to avoid missing any instances!) at the end, if for any reason I don't want to use the name I've chosen.
On the change-of-tense thing, I don't ever think about the tense I'm writing in. I think I'm almost exclusively a third-person writer anyway, but within third-person, there are stories where you write from the perspective of one character, and stories where you move from person to person, giving several characters' viewpoints, and I do think it's important to make sure the reader knows whose head they're in. The hazard for the writer is that we know. We don't have the doubt, we don't need the clues, so it's unlikely we'll see the absence of clues, and get confused, as a reader might.
The big hazard, I think, for all writers, is garden-path-sentences: writing that leads the reader in a particular direction, and then turns out to be going somewhere else. It's really hard to think of a good example off the cuff, but the sort of thing I mean is a clumsy sentence such as "I was going in some way to do something about it". The reader, getting as far as "I was going in" will pair up "in" with "going" and assume that you're going in a door, into a house, or going in something. But then, later, it turns out that "in" belonged with "some way", and not with "going" at all. The temptation is to fix it with a comma ("I was going, in some way, to do something about it"), but just as lawyers do not use punctuation (on the grounds that writing should be 100% clear without needing punctuation to differentiate meaning), it's far better not to write sentences that mislead anyway, unless you deliberately want the surprise value. Otherwise, it's extremely disconcerting for the reader; it means they have to concentrate on reading rather than merely being in the story. But hey, it's all fun.

... re-reading my post, I actually did it: "just as an actor can get into a character's head, be that character convincingly", where "be that..." sounds like the start of "be that as it may...".
Oh, and I sometimes secretly hope that someone I know will indeed recognise me from a story on this site, pop up in real life, and say "that's you! Would you like to do that for real, with me?". But pigs flapping past the window are more likely.