Tracking Characters
Posted Saturday, 01/09/21
People often ask me how I keep track of storylines and characters in different books as I'm writing them. To me, it's easy. If an author has created a story purely from their imagination, it's rather simple to keep track of the characters. They become like bona fide family members, so I have no trouble in remembering them or their purpose in the story. Jumping from one novel to another has always been somewhat easy for me because of this. The characters are family, in a way, and not easy to forget where they belong.
However, I keep a spreadsheet for each book in order to reference individual character quirks and their relationship to others.
(Above): Sample of the spreadsheet for Glinhaven. Click to view larger image.
(Above): Sample of the spreadsheet for Glinhaven. Click to view larger image.
The spreadsheets are compiled in table format, which includes all of the central and non-incidental characters and locations in a fiction story. They centralize information pertinent to the story so I don't have to keep paging back to remember eye color and other bits about characters as I write.
The spreadsheets are a lot of work to assemble, but save time in the long run.
Tags:
Writing & Editing