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I am having a tad trouble keeping my facts straight on the fantasy novel i am writting. Building a fantasy world is one thing, but does anyone have good tips for keeping up with that world?!
Posts: 76 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
If you're starting to have serious problems, you have to go to the outlines. If you don't have one because you think you're the sort of writer that doesn't need one, then either you aren't having a problem or...you're the sort of writer that needs an outline.
However, short of going to outline, there are a number of simple ways to deal with the inevitable small glitch.
Use your word processor's search functions. If you don't know where you left a secondary character or plot element, then search for it (use a couple of varients on the name you call it). If you need to change every instance of "Mogalia" to "Tervain", same thing.
Farm it out to some of your alpha test readers (and I mean readers, not fellow writers). Readers are better at pointing out small glitches without wasting your time telling you what to do about them. If your alpha readers are worth their salt, then they'll spot most small glitches.
Remember that fantasy novels don't have their own facts that need to be kept straight. Everything that you need to work at keeping internally consistent is a matter of invention, not fact. If you are having problems keeping facts straight (sunrise in the east, water flows downhill, etc), that is a different problem that requires a whole other order of solution.
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I absolutely am one of the writers that needs an outline! And I have tons of outlines and notes. It is an entire world i've built after all.
The problem is that there are TOO MANY notes. the story flows along easily, but i have at one time made a main character who started a romantic subplot with another main character, who after reviewing turned out to be her cousin! ACK! The plot worked out GREAT! So I had to change someone's father...
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This week, on top of my outline, I started listing specific facts I needed to reveal in each chapter because I discovered that if I didn't do this I was getting ahead of myself and dumping in all sorts of facts that I didn't need to include until later in the book. I know what you mean about love interests, I just discovered the perfect love interest for my sequel- thank goodness they aren't related and they're even the same species.
[This message has been edited by Kickle (edited June 20, 2004).]
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Character bibles, world bibles. Notebooks, charts, maps and time liens to tell you what is going on in the book as you write it. I make one up after my first mad draft. Then go through an iron everything out.
I also start with a white board and have my core idea in the center and add idea bubbles coming of that core as I get new ideas for the story.
To some extent I use them all. But to add, I have a marginal talent for drawing, so I create my world and my people visually, making notes about them on the page. I also use timelines, maps, outlines, pages of notes and questions and key elements I need to remember to resolve. These things I keep on the wall above my computer where I can easily see them and refer to them while I write without having to open up yet another window on the computer or sift through my many notebooks to find.
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I write in Roughdraft, a word processor that makes a separate notes text file for each file you start. So I make my bible out of all these note files, either by combining them into one file or printing them out and putting them in a binder. works pretty well.
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I have a work in progress outline. As I finish a chapter, I summarize the relevant details in bullet points.
If I forgot to put something in a previous chapter, I type in red what needs to go there and put it in either after I'm done or when I'm stuck and need to do something productive.
Here's the tricky part, and I think the part you're talking about. Every page, every paragraph, and every sentence we make decisions about our story. Many of them are small decisions, seemingly unimportant at the time, but sooner or later you want to reference say, what color dres your protagonist wore to the party. The best you can do is search for it. The real trouble is when you forgot that you had already decided your character was wearing a blue dress tonight and later you stick her in a green dress. Readers can catch this, but they can also miss it. All I can say about those things is that I've seen these things in published novels too and usually I don't even care. :-)
Character sheets are very important. Every time you make a decision about a character you need to have a place to add it to your sheet. If you want your character ot have blu e eyes, write it down and later you won't change them to green. If you ever name a character (in other words, they step out of the backgroun enough to warrant a name rather than "the receptionist," write down their name and where you ran across them in a character sheet. I use an excel spreadsheet for that purpose. Actually, I've got one novel that's gone through so many drafts that I have named characters that don't actually appear anymore...but if I ever run into the King's Secretary again his name wlil be Marnin.
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With the mention of character sheets bring an idea to mind.. is there a place to share character sheet templates. I can see where they are very useful, and if there was a template to help you track the kinds of data in an organized fashion, well wouldnt that be awesome ?!
Posts: 76 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
At some point, this all begins to defeat the purpose.
Remember, an outline is a simplification, a way of keeping your most important plot elements straight.
Sometimes my mom's eyes are blue, sometimes they're hazel or grey. Occasionally, one may be green. And I don't think it's because some divine pen has slipped. But, she's always my maternal parent.
Some details can be a bit fuzzy. Other details cannot.
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I've always thought an outline was for controlling the story, not the characters.
If a tattoo one day moves from the left arm to the right arm, it should have a reason to do so. Cousins should not accidentally have subplots because you temporarily forget who you made thier parents out to be. If skywalker had kissed the princess passionately, we'd all be a little grossed out (except for people in arkansas )
point being, when you create a world, good writing can be fuzzy at times, but you have to have the facts so that you do not contradict.. and i dont think good fantasy can be entirely fuzzy, becuase there is no point if a picture is not drawn in the words. it would be like a bad cell phone connection, and no body likes those ..
[This message has been edited by cgamble (edited June 21, 2004).]
I accidentally had cousins getting together in a story of mine....real trouble is, they wre main characters. I changed one parent first, then the other parent, then made these two parents brothers in such innocent and completely separate decisions that it only occurred to me months later what I had done. That's what comes from having complicated family hierarchies in your story including adoption, kidnapping, unknown biological fathers, etc.
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If a couple in West Virginia gets divorced, are they still cousins?
But seriously. There are several programs out there for keeping track of the bits and pieces of your story. I was using Chalk on my PDA for a while. Dramatica is supposed to do this well for PC's but I haven't tried it. You can download a free trial (www.screenplay.com), but I've got dialup, so HA! to that.
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Christine, you mentioned spreadsheets. How do you do that? It seems like just too much information to keep track of on one spreadsheet. Do you just do character names down the side and things like "role," "eye color," "pet peeves", "social security number" accross the top? I've been doing a lot of spreadsheet stuff lately, and have learned that you only get something out of it once it's set up well for the purpose you need it for.
Posts: 292 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I have story ideas and characters written down in a notebook and I refer to it from time to time and when something new comes to mind I try to write it down. A spreadsheet would just confuse me personally.
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i did the spreadsheet thing, with a different character on each "worksheet" in the workbook. I actually discovered plot points missing from my story. and good ones at that!
Posts: 76 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
I have a 'referance' folder on my desktop. Inside the folder I have several catagories that I keep all my 'stuff' organized in. (I have to routinely go through and clean up to keep it organized )
People, Places, Things Guilds, Places, Magical Artifacts, Inventions
Plot
Misc, Notes, Goals
That's how I keep track of who's who and what's what. And just in case, I keep a backup copy on CD and a printout copy in my files...somewhere....*peers* I think. ^_^
My system may be complicated but at least it's organized in a way that works for me!
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I keep a folder with character details, plot elements, world history, world customs, maps, etc, in a corner of my room. Haven't got round yet to transferring it to a PC.
Posts: 121 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
Most spreadsheet programs can create a simple type of database using form entries. You can then sort the entries by any of their different fields. I'm sure that could be some help. I haven't tried anything like that for my fiction....
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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I've always thought that the point of having an outline was NOT to say, "I'm going to do such and such here, and then--" but as a method to get your subconscious mind working on the meat of the story. That way, when you're stuck, you can go back to the outline or character sheet or whatever and say, "Hey, here's an interesting point. . ." Then your subconsciousness will pick at that plot point, or character flaw and it will give you the umph you need to either keep writing, or go back and remake what you've done so far.
Posts: 128 | Registered: Jan 2002
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