I forgot that today was the first day of a dogsitting job which means I got no sleep last night, which meant today did not go as planned. I figured I'd pull back the curtain so to speak and show you a bit of how I organize my writing, specifically keeping track of characters, using a supporting character from this year's NaNoWriMo. To begin with, I use GoogleDrive and create a table with two columns. The left is smaller and here is where I put each character's name and any pseudonyms along with basically a head shot for each character. I, of course, usually have many reference pictures for each character but it gets too busy visually if I include more than one in the cast sheet/archive/whatever I call it that year. On the right is where most of the vital information goes such as appearance, family, occupation, where they live, and their personality. Any details that reoccur and are important to the story also goes there, such as where the character lives, important ways they relate to other characters, or, for example, if there are superheros/mutants in the story what their powers are and a bit of their origin story.
You will notice that Stephanie's table background is colored in. I will often brainstorm scores of characters, family members, and acquaintances long before I write a word of the story and most of them will never make it into the written work. When I begin the actual writing I will often color in the squares of characters who have actually appeared. When my casts are too huge I will sometimes have to resort to making a whole new document with just the appearing characters and/or break it down by location (for example, Robyn has family in England and Aurelia or Rayella lives in different locations depending on the point in her life).
No comments:
Post a Comment