Keeping Track of Characters

Keeping track of characters can be tricky so I plan to draw flow diagrams / charts / mind maps – you know the type of thing that shows the relationship of each character to the main protagonist and to each other.

I also plan to keep a wiki so there will be character entires in this that will be for all intents and perposes an electronic flow diagram with extra dimensions – I love the hyper part of the internet!

Drawing up time lines is also going to be quiet important for a story of this scale – the ‘story’ is far bigger than this one novel that I am about to embark upon writing!

With a wiki I can keep personal files on each character complete with illistrations to help me flesh them out and keep track of them in my mind.

But what is also going to be important is to track who appears in which scene/chapter of the novel and what they have done – so character histories are quiet important I feel.

I need to go and make/bodge together a wiki now I think – hopefully I will make that live too but I’m not promising anything 🙂

For secondary and tertiary back ground characters I may just give a sort of index system, sort of jack soldier a) b) and c) extra.

This novel is starting to turn into a scary sized project :/ It doesn’t have to be as complex as this but I wrote The Drs Wife out with no planning at all and I’d changed the best friends name three times! Not to mention changed the colour of a major characters hair! As I’ve been typing that novel up and editing I have found that I have had to construct these sort of devices to keep track of the characters retrospectively which I feel is probably harder than doing it as your going along!

Posted: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 @ 8:34 am
Categories: Uncategorized.
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