Remembering your character details
If you write with more than one character in your storyline, it's necessary to remember all the little details which makes that person or persons unique. Even if you have only one human character in the majority of the manuscript, as in Life of Pi and the movie Cast Away (Tom Hanks and his soccer ball) you still need to keep track of who that character is.
For today's discussion we'll imagine you have more than one person dancing through your pages. If you plan to have a character that is more than one dimensional you'll need to keep track of what makes that person special. If your work is to be read by a book club for example, what would the readers say about the characters? Would they say they liked that she only drank sweet iced tea or that she dressed only in pink? Would the readers remember that on page thirty-nine the character had a fear or spiders but on page one hundred she picked one up to set it outside? You don't want the second situation to be the case because those errors will be caught, even when you've used a good editor.
In a previous blog I discussed the advantages of using an outline. That is great for the plot and useful when you to create a synopsis for a potential publisher. However, an outline doesn't work well when trying to keep track of who your characters really are. You may not be proficient using Microsoft Office tools but Excel is an easy to use spreadsheet which will allow you to create any number of columnar entries. You could also use Word and create a table for each character but I find that cumbersome.
Using Excel I assign each character a row and then list every possible characteristic of that character. For example, I will list his or her physical description, career, story function (is the character the protagonist, antagonist, helper, best friend), where was the character born, family ties, likes, dislikes, quirks, flaws, home environment and so on. I can easily search the spreadsheet for a particular name or piece of information. Under the dislikes column I may have listed a character's fear of spiders. That would allow me to easily fact check later on to make sure I hadn't confused any details.
If you are writing a series some characters may be in only one book and others may carry forward throughout the series. Tracking the character information in this fashion allows me to look back into a prior novel to make sure I don't confuse any details or even reuse a name of a minor character.
You may find this tracking of information to be extreme but for me it has worked exceedingly well. As I outline and write book two in the Jayne Stanford series I found I had forgotten some details which were essential from the first book. Using my spreadsheet allows me to quickly fact check and move on. I don't want to invest the time to re-read the entire first novel in order to find out if Jayne is afraid of spiders. She isn't.
Happy trails,
Leslie
For today's discussion we'll imagine you have more than one person dancing through your pages. If you plan to have a character that is more than one dimensional you'll need to keep track of what makes that person special. If your work is to be read by a book club for example, what would the readers say about the characters? Would they say they liked that she only drank sweet iced tea or that she dressed only in pink? Would the readers remember that on page thirty-nine the character had a fear or spiders but on page one hundred she picked one up to set it outside? You don't want the second situation to be the case because those errors will be caught, even when you've used a good editor.
In a previous blog I discussed the advantages of using an outline. That is great for the plot and useful when you to create a synopsis for a potential publisher. However, an outline doesn't work well when trying to keep track of who your characters really are. You may not be proficient using Microsoft Office tools but Excel is an easy to use spreadsheet which will allow you to create any number of columnar entries. You could also use Word and create a table for each character but I find that cumbersome.
Using Excel I assign each character a row and then list every possible characteristic of that character. For example, I will list his or her physical description, career, story function (is the character the protagonist, antagonist, helper, best friend), where was the character born, family ties, likes, dislikes, quirks, flaws, home environment and so on. I can easily search the spreadsheet for a particular name or piece of information. Under the dislikes column I may have listed a character's fear of spiders. That would allow me to easily fact check later on to make sure I hadn't confused any details.
If you are writing a series some characters may be in only one book and others may carry forward throughout the series. Tracking the character information in this fashion allows me to look back into a prior novel to make sure I don't confuse any details or even reuse a name of a minor character.
You may find this tracking of information to be extreme but for me it has worked exceedingly well. As I outline and write book two in the Jayne Stanford series I found I had forgotten some details which were essential from the first book. Using my spreadsheet allows me to quickly fact check and move on. I don't want to invest the time to re-read the entire first novel in order to find out if Jayne is afraid of spiders. She isn't.
Happy trails,
Leslie
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