While responding to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
writingrachel's comments to my last post, I raised the topic of character charts.
Character charts are fun. They take on a life of their own, and by extension, so do your characters. You ask yourself something like "what is your hero's religion" and next thing you know, you find you've painlessly written several paragraphs about them which you may end up referring to or even using in your story, later. You may not, but it still helps round out your character in your own mind.
For those of us who've cut our writing teeth on fanfiction, we've had our characters handed to us whole, so while we might pick and choose character traits from anywhere in canon (TV characters change based on interpretation, growth over time, and inconsistent writing), we don't actually have to come up with them. In fact, we'll be (constructively!) criticized if we don't have our characters bang on. It's a great way to learn to write a consistent character: What would Jim Ellison do now? Under what circumstances would Fraser not become a mountie? How am I going to get my guyz together if one's stuck with DADT?
The fact that we're intimately familiar with these archetypal characters is also useful when writing original characters; it's not like Alliance Atlantis has the soldier and the scholar or the country mouse/city mouse dynamics copyrighted. (Although I'm sure they've tried!) But we know them so well. So even if you have a kick-ass, hard-nosed female protag, you can still say to yourself: What would Jim Ellison do? And then decide it that's what MacKenzie Thorne(tm) would do.
Character charts are great then, for gifting yourself with a fully-blown (heh), fully-grown character, without the help of JJ Abrams or Joss Whedon.
They're excellent reference, especially if you tend to work on more than one story at a time. And if you're submitting, getting rejected, re-writing, re-submitting, you will be working on multiple projects, even if it's not your (read: my) style. The characters tend to blur. Uh, which one has the prostitute mother? Which one is secretly a robot? You'd be surprised what gets muddled in your mind when you haven't worked on a project in a bit.
For me, character charts are especially useful because I'm rewriting fanfic into original fic. I need to invent characters who aren't Blair Sandburg, Ray Kowalski, or Rodney McKay. They need to be new and original and law-suit-proof. ;-)
You can google character charts from anywhere on the net. I use a hybrid of the one offered in this book that tovalentin lent me (which I just found is back in print and available from Amazon.com for US$12. (Amazon.ca has 3 used copies for C$80 each!) and I ordered!), coupled with this useful page: http://www.creativeoptions.com/Write/cha
I find the chart in Writing Romance: Create a Bestseller to be a little too simple, and the one at creative options to be a little too complex. You figure out what's best for you.
There's an lj comm that asks 5 questions a week about your character and you can post them to your lj or just answer them for your own reference: http://community.livejournal.com/writer
Thanks to jamesenge for pointing me that way.
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I do write timelines to keep track of plot, characters, and character interactions, with some background information written as notes. These go as far back as necessary, sometimes to a generation or so before the action in the story, if ancestors are important. I highlight what's found its way into the story so far. I don't like to box myself in within the story with descriptions and background that might be an obstacle later on, so I tend to keep information divulged about the characters within the story on a need to know basis. I usually have to adjust the timeline and some character traits or background as I write; the writing and development of the story takes precedence over my original outlines. The timeline helps me to go back at the end, in the editing, and make sure it all jibes.
That highlight thing though, that would fit nicely into what I've been doing.
As I'm writing and also with feedback, I put a bunch of bullet points at the top of the file (I'm still using Word). As I adress each one, I delete it. When all or most of the points are gone, story's done. Voila!
Right now I'm using index cards because originally I just had an *idea*. A basic concept that I knew had this hiding, invisible, HUGE story that I could use to tell it. But I needed to sort it out.
A long time ago, when I was first taught how to do research papers, I was taught the index card method. Which definitely had it's uses then, and probably still does even in slightly different method now that technology has gotten smaller and more portable and less unweildy in a few programming respects.
I still fall back on it though, when I really just need to note things with no particular organization. I don't even fill entire index cards at first (though you get more and more likely to as you go on). But they help me sort out ideas and story points and plot points, etc. And LATER can be used similarly to how you would use the index cards while writing a research paper. Even though I truly want to move it all to the computer at some point soon, because OMG what if I spill water on them, it helps to have these tiny invidual thoughts-- individual like that as I finally sit down with my 100+ index cards and get to the organization level.
It works 'pan projects' as well. I have cards with character traits and defining personal moments, things that just strike me, plot fragments, etc. Part of me totally rebels at this sort of 'pre-industrial' approach, but my brain totally adores it as a first step.
(Though I am searching for a way to 'index' those stray cards on the computer anyway. For traveling purposes. I THINK MS OneNote might be it. Maybe.)
I while back I posted asking about writing software. I checked into each of the suggestions and one of them actually had "virtual index cards" that you could move around as you felt like. I'd probably use PowerPoint if I was going to do it that way, just because in my job I use Word, Excel and PowerPoint constantly so I'm more comfortable than index cards. No one ever taught me to do research papers ::sulks:: but then my degree is in business so maybe we didn't do research papers. It was a long time ago. ;-)
I like the idea of shuffling ideas around while I stew about plots.
And it is really great for just jotting down ideas that don't have any particular story tied to them yet.
Hmm. You know I'm fairly MS savy and I'm not quite sure how I'd use excel and powerpoint to plot/ponder plotting stuff. Interesting.
I have no idea how to get images into an lj comment, so I loaded up a screencap of an Excel outline for an old Sentinel story onto my website. It'll give you an idea what I'm talking about:
http://www.storm-grant.com/storm_work/o
When I said I go back and adjust the timeline, I mean that if I have to change, say, a character's age or the timing of an event (graduation from school, military experience), I need to have the new info noted somewhere. I have to see whether or not the date came up in the story (highlighted or not) and how the change might affect anything else. It's not constant fiddling, it's more record-keeping and relationship building.
Cheers,
~ g.