organization

How to Keep Track of All Your Novel’s Details

October 13, 2017 By Jim Dempsey

Please welcome Jim Dempsey back to Writer Unboxed today! Jim is a professional member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders and works as a book editor at a company called Novel Gazing. In his own words, Jim tells us that:

‘I’ve been editing for a little more than 20 years, gradually making the shift from nonfiction to fiction, which is where my heart really lies. After a few years, I was so busy editing novels that it made sense to pool resources with another two editing friends, and together we set up our own company called Novel Gazing. That was in 2012, and although I have continued with a few nonfiction clients, I spend most of my time editing fiction for publishers and self-publishing authors. I enjoy the challenge of fiction, making sure all the pieces fit together to make a perfect whole.’

You can learn more about Jim and his services on his company website, and by following him on Twitter (@jimdempsey and @novel_gazing).

How to Keep Track of All Your Novel’s Details

I recently worked on a story that had two Mondays in the same week. When I pointed this out, the author was so embarrassed to have made such an obvious error, but it’s a simple mistake to make. Raymond Chandler apparently forgot to reveal who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep, and one character in The Iliad was still around to witness his son’s death even though Menelaos had killed him much earlier.

It’s those minor characters that are usually the problem. The little details. You know your main characters perfectly, you can see them in your mind’s eye. But was her mother born before the war or just after? Did he meet his first wife when he was a freshman or was he already a sophomore?

Editors have a similar problem when they start to work on your book. They don’t know anything about your characters, the world they live in, who did what or when, but they still have to keep track of it all. They have to be able to point out that John, who had a bad limp in chapter 3, is now escaping over back-yard fences like an Olympic hurdler or remind you that the witness spoke with a heavy British accent when she was first interviewed but sounds more like a Southern belle when the inspector revisits her later in the book.

Keeping track of all of these details and idiosyncrasies is essential for the editor, and it’s useful for authors too to make sure your characters, settings, style, and backstories are consistent.

Avoid confusion

Having two Mondays in the same week and other issues with your story’s timeline in particular can be time-consuming errors to correct. It can mean that everything after that blip gets knocked out of sync too. And a simple find-and-replace to change every Monday to Tuesday won’t work as you then have to change every Tuesday to Wednesday and so on, plus check for every mention of ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ and ‘day before’ too.

More importantly, a disturbed timeline can confuse readers: ‘I thought the murder happened on Monday, but now she’s saying today is Monday.’ It’s enough to make them drop your book to pick up another. Or worse, leave a scathing review.

It’s especially important to be on top of the timeline in stories if your story doesn’t run in a strict chronological order or you have several or alternating plot lines. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to easily keep track of your novel’s timeline.

One way is to use specialized software. Many of you will have heard of Scrivener (https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php), which was specially developed for long-form writing. As well as a word processor, the program lets you order your story with index cards on a virtual corkboard, and it comes with a detailed outlining feature.

If you’ve got a more complex storyline, perhaps a saga spanning many generations or a series covering the lives of multiple characters, then you might prefer Aeon Timeline (https://www.aeontimeline.com). It’s compatible with Scrivener—you can drag and drop documents between the two programs—and has a feature that will alert you when a character appears to be in two places at the same time. It will even work out your characters’ ages as the story progresses.

Other similar software for novelists includes StoryMill (http://marinersoftware.com/products/storymill/), Storyist (http://storyist.com/), and The Novel Factory (https://www.novel-software.com/). These all have features to track your characters, plot and timeline, and have some version of the corkboard and index card arrangement.

You have to pay for these programs, and you’ll have a bit of a learning curve before you’re working fluently with any of them.

Keep it simple

A simpler alternative, of course, would be to use an actual corkboard and index cards, or a large whiteboard. Or stick pieces of paper on the wall, providing you have understanding housemates if your timeline ends up stretching a little too far.

A more discreet alternative, if you don’t want to flash your novel’s specifics to everyone just yet, is to use a spreadsheet program like Excel or Numbers. But a table in a Word or Pages works just as well.

When I start editing a new novel, I set up a series of spreadsheets to keep all the details of the timeline, characters, and settings together. When I come across a description in the text, I make a note in the relevant table.

For example, my character description sheet has two columns, one for the character name and one column for the description. If I read something like: ‘Lynn combed out her long, dark hair and put on her glasses to finally read the note,’ then I add the name—Lynn— and the description—long, dark hair; glasses; shortsighted.

Over the course of the novel, I build up a picture of Lynn with the other details I come across: lives on the fifth floor; buys a flat latte every day from Stay Up Latte.

I do the same with descriptions of locations in the novel. For example: Stay Up Latte—two blocks from Lynn’s apartment; on the corner; best carrot and hazelnut cake on the north side.

The timeline table needs a few more columns. [Read more…]

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Setting Up Your Scrivener Project for Easier Compiling

April 30, 2017 By Gwen Hernandez

A common anxiety I’ve noticed among my Scrivener students and training clients is over whether they have their project set up “right.”

So, I’m going on the record: There is no right or wrong way to set it up. Scrivener flexes for whatever structure makes sense to you and works with your process.

Keeping It Simple

For example, during my drafting phase, I generally write all of my scenes one after the other without putting them in folders (though I usually add the title page and other front matter items shown below later). If you write in chapters rather than scenes, you could follow a similar method.

If you like to storyboard, I would skip the folders until you’re happy with the structure/order of scenes, so you can see the entire manuscript on the Corkboard.

Once the draft is done and clean enough to send to my content editor, I group the scene documents into chapter folders based on where I think the best ending hooks are, while attempting to balance the word count among chapters.

If you have a plotting method that requires it, you can add in chapter and/or part folders right from the start to keep everything organized as you go. In the past, I’ve started with empty part folders and added each new scene into the appropriate folder to keep the story structure loosely visible, and then grouped the scenes into chapters later.

That said, no matter what setup you choose for your drafting phase, there are some things you can do to make your life easier when it comes time to compile (export) your manuscript.

If You Remember Nothing Else…

There are two key things to understand about the Binder. *insert foot stomping here*

1. Files in the Draft folder (aka Manuscript, Screenplay, etc) will be one of three types: text document, file group, or folder. (Images, PDFs, and other non-text type files must be stored outside of the Draft folder.) Here’s an explanation of each.

– Text Document: A file where you write the text of your manuscript or keep notes on your work. Used to break the manuscript into logical scenes or sections (or for individual parts like blog posts, articles, and reports).

– File Group: A text document that contains other text documents, much like a folder, but not treated as a Chapter or Part during the compile process. Useful for organizing a manuscript or chapter into sections with section headings. If you remove all of the documents from a file group, it reverts to a standard document.

– Folder: A container for documents and other folders. Works like a document—and can have text in it like a document (e.g. for an epigraph or dateline)—but is usually treated like a chapter or part during the compile process (e.g. for titling purposes). A folder helps you visually organize your work and supporting materials. Even when empty, a folder is still a folder.

Below are the icons for each type of file. [Read more…]

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Using Scrivener with Story Genius

January 29, 2017 By Gwen Hernandez

I recently started working through Story Genius by Lisa Cron to help me write the fourth story in my romantic suspense series, and long before she started talking about organization (Chapter 11), I was—shocking, I know—thinking about how to set things up in Scrivener.

The writing software is perfect for keeping all of the elements together, from “What If?” through to “The End.”

Here’s how I’m using Scrivener to support the Story Genius process. I’ve even included a Lisa Cron-approved Scrivener template in case you want to skip setting it up yourself. ;-)

Choosing a Project Template

When you create a new project in Scrivener, your first decision is which project template (predefined framework) to select. If you’re going to use a document template (like a form you can fill out repeatedly without ruining the original) as a basis for your Story Genius-style scene cards or character bios, I recommend choosing the Novel project template—which already has a Templates folder built in—and then deleting everything you don’t need.

NOTE: You cannot delete the Draft, Research, or Trash folders, though you can rename them and change their icons.

If you don’t care about having a document template for the scene cards or character bios, I’d choose the Blank project template. Then, delete the Chapter folder and Untitled document (select an item to delete and go to Documents—>Move to Trash).

Creating Your Folders

In Story Genius, Lisa recommends that you have six folders to keep track of your story’s facets: Key Characters, The Rules of the World, Idea List, Random Scene Cards, Scene Cards in Development, and Scenes.

I created new folders for the first five (Project—>New Folder), and then renamed the Draft folder to Scenes. I did it that way because, with a few exceptions, Scrivener will only compile (export) items that are located inside the Draft folder. Draft, or whatever you decide to name it, is also where Scrivener looks when calculating your word count in Project Targets.

To give each folder a unique icon, select the folder and go to Documents—>Change Icon.

Additional Folders and Documents

In addition to the six prescribed folders—which I ordered according to my own preference—I also added a Supporting Materials folder to store some of the preliminary exercises, a Productivity document where I track my daily work on the story, and a Templates folder to store Scene Card and Character Bio document templates that I created.

Within the Key Characters folder, I have a folder for each important character, and within that, I store documents for the preliminary character work, like the character sketch and backstory scenes. [Read more…]

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Navy Commander Rick Campbell Makes Waves by Penning Military Thrillers

February 16, 2015 By Jan O'Hara

Unboxeders, I hope you’ll join me today in welcoming retired Navy Commander Rick Campbell to Writer Unboxed for a brief interview about his writing.

For more than twenty-five years, as we slept on pillow-topped queen-sized mattresses, he claimed a rack aboard one of four nuclear submarines, working to keep us safe. On his last submarine, he was one of the two men whose permission was required to launch the submarine’s nuclear warhead-tipped missiles.

He finished his career with tours in the Pentagon and in the Washington Navy Yard. Upon retirement from the Navy, Rick tried his hand at writing and was offered an initial two-book deal from Macmillan / St. Martin’s Press. (Since expanded to another two-book deal.)

His first novel, The Trident Deception, was hailed by Booklist as “The best submarine novel since Tom Clancy’s classic – The Hunt for Red October”.

Rick’s second novel, Empire Rising, is due out Feb. 24^th and critical praise has been equally profuse. Publishers Weekly said of it: “Another riveting military action thriller by Rick Campbell. A MUST READ for fans of this genre.” And Booklist? “The story rockets around the globe and the pages cannot turn fast enough. Readers who miss Clancy will devour Campbell.”

Here’s the blurb for Empire Rising as described by Barnes & Noble:

Very much in the spirit of Jack Ryan, Campbell has crafted a tightly plotted and horrifyingly believable story in which China, desperate for access to oil in a near-future where supplies are running low, declares war and reveals itself to be much better prepared than anyone expected. After a military disaster that sends the United States reeling and leaves the Chinese free to act, a trio of well-written characters work to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Combining thrilling espionage-style adventures, detailed naval battles, and incredible SEAL Team missions, Campbell has created what might be the perfect military thriller.

Rick lives with his wife and three children in the greater Washington, D.C. area. You can find him at his website and on his Facebook page.

Jan: Welcome, Rick! To begin with, shall we establish the interview ground rules? Given your background as a college wrestler and your impressive military career, if my questioning gets out of line, do I need to be concerned for my safety or ability to travel?

Rick: Only if you’re flying over the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. :)

The Trident Deception and Empire Rising are the first military thrillers I’ve read, and I was immediately struck by the balancing acts you’re require to perform. To begin with, civilian-readers such as myself require ongoing education about technical details, military history, and jargon so that the narrative makes sense, and so that we might appreciate the challenges facing your characters. At the same time, you don’t want readers choking on information. How do you ensure you hit the sweet spot between information and overload?

Rick: You’ve identified a critical issue I struggle with. [Read more…]