Organization – It sounds like a wonderful theory
One thing I’ve often admired about really good writers – and I’m thinking of journalists here as opposed to novelists – is how organized they are. Or how organized they appear to be. Peter King, who writes for NBCSports.com and who has also spent many years with Sports Illustrated and others, is a prime example of this. I don’t know him, but through his writing he drops nuggets of detail that make me think he’s properly organized. He keeps detailed notebooks and files full of detail of when he met people, and what they talked about and etc. Whereas I have a bunch of hastily scribbled notes littered on the table in front of my monitor.
As I continue to procrastinate on the final book of the 30 Stones Saga, I’ve had to adapt to my lack of organization on the fly. For instance, it’s important for me (and the reader) to know where each of the 30 Stones are, especially as we enter book six. Because some of the Stones have changed ownership over the first five books in the series, the task of creating a useful listing takes some back-tracking and re-reading.
I have managed, thankfully, to compile an accurate list of the Stones entering book six. It took some time and effort but it led to more questions. Where are all the Dragons? There are, at this point, two generations of Dragons. The ‘Pillar’ Dragons, those who were created from humans in book 1, and the ‘True’ Dragons, those borne of the Pillar Dragons. Knowing where each of these Dragons are, along with what color they are, and their lineage is important information for me. It may not be important for book six, but it might prove invaluable in the follow-on series I have gestating in my head. (Of course, it also might be useful for book six, but I’m not going to tell you that right now am I?)
An inherent danger of world-building for a fantasy novel or series is that there’s an awful lot of detail, and a lot of … well, everything that needs to be established. I have purposefully, in some cases, not lingered on some details like trade or religion or social or economic systems because they just haven’t been important to the story. And, to be fair, when creating a new world, I feel the reader can probably fill in some of those details herself.
If, however, I was asked to present a class on organizing your story, I would absolutely and without reservation suggest putting as much down on paper (or electrons) as possible before you even start writing. I find spreadsheets are useful for this kind of exercise because you can, in one sheet, list a dragons name, color, location, progeny etc. Additional sheets can contain other information and it’s all stored in a single, convenient location.
Scrivener is another option. (Scrivener is an option to word processing programs but one that offers a lot more tools for writers) To be fair, I’ve only started using Scrivener for book six and I’m not nearly conversant in what it can and cannot do. But it looks like it can do a lot and one of the things it can most certainly do, is let you write notes in the form of index cards. With a split screen showing the index card cork board, and the writing document, it’s much easier to keep track of dozens of different bits of information. When that information is used, you can color code the index cards and move them around on the cork board, driving unused information to the top. It’s a wonderful piece of writing kit I wish I would have tried several books ago.
So, my organization skills have gotten better as a result of writing five books, but there’s room to improve. Hopefully, that improvement will result in more writing time and less re-reading time as I look for information going forward.
Will I ever reach the levels of professional journalists who have stacks of notebooks and recordings from a decade ago and who can almost instantly recall a source? No, almost definitely not. But that’s another beauty of writing fiction – sometimes in the act of forgetting something, you think of something better along the way.
