A Writer's Woes

A Hierarchy of Files

Stories come to me in streams of thought. They consume my every moment, making me think endlessly through their twists and turns. This is the first step to a story. I sit down at my computer and type up everything running through my mind. I love computers for this; I can cut, paste, and edit to my heart’s content.

When it’s time to write that particular story, I typically have five running files: Characters, Summary, Research Notes, Story, and Forget Me Not. These files all have a “ – r # ” after them to denote the revision number of the file. I never know when an old idea (a previous version of the file) might be useful to me and I’d hate to lose them.

The Characters file lists all of my characters and a description of them. My primary characters have a much more in-depth discussion of their personality traits than my secondary and tertiary characters. I also list how my characters know/relate to one another and the major changes they go through in the story.

The Summary file is a synopsis of the story plus all the backstory. It lists all major plot points, how the story progresses relative to the timeline of the story, all major character interactions, and the main story turning points. It also details the backstory which may or may even show up in the novel, but is information that I need to know to write the story. Lastly, anything that I may or may not include in the story is put in italics, a reminder to me that that piece of plot is still being thought out.

The Research Notes file details all of the research I’ve done on any part of the story that requires research. For this book, this includes historical notes about 1790’s England, title hierarchy and land ownership, a typical voyage across the Atlantic, traveling across the new world, and interactions between white people and Native Americans.

The Story file is where I write the story. This has the most revision levels by far as I’m constantly rethinking what I’m doing and how I’m doing it, yet I’m leery of just deleting the scenes I’ve written. Sometimes I add them back in later. Sometimes I just look back to see how I originally dealt with a situation.

The Forget Me Not file contains all the little tidbits I’m afraid I might forget such as foreshadowing elements, elements I introduced early in the story that I need to refer to later, etc. It also contains questions I still have about the story that I don't want to forget to check on (such as whether an aunt who was a Dutchess would be addressed in a familiar way, "aunt," or in a more respectful way, "your grace"). Lastly, this file contains things that need to be changed in the final revision such as names that are too similar and might confuse the reader.

At the moment, I need to update my Synopsis file with my current storyline so that I can start rewriting the beginning of my novel to incorporate those changes and eliminate the incorrect backstory that is currently plaguing the first part of my novel.

posted by chrmisha @ 11:50 AM