14 February 2005

Tips for Keeping Track of Characters in Your Novel
by Diana Pharaoh Francis
www.sff.net/people/di-francis

Diana Pharaoh Francis is the author of fantasy novels Path of Fate and Path of Honor . In 2003, Path of Fate was nominated for the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award in Fiction. Her ugly vampire story, "All Things Being Not Quite Equal," was selected for the Best of Dreams of Decadence anthology, published by Roc Books in 2003. She holds a BA & MA in creative writing, and a PhD in Literature and Theory. She currently teaches at the University of Montana-Western.

Let's face it: write a novel, and you need to find a reliable method of keeping track of your characters. Imagine yourself in the fifth chapter of the last book in your trilogy, inserting character information that contradicts what you already said in book one. Maybe it's only an eye-color shift, but maybe it's a shift in religious beliefs or suddenly your heroine becomes an orphan, though earlier she had a mother and a father.

Your copy editor or editor may catch those errors, but they might not, but a fan certainly will find it. Or a reviewer. On the other hand, if you're a beginning writer, you might lose a chance at a sale because you're too sloppy. And even worse, from the creative standpoint, you will have built your plot on flawed premises that may result in having to gut your manuscript and rebuild. Better to keep track as you go.

Things important for me to track include page and chapter reference locations, former names and new names, nicknames, changes I made that might need to be dealt with elsewhere, and extensive notes on appearances, habits, background and motivations. And I want to do all this efficiently. I wrote my first novel, Path of Fate , with an embarrassing lack of organization. But then I didn't have a contract, and so I had time to waste. Not any more. When Path of Fate sold, and I was given a deadline for Path of Honor , I spent an unreasonable amount of time searching through the various chapters of Path of Fate to guarantee continuity, to find out if previous information contradicted what I wanted to add, and so on. I had to find a better way.

So what are some common ways to keep track of characters? Over the years I've run across a number of them.

1. Accounting Tape: This one was suggested to me by a former writing teacher at Iowa State University. She would take the three-inch wide calculator tape and hang it in strips along her wall. She would then make character notes on the tapes so that she could have that information in front of her at all times.
2. Index Cards: Along the same lines as the accounting tape, a writer keeps track of characters on the index cards, storing them in a box so that they can be quickly sorted through.
3. Butcher Paper: Hang a long strip of butcher paper on the wall and make character lists. Again, much like the process of the accounting tapes and index cards.
4. Notebook/Journal: Write the information down as it comes to you and flip through pages to find what you need when you need it, using sticky tabs to speed your search.
5. Appendix: Keep an alphabetized list of your characters in a separate computer file. Insert the information on each character and then you can scroll down, following the alphabetization, or do a search to locate the character's name
6. Database: Create a database of information

The purpose of keeping track of your characters is to maintain continuity and keep your plotline flowing. However, if you're like me, you want to spend as little time as possible doing the bookkeeping, instead putting your effort into writing your novel.

I have tried 1-4 above and found a number of pitfalls. First, those lists are time and work intensive. You're rewriting by hand what you already typed. You have to rearrange and reorganize when you add new characters and new information by moving stuff on the wall or taping on extra accounting tape. The entire thing can become a mess when you want to change information—you begin scribbling out and trying to use post-it notes to bandage the damage. Using a notebook means that you have to flip pages until you find things, and maybe you didn't put all the information about a character in a central location, which means you could overlook important details.

The appendix is a good idea, but to me, more work than I want to do in scrolling and finding. Appendices could easily be 50 pages long. (Think of incorporating that 50 pages in note cards, notebooks, butcher paper or accounting tape—my hand is cramping just thinking about it). The database is better still, but for me, the learning curve is too high, and I don't own a database program.

I want something simple, that I can use now, that I can cut and paste into from my novel, and that is focused and organized. I want to use my word processing program, which I already know inside and out; and I want to be able to find information very quickly.

A better solution than any of the above choices is setting up your character list in your word processing program, using a table of contents internally hyperlinked to your data, so that you can access all the information with just few keystrokes and minimal wasted time. This system also allows for the equally quick input of new information. It isn't as hard as you might think to set this up.

The following instructions are based upon Microsoft Word 2000.

Step 1:
Begin by opening a new document. Hit the return key about 10 times so that you have some space to work with.

Step 2:
On the third line, insert a table. I like a four or five column table. I use only one row so that I don't have to keep tabbing cells. But you could do a separate cell for each of your entries with no problem.

Step 3:
Type a list of character and place names in the columns. It may be that you want a column of primary character male names, primary character female names, secondary character names, non-human names, place names etc., or you may simply wish to list your names alphabetically. The organizing principle is your choice. The main thing is to make each column useful to you. This table will serve as your table of contents.

Step 4:
Copy and paste the names into the lower part of the document. In between each name you might wish to put a page break so that you have a visible line separating each character. But between each person, write the word "top" (You will later hyperlink this to your table of contents to increase maneuverability.)

The following is an example from Path of Fate and Path of Honor .

Kebonsat
top
Metyein
top
Reisil
top
Saljane
top

Step 5:
Go to the first name in the body of your document. Highlight the word. Go to the insert menu and scroll down to bookmark. The dialog box will ask for the bookmark's name. Call it by the same name (Reisil will be Reisil, Saljane will be Saljane, and so forth). Click Add. Repeat for each of the names on the list in the body of your document. What you are doing is marking the location of each informational entry. Next you will hyperlink the matching entry in your table of contents to your informational entry.

Step 6:
You are now ready to create your hyperlinked table of contents. Go back to your table. Every name in your table should match a name below in the body of your document. What you want to be able to do is click on the name in the table of contents and be automatically switched to the appropriate location in the document—as any hyperlink works in any webpage.

Right click the name and select hyperlink, or insert the cursor in the name and go to the Insert menu and scroll down to hyperlink. You'll get a dialog box. On the left will be a list of options under the heading of "Link To." Click on the "place in this document" tab. As you do, in the main window you'll see a list that begins "top of document" followed by "headings" then "bookmarks." Listed under bookmarks will be all the bookmarks that you have placed in the document. Scroll down to the bookmark with the appropriate name, highlight it and click okay. Now you'll see that that name in your table of contents is underlined and highlighted in blue. If you click on it, you'll be taken to the associated bookmark in your document.

Repeat the process for all the names in your table of contents. Once that is done, scroll down through the body of your document where you have listed all your names, and repeat the process for the word top. Right click and choose hyperlink and then select "top of the page" as the reference point (Word creates the reference point for you). This will enable you to return to your main menu with a click of the mouse—saving you scrolling back and forth.

Now all that is left for you to do is to insert your character information. I like to keep my characters document open as I work and toggle between the current chapter and the character list to copy and paste descriptions. I also tend to keep more complete notes since I don't have to copy by hand. For added utility, I include chapter and page number references. Even if those should change as you revise, you'll have narrowed the location greatly.

Keeping the document open also allows me to look up information on my characters as needed, with just a click of the mouse. The document is very fluid, so it's easy to add characters to your menu as you introduce them in your novel, repeating the bookmarking process.

This process is simple and efficient. By using this tracking method, you merely need to go to your table of contents and click on a character's name to have all your information available to you. This process is equally useful for organizing information about places, politics and timelines. And best of all, it only takes a few minutes to set up the document, so you are swiftly on your way.