How do I keep track of characterization in my story if I have to take a hiatus from story writing?
I just finished writing the first draft of my original story. The only thing I have left to do is to edit for grammatical errors and type up parts of the story that has been handwritten (most of the story has already been typed).
Due to personal reasons, I need to take a hiatus of at least one year from fiction writing. I might write a sequel to my original story and would like to remember how my main characters were characterized (speech pattern, personality, etc.). Is there a easy way I could do that?
Ideally, I am looking for a 1–2 page worksheet that I could fill out for each character, but I don’t know what items to include for the characters’ description nor how much detail I really need to record.
Also, is there anything I should do to facilitate my return to fiction writing when the time comes?
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Why are you wanting to wait a whole year to come back to it? Imo, if you use a spreadsheet, your characters will be boring, chopping, and robotic. Simply listing their traits makes them less human (unless your characters aren’t human). In my CW classes we’ve discussed similar issues. It’s better to write up 1 page descriptions using full sentences. Describe your characters as if you were telling their own personal story to someone who has never met them before.
I think the best thing to do is to first type up everything you have, just to have it all on a electronic file; if you leave this story for a year, your handwritten pieces could go missing or get destroyed, so you don’t want to take the chance.
In my experience, if I left a story alone for a whole year, I would have to re-write everything. The story will be very different, because you have changed as a person, and you’re writing will most likely be better than it was a year earlier.
The story is complete. The only thing I need to do is to type stuff up and revise for grammatical errors.
The fiction I am writing is realistic fiction based on experiences I’ve had, so the passage of time is actually conducive for writing (more experiences to write about). If I write, the next series of stories would take place several years later in the timeline. Characters would change. However, I do want to record what the characters were like before (i.e. in my current story) so that the characterization is at least somewhat consistent. For instance, it would be strange for me to have a character that used to be bossy and mean now become passive and quiet all of a sudden.
In that case, I would invest in a tape recorder and read your story out loud. It doesn’t matter if you can peg the sound perfectly (writers aren’t actors out of necessity), but I think that will help somewhat. I would also write supplementary material to the story (maybe character journals) that will further demonstrate their voice and personality.
I don’t have any spread sheets. I write down everything I can about my characters to a point of ridiculousness (when will I ever need to know that my narrator prefers banana pudding over chocolate ice cream?)
A good exercise is to think as though you’re characters are stuck in a room together. A pressure situation. What would be going through their minds? What “roles” would they slide into? How do their personalities take hold? Try to peg as much information about them individually and as a group.
I would also keep a notebook and write notes down throughout the year that strike your fancy. Just because you aren’t siting down to write a full-fledged story, doesn’t mean you have to abandon storywriting altogether. I have many theoretical characters and stories that I have yet to tap into, but I’m always taking notes down.
To go on what @muppetish said, if you have a webcam, you might want to record yourself reading the script so you not only hear it, but also see the facial expressions you want to convey.
For the next year, think of the characters as traveling. As you think of things write them down on an index card, date it and file it away. That way, your characters stay with you, but will continue to change and expand over the time span, and you will have a collection of snippets that are relevant to the character, and will have allowed them to change with you.
I use a table for characters with the following, at a minimum:
page number of first appearance
full name
age/date of birth
relationships to other characters
other notes
For a long story I might copy into the table the whole passage in which the character was introduced, with whatever descriptive language I had used. I might also add details given later, as well as key things said about them by other characters and references to their major scenes.
If I am planning ahead and haven’t actually written the character into the story yet, I would do a kind of stream-of-consciousness description of the character and his or her role in the story, knowing that it would probably change some when the time came.
For a short story, I wouldn’t need to record that much detail. Even a longish short story can be read in ten to twenty minutes, so it would not be that hard to revisit what I had written.
There are some writing-support sites on the web that offer tools for character profiles. Here’s one that I happened upon but haven’t used, just as an example. And here’s a big general list of resources.
For me, it’s a little easier since I have been working on/with the same characters (over a dozen of them!) for many years, so even when I take a bit of time away from actively writing, I am familiar enough with them that I still know them when I pick up a notebook and resume writing.
Of course, having most of my previous writings involving them (I have some old notebooks!) helps to jog my memory for the little details; while I know the personalities, I am horrible at remembering birthdays even for real-world people, let alone sci-fi characters. Notes from my old gaming sessions help too. I used them as NPCs in a Shadowrun campaign I ran, and that fleshed them out better as they interacted with other people (the players), which helped my writing quite a bit.
What details you need to remember varies as much as writing styles or stories do, so I doubt you’ll find a “one size fits all” solution. I can only really answer by relaying what has worked for me.
@Jeruba That was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.
I think the idea to record possible stories based on experiences I’ve had is good.
What I told my sister to do was put a bunch of index cards together with a steel ring. That way you can have notes and move thoughts around if you need to.
@Jeruba Thanks for that. That writer’s linkapalooza you posted is a great resource!
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