Keeping All the Balls in the Air
(published March 2005)

Back in prehistoric times when I wrote for the soap operas, there was always someone in charge of “continuity” who made sure that Greg and Aileen didn’t sit down to a ham dinner in Act One and get up in Act Four praising the roast beef. As a novelist, you must control your own continuity. Here’s how I and some other novelists keep all our balls in the air without dropping any.

Do character dossiers
Most novelists keep files of some sort for character biographical information and other details. In my case, it’s usually just a manila folder with thoughts thrown into it as they occur to me. Sophia V. Schweitzer, an award-winning short story writer whose latest novel is still making the rounds, creates detailed character files on her computer. “For each character,” she says, “I write a three-page (or longer) profile that answers dozens of specific questions.” Although this practice gives her more background info than she will probably need, Schweitzer says “it helps me to get to know the character through and through. It reassures me that I can look up any detail -—from political affiliation to color of eyes, favorite foods, parents'
background-—that I might suddenly need.” Schweitzer admits that she is “a loyal user of the ‘find’ command.”

Anita Bartholomew, who has two novels in progress, one under contract to CLP Entertainment, keeps similar files, then refers to them when writing, just as she would with a non-fiction piece. Bartholomew says that when creating a file for a new character, “I often simply copy/paste my initial introduction to the character straight out of the text.”

Create a chart
Charlene Baumbich, author of the successful “Dearest Dorothy” series (Penguin), says she has learned “the hard way (by having to reread an entire book, because I'd once mindlessly changed a character’s name and then given two others the same one) to capture details about characters as they show up.” Baumbich puts these details into a table, “by first name, last, description. Age. Eye color. Hair. Relatives. Favorite sayings and quirks. Where they live. What committees are they on. I can push a button and alphabetize them by any of these choices.” Baumbich adds that “by the time you're to book three in a series (and don't think that can't happen, because I'm living proof), you really need to be able to access info like this, and quickly.”

Make a timeline and/or map
When I was writing my two-novel Pandora’s Genes series, I had three main characters, each of whom moved through several different locations over a period of several years. After months of confusing myself, I drew a big map of the areas my characters inhabited, then taped several pieces of paper together lengthwise and made a timeline divided into several columns to show which character was where, when, and what the major events were at the time. I scotch-taped both map and timeline to the wall above my desk. It didn’t look great, but it made the later stages of writing easier, and helped a lot when I was putting the finishing touches on each novel.

Sandra Dark, who has published ten novels, keeps track of time much more simply: “In the first draft,” she says, “I tend to ballpark timelines. Once I have that draft in hand, it isn't much trouble to whip out a calendar and note dates and times for each scene or time break.”

Be obsessive-compulsive
Although she’s not much for timelines, Sandra Dark found a nifty way to keep tabs on the happenings in her current project, which involves telling the story from each character's first-person viewpoint over a large number of chapters. To keep things straight, she wrote “a quick little reference-bio for each of half a dozen main characters, plus about a page of jottings about the general story line.” Then she divided the story among the characters, with an index card for each of the eighty chapters, and sorted the cards into three stacks, for acts one, two, and three.

Dark admits that all this preparation sounds like a lot of hard work, “but it took no more than a day...and I'm a compulsive-obsessive organizer, so it soothed my brain.”

Dark adds that to remember to reinforce character traits (such as a facial or verbal tic), she slaps a Post-it on her monitor. “Then I refer to it each time I deal with that character.”

To me, the most amazing thing about writing a novel is that sometimes your subconscious will tie all those loose ends up for you. We’ll take a closer look at this mysterious dynamic in the next column.