How to Manage the Research Notebook from Hell: Part One of the RT Booklover's Convention Series

As some of you likely remember, I attended the RT Booklover’s Convention last weekend, and to my great fortune made it to five panels, whilst also sending my undercover spy (aka my mother, lol) to a sixth.

*NOTE: This post contains one minor expletitive, because it was important!*

The first panel I attended was:

The Research Notebook from Hell – Keeping Your Series Organized

How do you organize a multibook series, especially when you’re dealing  with the complicated worlds of urban fantasy, paranormal romance or  fantasy? There are characters, plots, subplots, bestiary, magical  systems and multiple worlds, all to keep track of without going crazy.  Your readers will definitely notice if you keep changing a character’s  eye color, if names suddenly change or dates don’t match up, so  a system in place. Find out how to keep things organized so  that at the flip of a page, you can remember what you need to know when  you’re writing a series.

The Series Bible: The Most Important Details
(Eh… That Means Everything)

As the name implies, a Series Bible is just that, the Bible of your series: the hefty tome that contains all the answers, outlines all the rules, and summarizes the lessons put forth in your actual manuscript.  Regardless of your feelings or views toward the Holy Bible, your Series Bible is the unshakable truth for the world and characters you create in your series, so you need to maintain it accurately and keep it well-organized.  Then, when you get to book 15 (hey, we can all dream, right?), it’s easy for you to flip back and remember that oh yeah, David the Dragon Speaker has brown eyes (I’ve already changed his eye-color three times, but hey, once was on purpose!).

The experts on this panel (some of whom ARE on book 15… or 18… actually she couldn’t even remember what number it was anymore…) recommended the following tips for staying organized and on top of your smorgasboard of research and plot threads:

1. Organize your Series Bible (SB) by categories such as Major Characters, Minor Characters, Beasts, Groups/Organizations, Subplots, etc.  If you prefer a hardcopy SB, do this using tabbed folders and then keep them all in a (very large) binder.  For those of you who prefer digital SBs, two very awesome ideas are to create a FREE private Wikipedia (YES you can do this!  Who knew!?!?) for yourself and update it as you go (this has the advantage of being able to be made public later if your series gets published and takes off, lol) OR set up your SB as its own separate project in Scrivener!  (I personally LOVE this idea, as I love Scrivener, and if you are a writer who does not use Scrivener… um, WHY!? Go buy it now!)
2. After you write each chapter, create a bulleted list of what happened in that chapter, and then add those relevant details to your SB to help track plot thread developments, subplots, and character arcs.  (Another perk of Scrivener… use its provided summary index cards to write chapter summaries as you go.  I’m not even halfway through the novel and those have already helped me immensely in remembering what-happened-when in the first Act!)
3. Be sure to record CHARACTER CHARACTERISTICS in your SB, especially for the minor characters, including physical as well as emotional/attitude factors (looks, quirks, phobias, mental profile, family, etc), relevant background history that shaped them, and birthdays to keep track of their age (even if not all of this comes out in the book).  Also include what happened to each character (major and minor) in each book, internal and external.  Also under each character section, or within each folder, create subsections for “what may happen in the future” to that character or “this is why this happens but nobody knows this until chapter x or event y”.
4. Take note of SUBPLOTS, PLACE NAMES AND GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION (especially if you have made up your own continent or world), ALIENS/PLANETS/SPACESHIPS for sci-fi’s, THE MAGIC SYSTEM if present in a fantasy, including each specific power and its limitations so it stays consistent across all books, and MYTHOLOGY/HISTORY OF YOUR WORLD (as important to keep consistent as the magic!).
5. Keep track of character family trees if they are at all relevant, even if all of it isn’t mentioned in the book (one panelist accidentally had her character be the 9th son in one book and the 10th son in a later book… fortunately she managed to fix it in a believable manner, but learn from her experience!  Record your family trees if you will be mentioning any relations at all!)
6. Record cultural/period traits!  If any of your characters are from a culture different from the modern world, or even just different from the country of your main audience (or you) – or perhaps, live in a different time period, be sure to record their cultural customs including food, drink, and words/slang.  This goes for any unusual/different cultures/customs/time periods your characters might encounter as well, not just the ones they originate from.
7. Record the passage of time as it coincides with your story.  Every book happens over time, even if it’s just one hour.  In your SB, track dates along with the major and minor events to stay consistent.  If you deal with paranormal creatures such as vampires and werewolves, the sun and moon cycles would also be important, so track those as well.
8. Create a timeline!  No, this is not the same as tracking the passage of time!  Include characters’ important dates as well as important cultural dates, historical dates, etc, past, present and future as they relate to your series.
9. Once the final version of the book is approved by your editor, add any details that might have changed into the SB permanently.  (So for some of us, this may not even be on the horizon yet, but visualize it anyway!  Visualization helps it happen!)
10. TAKE NOTES FROM BOOK ONE!  Create special sections for “future series book ideas” with a note that includes where that idea from in the first book for future reference.  Whether you have a series in the works or are just trying to organize an epicly long one-book tale, it never hurts to keep your world organized and up-to-date!  Better to start from the beginning (even if you don’t think you’ll have a series!) than be scrambling to play catch-up in the end!  One panelist had to literally go back and reread her first four books very carefully and take notes as she went to back-create her SB… trust me, from her to us – YOU DO NOT WANT TO DO THAT!

The Series Bible: BACK THAT SHIT UP!!!

Whether you prefer to keep your SB in hardcopy or digital format, the one thing all panelists pounded into our heads was to BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP!  Currently, I am still not that great at doing this (*guilty cringe*), however, I hereby vow to do better!!!  Some great ideas they threw out for backing up your work without it being a complicated pain-in-the-butt:

1. If you have a hardcopy SB, translate it all to a digital copy as well for your backup.
2. Automatically set your Scrivener SB file to back up to Dropbox every time you close out of it.  (I MUST do this!!!!!)  This has the added bonus of then being accessible from everywhere since the file is in the Cloud!  Voila, instant-access Series Bible!
3. Set up a special email account for the sole purpose of archiving back-up files.  Then save each day’s progress as a new document (whether in Word, Scrivener or other word processing format) and email it to that account.  Another great idea, as this way you have original copies of each changed document in case you ever decide you like the old version better!

And one more thing…

Another tidbit of advice from the experts: if you find you have certain problem areas in your writing, such as a tendency to misspell a certain word, or a tendency to overuse a certain word, etc… aside from writing yourself a post-it note and sticking it to your desk or computer monitor or laptop, of course (which I admit, I do), you can also just wing it and then at the end of your chapter or even your entire manuscript, run a search for your problem word or phrase or do a “find and replace”!  (But please, as a beta reader… DO do your own run through and try to fix those as much as you can before sending to a beta!!! 😉 Makes our lives so much easier, lol.)

Lastly, a lovely Resource!

If you get tired of running to the thesaurus, print this puppy out and tape it to your wall!  It comes highly recommended: 1000 Words to Write By
, from Deanna Carlyle.

And that concludes the first panel run-down.  I hope you found this information helpful in some way and enjoyed it as much as I did!  To all until next time, HAPPY WRITING!

 

Next Up in the RT Convention Series: Indie vs. Traditional Publishing – You CAN Have It All!  With panelists Mark Coker (Smashwords, Founder), Sylvia Day (aka S.J. Day), Abbi Glines, Colleen Hoover, H.P. Mallory.