Advice Column: Keeping Track of Everything

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Audra asks: My story has gotten absurdly long. I need a way of tracking everything. I have a detailed timeline, but it doesn't distinguish between storylines (which intertwine anyway). Outlines have never worked for me. Same with bubble maps. Simplifying the story would probably be smart, but I've considered it and all the pieces matter. I want to make cuts when it's done rather than try to cut before I know what's important. Any ideas for keeping track of this mess?

Hi Audra,
I love crunchy technical questions like this. Keeping track of "everything" is a tall order, and I don't think there's any one tool that can do it all, so I'm going to make a few different suggestions, that can go together or be used separately to give you a handle on what's going on. My first recommendation is for your timeline.

Use a Spreadsheet
When you're tracking multiple characters or storylines across the same period of time, the best tool I know of is a spreadsheet with dates (or other time markers) down the left-hand side, and the different characters or storylines across the top, as well as one for general world events that aren't specific to any one storyline. I helped maintain one of these for my husband when he was working on his thesis, and we had things like in the "World" column like, 2012 "Year Of No Good Things". We also used color coding to indicate the time of year for events in different columns in the same year so they could be in the same row. If the month or date mattered, we put that in parentheses in the cell. The project was four stories that took place over the course of almost two centuries, so years were a good unit for the rows. If your story is set over a shorter time span, you might do better to use months, or even weeks or days, as your basic unit. I also mention that we were dealing with 200 years of plot (from 1870 to 2063) because I want you to understand that I speak from experience when I say this: Do not over-systematize this. You will already have some empty space, because not everyone will have stuff going on at every row. Don't freak out and feel like you have to fill this in. At the same time, do not exacerbate this issue by adding rows that don't have anything in them. This may mean that you have some abrupt jumps, but that's better for a readable, usable timeline sheet than leaving empty space where you don't need it. Get very comfortable with your "add row" function so you can add things as you go. Below is a screenshot of the one I put together for my setting, which I was planning to do one of these days anyway, so thanks for the motivation.




You'll notice that I used years for events that are history in my setting, then split down to months when I get to the places where stories start happening. If I wanted to write a story about, say, vampires emigrating to the US, I would probably break a chunk of the 18th Century into months as well. This is a world and timeline shared between stories when don't overlap often, so for your more intertwined stories, you may need more sophisticated ways of marking where different people's storylines interact.

Notes and Outline Document
I say "Notes and Outline", because that's what I call it. I'm a kinda flashlight method writer, so I am mostly outlining things I've already written and, if I'm really on it, the next couple of scenes I'm planning to do. You don't have to include an outline of any kind. Basically, this is a single document, divided into sections, where I can keep a lot of different kinds of information that I might need to refer to while I'm writing. I keep the one for Pointlessly Contrarian in a Google Doc, with horizontal lines separating the sections, bolded headings, and a table of contents at the top which uses in-text links for navigation. The automatic contents sidebar thing they have now is cool, but it isn't yet reliable enough for our purposes, and Word doesn't have an equivalent as far as I know. (They also didn't have it when I started working on Pointlessly Contrarian). Some of the sections are information I want to be able to find without searching, like Carson's class schedule and short bios for all the secondary characters, but others are more process oriented, like a list of "open questions", things about the characters, setting, or plot that I need to figure out or decide at some point. I also have a "bits and ends" section, so that when inspiration strikes for a line, scene, or description that doesn't fit anywhere, I have somewhere to put them.

Note Cards
Writers use note cards in a lot of different ways, and at some point I should probably do a post just about that. What I'm suggesting here is a technique that I think originally came from screenwriting. Write a short description of each completed or planned scene on a lined 3x5 card, You can give each scene a name at the top, but you don't have to. (I do suggest numbering the scenes in the order in which they appear in the story). Sometimes it helps to split the information up into:

• Who is in this scene
• What happens
• What does it accomplish (e.g. "this is where Protagonist gets his magic sword", "update on the villain's plans", "protagonist realizes love interest likes him back")

But you don't have to do that either. You can use color-coding here to differentiate plot threads or types of scene. If you can't write small enough or clearly enough to put anything useful on a 3x5, you can type something up and glue it on, but be careful with this. You're not trying to fit the entire scene on a notecard!

Once your cards are made, you can pin them up on a cork-board or spread them out on a table or the flood. This should allow you to kind of get the whole story up in front of your face so you can see what's there, what's missing, what needs to be rearranged. It's a way to get a top-down view of the book.

Even when you're not in a places where you can spread the cards out, if you carry them around, you can flip through them to remind yourself what's happened in what order, and where everyone is. In addition to its logistical function, this technique can help you see parallels or connections between your plots and characters that aren't always obvious when you're in the thick of it, and thus suggest new directions you could take or ways to deepen and complicate what's already there.

Reread Regularly
This is a good habit to get into for a longer piece even if you aren't having trouble keeping track of it. At set intervals of time or word count (like, ever 2 months, or every 10,000 words) reread the whole story from beginning to end. You can edit while you do this, or make notes of things to go back and change later. This is not when you generally want to be doing serious revision – if it' more than a sentence-level edit, made a note and move on. The idea here is to make sure there's a reasonably up-to-date version of the story in your head, and to give you regular opportunities to catch inconsistencies or places where the plot threads might have gotten tangled. This is sort of the opposite of the strategies I described earlier for getting the whole story shrunk down or zoomed out enough to see and move all the pieces; here, you're making sure you remember what all the pieces actually are. If you switch between different perspectives throughout the story, it is worthwhile to occasionally mix up these rereads and read all the sections from perspective A, skipping over the rest, then go back to the beginning and do the same with perspective B, and so on. If you have other clear section types, like by major storyline, or time period, try doing it that way too. Also, every 50,000 words or so, reread the whole thing out loud, or get someone else to read it out loud to you. It will help you figure out whether you're actually making sense. 

Study Your Story
This is sort of the broad version of several of the points above. What you have in your working draft is a large body of complicated knowledge that you need to be able to understand, apply, and explain. (The "explanation" here is that you will sometimes need to make references in the text to prior events - at this stage,no one reasonable will ask you to explain a first draft work in progress of this length). That means you need to study it, the way you would study a textbook, or a subject you're interested in. If you have existing study skills that aren't covered by any of the previous suggestions, use them. Read through and take notes on separate paper. Mark up a printed copy with a highlighter. Make flash cards. Make an 8.5x11 notes sheet like you're gonna have to take a short answer exam about your story. Whatever already works for you to run all that information through your brain in a new direction to help you solidify it, and get the key points into a form more accessible than The Whole Thing. 

Create A Private Wiki

Disclaimer the first: I have not actually done this and thus cannot offer detailed advice. 

Disclaimed the second: This has the potential to be a truly massive time sink. 

Most authors who use this technique talk about it as a thing for series bibles, to keep book-to-book continuity straight, but I think it's valid for any story big enough that you're having trouble keeping track of it. Basically, you use one of several free or low-cost options to create a fanwiki, but only you can see it, and you put everything you know about the story in there, with pages for characters, places, special items, whatever, all nice and cross-linked like Wikipedia. Brandon Sanderson and Seanan McGuire have both said they do this, although neither has written about it in detail anywhere that I could find. 

I lieu of talking about how best to go about this when I have no personal experience on which to base advice, here are the two best articles I found about it. 

https://www.tor.com/2019/01/07/how-to-create-a-wiki-to-support-your-fantasy-worldbuilding/

https://heartbreathings.com/using-a-wiki-for-your-series-bible/

I would recommend breaking the normal rules of the internet and actually looking at the comments on the Tor article. Lots of good suggestions, and the author was actually in the thread for a while, answering questions. 

Do you know, the working title of this post was "August advice column"? Audra, I hope something in here is useful to you. Everyone else, remember to keep sending me questions. Until next time - be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things. 

Dresden Files Reread - Storm From Chapter 10

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Content Note: Substantial discussion of smoking - no sensory details. 

As soon as he leaves the meeting with Bianca, Dresden calls Linda Randall. She finds time to make a weird, inappropriate joke about "investigating my privates" - has anyone in real life ever talked like this? - before making it clear that if he wants to talk about Jennifer Stanton, she doesn't want to talk to him. Dresden determines from background noise that that she's at the airport, and decides to disregard her clearly states preferences and go bother her in person. I think talking about how terrible everyone's boundaries are in this book is getting repetitive, so the less said about this the better. 

Once Dresden has her cornered, she acknowledges that she and Jenny not only used to work together, but were at one time roommates in the sense of Oh My God They Were Roommates. Unless I'm seriously forgetting someone, this makes Jennifer and Linda the only canonical f/f couple in the series, and neither of them survives the first book. I am not counting Justine's various lovers from Ghost Story onward, mostly because those are one-off encounters for Thomas's benefit, but especially in light of the information revealed at the end of Battle Ground. I also note that Linda is one of two characters in the entire series who definitely smoke, the other being Madeline Raith. Since we know there are EMTs in this series who smoke, it is of course possible that Lamar or his partner, whose name escapes me, also smoke, but w haven't had names matched up with nicotine intake there. This is odd only because in 2005 (as reasonable a snapshot year as any for this series), over 20% of American adults smoked tobacco, so in a series with dozens of named characters, I would expect to see a few more of them. Many Dresdenverse characters are in high stress jobs, the cast is skewed male, and a bunch of them have on kind of preternaturally good health or another (can Wizards even get cancer?) so I would think, if anything, that more of them would smoke. Oh, I guess Shiro had his cigars. Does that count?

Linda also reveals that Jennifer called her the night she died, asking if she wanted to get together again for the engagement with Tommy Tom. At that time, Jenny didn't seem to think anything was up, at least as far as Linda could tell. This is also where we get out first glimpse of the Becketts, and the immediate impression that something is Very Wrong with them, especially Mrs. Beckett. 

In between almost every action or interaction Dresden attempts, he chills for a minute and considers his next move. Just from a writing perspective, I have mixed feelings about this. It gives us good access to Dresden's thoughts, and a sense of what's coming next in the story. I can't help feeling like this could be smoother if Dresden had someone to talk to, but it would change the mood of this first book so far I'm not sure it would be a worthwhile tradeoff. 

In any even, having gone over his options and priorities, Dresden follows up on Toot Toot's information, and makes contact with a terrified pizza delivery driver, who has already spoken to Victor Sells. He reveals, without ever realizing it's not Victor on the phone again, that there was an orgy at the Sells's lake house night before last (the night Tommy and Jenny died, although Dresden has not yet made this connection), and that someone else was sneaking around taking pictures. I do wonder how it is that Harry and Victor sound so similar on the phone, but maybe this kid is just too freaked out to pay attention. This is when Dresden first thinks there might be more to this than a cheating husband, but he's still leaning towards "midlife crisis" rather than anything more nefarious. 

Harry heads home to do the dark magic research Murphy wants, but is interrupted by a man with a baseball bat, who bangs him around a little before warning him to stay our of the murder investigation. Dresden concludes, not unreasonably, that it was Marcone who sent him, and I don't remember at the moment whether that's correct, or if we're ever told which of his conversations prompted this reaction. 

Stay tuned for Chapter 11 at some point soonishlike. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things. 

Dresden Files Reread - Storm Front Chapter 9

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This is the actual longest chapter of the first book, but it does a much better job of not feeling like it than Chapter 2, which is some 5 minutes shorter. 

When Harry finally wakes up, it's 3 in the afternoon, and in a few hours, he will have to go meet with Bianca, vampire proprietress of the velvet room. But before he can do that, Murphy calls and berates him for not already having gotten results on the difficult, illegal magical research that she asked for all of 25 hours ago (and has already been told may not be possible), and tries to forbid him to see Bianca, including threatening to lock him up to stop him. Honestly, his fear of randomly getting put in protective custody if he cooperates with the police makes some sense if this is normal behavior for Murphy. Her behavior towards him is frankly unprofessional, and "they're friends" isn't much of an excuse when she has yet to act friendly towards him either. It's just demands, hostility, and zero respect for Dresden's boundaries. 

Dresden gears up and heads out, reflecting that the White Council might not actually be that upset if Bianca killed him, then scolds himself for paranoia, observing that if he continues thinking like this, he'll end up turning his little basement apartment into the Fortress of Solitude. And that's kind of what happens, gradually, between this book and Changes, so that's some pretty solid foreshadowing right there. This is also where we get the first instance of the "wizardry is about preparation" speech which occurs in almost every book. 

The Blue Beetle breaks down just as Dresden is getting to the mansion that serves as the Velvet Room's base of operations, so we get a whole bit where he's standing there arguing with a security guard. This doesn't accomplish a whole lot in terms of plot, except to establish that Bianca is nervous about letting a wizard into her house, but we do get the first mention of Listening, and of the fact that vampires respond to faith, not to specific symbols. It's a bit odd that neither Dresden nor Bianca is willing to rely upon, or even mentions, the obligations of guest and host that are later established to be foundational to the supernatural community. We also see Dresden's sword cane for the first time, although the security guard takes it away from him. I don't think we actually see him use it until Blood Rites, and I don't know whether the earth magic it's imbued with there is already present here. He only talks about it as a blade, and option to defend himself without having to rely solely on magic. 

The second Dresden mentions Jennifer Stanton's death, Bianca goes for his throat, apparently convinced that Dresden must have committed the murder because he's the only local wizard strong enough to do it, which is information in and of itself, although it's not clear that Dresden realizes this. Between Bianca's attack and Dresden's counter with a literal pocket full of sunshine, Bianca's true, gross, batlike form is revealed, which is embarrassing for her and disturbing for Harry. Even once everyone calms down and the vampire gets her face back on, the conversation is... strained. It doesn't help that Dresden is bleeding from a cut acquired during the scuffle, but we get quite a lot of Bianca's feelings about Tommy Tom, her own employees, and sex work as an industry, which is not as cringey as it could be considering it's Jim Butcher writing this. Dresden does also get a lead: Linda Randall, who used to work for the Velvet Room and was close to Jennifer. This conversation is also where death curses are first mentioned, although we don't get the technical details of how they work, just that they're something that can happen when a wizard dies, and they're dangerous enough for Bianca to worry about. Bianca tells Dresden he has to leave, calls Paula in, and begins to feed upon her. This is where we, along with Dresden, find out about the addictive narcotic properties of vampire saliva. 

There's two things that stand out to me about this interaction with Bianca. First of all, she's a crazy person. Attacking him like that was a monumentally bad idea, no matter how sure she was that he was the killer. Similarly, she would have had to already be kinda unstable for her interaction with Dresden to push her so far that she accidentally ate someone. Honestly, I'm surprised Ortega allowed her to be elevated in Grave Peril. Bianca is a liability. 

Second, Bianca is attached to the humans she considers hers on a level that we are later given to understand is not normally possible for vampires of the red court. I see four possibilities here. The boring answer is that this is a first book and Jim Butcher simply hadn't settled on how exactly vampires think, act, and feel. A more interesting possibility is that capacity for prosocial behavior in vampires is inversely correlated with sanity. This is supported by the Eebs, who are extra crazy and very attached to each other, and the Red King, who has totally lost his mind and must have some capacity for prosocial behavior in order to run the entire vampire nation. Third, Bianca may be contagioned, which we know can allow supernatural creatures to disregard the normal incapacities of their species, and is supported by her association with Cowl and Kumori, and her gift of the dagger to Lea. Fourth, we may be looking less at genuine attachment and more at something akin to the proprietary anger Harry describes in the Winter fae he influences in Battle Ground. Of course, none of these options are mutually exclusive. 

Dresden waits outside for Paula to come down with Linda's contact info, but of course she never does. Eventually, someone else comes down with the phone number, along with a note that says only "Regret". While Bianca barely comes up again in this book, this moment marks the beginning of a conflict that informs every subsequent book until Changes. 

Sorry for the long, late chapter. I had to get our reading and writing goals for the year posted first. Expect Chapter 10 on Saturday as usual. Be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things! 

2020-2021 Eeveeyear Reading and Writing Goals

Here at Mint and Brambles, the beginning of October is the "new year" for my annual reading and writing goals, because I am still very tied to the academic year, but I'm also a bit of a disaster. It also gives me a month's lead time before NanoWrimo to figure out what I'm doing for that. Writing 50,000 words in 30 days is not a thing I can do, but I like to do something. 

Last year, our goals were to write 20,000 words of fiction and 250 handwritten pages of whatever, read 100 books, get two short stories done and ready to submit for publication, and spend 1000 hours writing and 1200 hours reading. I...achieved none of those goals. Well, I might have hit the time goals, but we'll never know, because I stopped having a working phone in December, and due to a combination of global pandemic and me being a disaster,  that situation still hasn't been rectified, and none of the tech I'm using to fill in the gaps can run my time tracking app. I managed to read 74 books, write 14731 words of fiction, and do 191 handwritten pages. I didn't work on short fiction at all. Looking over my progress bars, I'm mostly struck by how close together they are. I did try to keep things in balance, catch up where I was behind, but there were times during this year when it was wildly mismatched. In particular, one handwritten page in my current notebook can run to over 200 words, so doing on of those adds a lot more to my word count than it does to my page count. Getting into a rhythm with the Dresden Files reread over the summer helped a lot with catching my page count up. I still can't decide if the phone situation helped or hurt how many books I managed to read. Normally, I'm a book audiobook reader, and the interim "phone" doesn't run audible, but it does run Nook and Libby. I read faster with my eyeballs, but time I spend playing phone games is no longer really able to double as reading time. Other complications include the fact that a lot of my audiobooking is rereading, and that I do spend less time playing phone games now that I don't have access to MergeDragons. 

I do regret the loss of time tracking, because a lot of my reading this year was really long game manuals and a couple of thick, dense academic books, and without that, I don't have any way to account for how much more time and work that was compared to, say, reading the latest October Daye book. Since I still don't have a working phone, I'm going to incorporate a page count reading goal for the coming year. Page counts are easy enough to look up, so I should be able to do this for ebooks and audiobooks as well as physical books. I also stand by leaving rereads out of my book count, but reading some books over and over is part of my writing process, and this is a writing blog, so I'll be adding a separate goal for a certain amount of rereading. 

Reading, writing, and page count goals are all returning, updated to 150% of what I actually accomplished this year. This puts all of our goals somewhat higher than last year, which is gonna be interesting given that I didn't reach last year's goals in the first place. It's good to reach a little. I was having issues actually doing blog posts since they "only" help the page count, so this year we're gonna have a goal for blog posts as well. 

Reading Goals

• Read 111 Books
• Reread 80 Books
• Read 38150 Pages (includes audiobooks, does not include rereads). 

Writing Goals

• Write 286 Handwritten Pages
• Write 22096 Words of Fiction
• Write 75 Blog Posts

I don't know how close I'll come to reaching any of these, especially the new objectives. One of the things this blog is about is learning in public. Please join me in the coming year as I attempt to be gay, do crimes, and read ALL the things.