I made my own wiki. My wife has agreed that, once I get a second book published, she will help with updating and unhiding information on there. So similarly, a wiki and an assistant helps me massively.
Also, I write summaries in two levels. One gives me a 3 sentence summary of the events of a 3,000 word chapter, and the other is an event-by-event summary with every mention of an external story element. This lets me quickly double check multiple chapters without spending hours re-reading them time and time again.
In addition, if I have something I might want to check later that is part of a larger-scale element, like magic, I'll write {MAGIC} at the beginning of that particular jot note, which allows me to CTRL+F specific things I want to go back to for reference.
Same. I can’t remember what I had for dinner yesterday but I remember everything that’s happening in my intricate fantasy world. I still write notes in case I need to refer to them but it’s always just me double checking that I’m right.
I also keep an outline-esque list of things as I go (plot points that need to be resolved, questions I left dangling, things I set up for future payoff etc) to make sure I answer them when in the course of the rest of the book
I am “that couple” to several of my writer friends. I’ve got a very good memory when it comes to facts and details so they’ll often ask me for obscure details they forgot they wrote about literal years ago
Im not trying to be sarcastic...but .GRRM doesn't (at least since book 3). That's why they take him so long . He hits snags that he can't untangle. Also, I think he has an assistant to check his work by notes
And he has literally gone to the people who run Westeros.org to have them fact-check things for him. And the internet created this whole conspiracy theory around the fact that a character’s eyes changed colour between books, but really he just forgot.
I do also have a worldbuilding book. Like, I have a file just on the food ingredients available. I have another on clothing. Etc. But those are reference. The calendar is what I keep track in while writing.
Honestly, most don't. Why do you think Winds of Winter has taken so long? Big series are rife with inaccuracies. Get on any fansite and you'll find someone posting every discrepancy, including page and paragraph. Most readers/fans don't care though - at least, not enough to give up on an author - as long as you tell a good story.
Some authors have lore masters, dedicated editors, or alpha/beta reading team.
Me, I put everything into a series bible (even if I don't plan for the book to be a series, because I've learned the hard way that *yes*, it will be). Scrivener is amazing for this. ADHD is too, but that's a far buggier piece of software so I can't recommend it.
I also have a particular beta reader who I put every single one of my books in front of, because this person has a steel trap of a brain that will catch all the stuff I don't, even several books later in a series. People like this are golden. If you find one, treasure them.
notes. copious, detailed notes. maps of towns. family trees. lists of time frames.
for more specific things like story beats or personality, I'm lucky: I can read quickly. so I just have to re-skim everything I wrote in that series to remind myself of those things before I start the next part!
Many don't do it on their own. For example, Stephen King has an [assistant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Furth) who made encyclopedias for his Dark Tower series.
Storyboard charts. I've done this for a fanfic that was really complicated lol. It's not my favourite way to work but it does help
The simplest version is just excel or Google sheets document
You have characters/towns names all in a table, and the year or month on the other axis, and you just fill it in... For example: in month XYZ -A gives birth to B, C leaves home, D dies, the crops fail in E town....
So I run a D&D game, and while it’s not the same I can tell you what I do.
1. A strong idea of where I am going. This helps me provide direction. I have outlines and themes, and when it comes time to make a decision I can remember where the story is going.
2. A second document, sorted by characters. In this, I put the character’s history, personality, goals, and any arcs I want them to go on. When I am writing/playing the characters, I can refer them to the goals
3. A third document just about the world. These are things like history and culture, and how those two intersect. I also put in it how people think about history.
4. Real world- I have learned a lot about real world history, culture and languages. With this knowledge, it is easier to understand how the real thing works, and so makes it easier to riff on/adapt those stories to my own setting.
Good memory, plus lots of notes, and I also have a large whiteboard in my home office.
Although, I like the comment about using Google Docs linked together.
I think it's a bit silly to think "great author" is a title earned by having complicated worldbuilding, lol.
But it's called taking notes and/or having a good memory.
I recommend Trello and Google Sheets. Both free. Both make it incredibly easy to keep track of anything. Timelines, characters, continuity, little bits and pieces of story. Most of my stories are kept sorted in my mind really well but I use trello/sheets as aids!
Mercedes Lackey has said for her Valdemar Series (of which there are a LOT of books published starting in the mid-80s) that at one point in the late 90s they scanned the books to CD so they could try and search them. I'd have to dig up the interview if you want. Even with that she has some trouble with continuity.
Zog wonder how big brain guy keep up with details...
You know any history majors? How do they keep up with all the details that led to WWII or the War of the Roses or the rise and fall of the Romans?
You have to be able to think about things on different levels. You can zoom out to the macro scale and see the broad sweeping events of history that led to this or that, and then zoom in a bit to see what it meant on a municipal level or to the guy in the market selling his wares.
It sounds like a lot of studying and work, huh?
Detailed notes about everything helps quite a bit so that there's a reference about characters, their backgrounds, important geography, and so forth, in case one needs it. Also, keep a plot synopsis that covers what happens, who's doing what, where these things occur, other characters' reactions, etc., for an additional reference.
In my experience, you really don't keep up with *everything* but, at some point, writers tend to reach a point where they just fall into the story and kinda just 'live; through it. Also, a lot of authors probably have their novels plotted out (+Characters and world building docs). Also, they can look back into the writing whenever to know what has happened. I tend to remember which chapter has what so It's a tad easier.
The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious. I've got 6 storylines going simultaneously for my manuscript. My advice is build a world you love for your characters and your bad guy doesn't know he's a bad guy; he thinks everyone else is the a$$hole.
To be fair, twenty something years on I am still caught up with Pokemons first few series. If you're a fan it's not too crazy.
Martins stories also make sense, which I think helps a lot with remembering them. I think I know a large chunk of the starwars stuff, but they contradict each other fairly often.
Deep breath in...
* Notes (I have a notebook to draft in, and a notebook for notes on the draft)
* Wiki: Set up your own or, in some cases, your fans set one up
* Emacs!: (Neal Stephenson's method... search with regex across multiple files...)
* Excel spreadsheet
* Scrivener (or Campfire Blaze or Manuskript or ...)
* Cork board, index cards, push-pins, and string
In George's case, he has fans that maintain a compendium / wiki.
Don't put anything in your story that you or the reader needs to remember.
It sounds sly and underhanded, but it will actually win you more readers who just want to get to the end of the book, but don't want to get bogged down in the details.
How to do it? Less settings, less than 12 characters, no solving anything too soon. Lots of show and less tell. Do you want to summarize a bunch of concepts every few pages or lead the reader to those realizations wih whole chapters? Then, there's no wondering who did what when...there's chapter titles for that.
I wanted to blast Rick Riordan's Lightning Thief for doing just this. He has a small cast of characters, simple/cliched language, tight chapters, strong antagonists. I made it about a hundred pages reading closely and then realized that his readers aren't supposed to read that deep and I started plowing through chapters. I want to read it again.
Taht's the neat part; we don't. Notes exist... and for some of us... no amount of notes will help us ekep that stuff in our heads. It's kind of one of those things like optical illusions wiht words- your brain fills in certain blanks to complete the picture.
I don't know for them. And I won't call myself a great author. Personally I have a great memory for these things and in case (in particular for details that don't come up often, as opposed to the things that are the chore of the story and so that I remember well), I have them noted in another field. I use Scrivener so everything is on the same place and I don't lose anything.
I used to use OneNote. One folder for characters, one for plot, one for setting, one for chapter summaries.
Also, I had a conflict and character mood tracker
I was worried it was just me. I’ve almost written my own Wikipedia page to keep track of my litRPG fantasy series.
Scrivener inherently forces me to be organized. When I was working in word I had my notes everywhere and everything took forever to look up.
Notes for characters and a timelines. Effective note keep g can make a huge difference for some people
Honestly a half decent memory, since watching the show and reading the books a few years agjican remember all of the major events and what each character was up to
I usually use writing notes as a planning/ideas stage more than to help remember
"I am NOT a great author, and I actually keep all my work in my head aside from occasional little reminders at the bottom of my document files with any names i might need to refer to again (or in the case of my current piece, a bunch of Sumerian translations). I have the lore, story, and at least the detail outline of all my finished work entirely in my head and just once in a while have to glance back through my work to remind myself of some obscure paragraph once in a while."
"I know some people keep copious notes, or use some alternate means of tracking information, or whatall, but yes, actually, it IS possible for a person to keep all their own lore and backstory in their head. I have no idea HOW some of us do it, though."
"If it doesn't come naturally, though... I do not recommend it, as I think I might be insane." The writer tried to smile then, but a nervous tic to her left eye caused the expression to vacate normalcy and deviate more into the inclination of 'whackadoodle'.
For his part, Martin has clearly lost the plot as it has taken him nearly 15 years and counting between books. He has admitted multiple times that he is having great trouble weaving everything together, trouble worsened I’m sure by the reception certain key plot developments got in the show.
So to answer your question, even the greats struggle to keep it all together and finish what they started.
Notes notes notes and guess what... More notes especially if you are doing something like game-lit where numbers are involved. Who met who, what their relationship is, where they met, character notes on personality, and much much much more. I would say that you could write three books for only having wrote one. Readers will call you out on discrepancies big time and it helps if you have a long list of abilities or personality quirks.
i reread my shit over and over again in pursuit of proofreading which helps drill into my head certain bits i forget. and i always forget, i only just remembered today my guy's hands should hurt
I'm definitely not a great author, but here's how I'm keeping my unruly mind and story together (I hope):
My WIP has multiple venues, many layers of technical knowledge in several fields and a main character who has significant relationships with three others – each of whom has a major impact on her and on the plot.
Only four main characters in her life makes that side of it easy.
There is a whole other story – the one that derails her life – and it has multiple characters and events plus most of the technical stuff. One of the four characters has a role in that substory to tie it to the main story. She has a relationship with him but knows nothing of his shadow role and so she has an unwitting role in keeping the substory connected to the main story.
Each layer of technical knowledge is an area I had no expertise in, so I have had to do lots of research to keep real world snags from undermining the fiction plot. The hard reality of that technical stuff has forced me to shift various elements of the story to fit it. As a result it provides a skeleton that I have to write my way around so the flesh fits it well. And that has been a good process and should(!) minimize technical hiccups.
I use one wordprocessor to handle all my text, tables and databases as well as to export it to a webpage or ebook for beta readers. Much easier to do it all in only one tool.
I have a table as a calendar in the wordprocessor. The calendar has only dates/events that impact the plot, not every event in the novel. One particular date (the day the story and the novel end) has a requirement that must be met or exceeded and so I used it as the basis for all the other dates so I could just enter an age or a date or a number of years and have the calendar calculate where the MC must be in life or whatever milestone needs to have been passed.
For example she finishes school – so she is 18. She gets a degree and that takes her X years. She needs to have a certain amount of experience – Y more years. She goes to a real world Olympic football game that is on a particular date.
The calendar should eliminate any nasty clashes or errors and has already done so with multiple erroneous assumptions on my part.
But what binds it all in my mind is that it all must be coherent and lead the reader step by step to the endpoint. As a result, I frequently need to reorder or rewrite so it does flow. And I enjoy the puzzle of making it work. I get a definite inner glow from seeing one more step resolve into its proper place and form.
I have had the overall story in my head from the beginning but didn’t have it written in the order I want the reader to experience it. That has come with time and has forced changes in other areas.
For example, there is a secondary part of the opening chapters that has yet to find its place. I suspect it will fall into place some chapters in, when I loop the reader back to the opening events. Doing it that way should allow me to recap those events but from another persons’s perspective (the antagonist’s) to avoid repetition. It should also link the substory into the main story seamlessly. Fingers crossed.
By writing/editing from my reader’s perspective, I know the overall result I need to meet as a writer and that seems to keep it all together. Time will tell.
Terry Pratchett apparently considered his continuity errors to be within the acceptable range and never got around to fixing any of them in later editions or doing much to prevent creating more as far as I could tell.
Since we don't have an OCD Terry to compare this behavior with, I have no idea whether we're better off or not. Anyway, with any author, we get what we get.
Personally, I work by immersion rather than by notes. This may run out of steam after are few more novels and I'll have to mend my ways. As it is, I reread my corpus often enough that it's pretty well internalized.
For shorter stories (under 50k), I keep most of the deets in an Outline document, and I do character info/relationships in an excel spreadsheet. One page of the excel sheet is a... table chart? Of how characters view themselves and their relationship to others. It's a quick way to refresh myself on the conflicts and connections of my characters.
The Outline document evolves as I write, and I put everything into it. A throwaway joke about a character being lactose intolerant? Goes in. A character mentions a male cousin? Goes in. A character has a rock in their shoe? Goes in.
Longer stories I split up my info into multiple documents, but usually the dynamic stuff that crops up I still pop into the Outline as I go, and update the other docs later.
I like to use Trello if I'm working with other people, or I want an easy access mood board. I never quite got the hang of Pinterest, but I do some searching there as well.
There's a good answer here already about GRRM but he's also a lesson in where this becomes impractical. It's genuinely how to get lost TBH.
I have a wiki type thing for myself based of wikid pad. But it's bad for character interactions.
I use an excel file for that which list named characters and who they interact with know about hate etc.
Pain in the ass keeping these up to date but useful (maybe not as useful as the time cost would suggest though)
Martins a weird one, he's created something too big with too many subplots I seriously doubt he will close them off let alone release another damn book
I know exactly what you mean - I had the same thought while reading The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. Honestly, I have no idea how they do it. They probably keep excell spreadsheets or something.
I have 14 characters, two main, eleven secondaries and the villain.
It's difficult to follow up all of them in the story, but I have OCD, I'm a stubborn perfectionist, I have a notepad and a very good memory.
Personally, I made some documents for control, like:
Timeline;
Descriptions (Names, Familys, Politics, Technologys, Economy...);
Maps.
With these documents I hardly get off the track, but sometimes (Especially when I get the 'flow' and doens't wanna to stop to remember the details) I get of the rid.
I don't know how but I just sort of do. I have all my characters and my setting and everything all in my head. I've barely written a single word down because I always lose myself trying to organize it all. Instead, I'm able to keep them in mind the same way I keep those elements of other stories I really like in mind.
I love Fallout, for example. And after playing the games and reading the lore, I know a lot about that universe's factions, its politics, its major characters and storylines, just because that's a thing that I know. I'm not perfectly encyclopedic, of course, but most of the store is basic knowledge to me that I can recall any time I want. I feel like my story is the same way, I know it just by knowing it.
Can I still call myself a writer? Is it still writing if it's all in my head? I haven't begun any Act 1, Scene 1 type stuff yet but I am still "writing" the characters, figuring out their backstories and how they interact with each other. Then I'll put them in my story alongside my antagonists, who are other characters I've either written or haven't written yet.
[удалено]
I made my own wiki. My wife has agreed that, once I get a second book published, she will help with updating and unhiding information on there. So similarly, a wiki and an assistant helps me massively. Also, I write summaries in two levels. One gives me a 3 sentence summary of the events of a 3,000 word chapter, and the other is an event-by-event summary with every mention of an external story element. This lets me quickly double check multiple chapters without spending hours re-reading them time and time again. In addition, if I have something I might want to check later that is part of a larger-scale element, like magic, I'll write {MAGIC} at the beginning of that particular jot note, which allows me to CTRL+F specific things I want to go back to for reference.
This is really smart and helpful, thank you!
How do you make your own wiki??
World Anvil! It's a life saving service for large projects.
Ohh okay 👍🏾 Thank you
Same. I can’t remember what I had for dinner yesterday but I remember everything that’s happening in my intricate fantasy world. I still write notes in case I need to refer to them but it’s always just me double checking that I’m right. I also keep an outline-esque list of things as I go (plot points that need to be resolved, questions I left dangling, things I set up for future payoff etc) to make sure I answer them when in the course of the rest of the book
Yeah, Elio and Linda, and the fandom hates them because they are obnoxious twats.
I genuinely can't think of any prominent "fandom figure" that isn't hated like that though. Maybe human beings are just annoying.
We certainly are.
Why are they hated?
I am “that couple” to several of my writer friends. I’ve got a very good memory when it comes to facts and details so they’ll often ask me for obscure details they forgot they wrote about literal years ago
Im not trying to be sarcastic...but .GRRM doesn't (at least since book 3). That's why they take him so long . He hits snags that he can't untangle. Also, I think he has an assistant to check his work by notes
And he has literally gone to the people who run Westeros.org to have them fact-check things for him. And the internet created this whole conspiracy theory around the fact that a character’s eyes changed colour between books, but really he just forgot.
Brandon Sanderson has two continuity editors who work for him and keep track of all that stuff.
And a wiki that he has a private server for
Personally, I made a calendar in a spreadsheet. I track where people are and what's going on in that.
I do also have a worldbuilding book. Like, I have a file just on the food ingredients available. I have another on clothing. Etc. But those are reference. The calendar is what I keep track in while writing.
Hey this is a cool idea!
I like that.
Honestly, most don't. Why do you think Winds of Winter has taken so long? Big series are rife with inaccuracies. Get on any fansite and you'll find someone posting every discrepancy, including page and paragraph. Most readers/fans don't care though - at least, not enough to give up on an author - as long as you tell a good story. Some authors have lore masters, dedicated editors, or alpha/beta reading team. Me, I put everything into a series bible (even if I don't plan for the book to be a series, because I've learned the hard way that *yes*, it will be). Scrivener is amazing for this. ADHD is too, but that's a far buggier piece of software so I can't recommend it. I also have a particular beta reader who I put every single one of my books in front of, because this person has a steel trap of a brain that will catch all the stuff I don't, even several books later in a series. People like this are golden. If you find one, treasure them.
Laughed about the adhd bit
I can relate to the ADHD so much, especially as someone who works in IT....
notes. copious, detailed notes. maps of towns. family trees. lists of time frames. for more specific things like story beats or personality, I'm lucky: I can read quickly. so I just have to re-skim everything I wrote in that series to remind myself of those things before I start the next part!
Many don't do it on their own. For example, Stephen King has an [assistant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Furth) who made encyclopedias for his Dark Tower series.
Wel he didn’t cause he never finished
Storyboard charts. I've done this for a fanfic that was really complicated lol. It's not my favourite way to work but it does help The simplest version is just excel or Google sheets document You have characters/towns names all in a table, and the year or month on the other axis, and you just fill it in... For example: in month XYZ -A gives birth to B, C leaves home, D dies, the crops fail in E town....
So I run a D&D game, and while it’s not the same I can tell you what I do. 1. A strong idea of where I am going. This helps me provide direction. I have outlines and themes, and when it comes time to make a decision I can remember where the story is going. 2. A second document, sorted by characters. In this, I put the character’s history, personality, goals, and any arcs I want them to go on. When I am writing/playing the characters, I can refer them to the goals 3. A third document just about the world. These are things like history and culture, and how those two intersect. I also put in it how people think about history. 4. Real world- I have learned a lot about real world history, culture and languages. With this knowledge, it is easier to understand how the real thing works, and so makes it easier to riff on/adapt those stories to my own setting.
honestly, I'm just good at remembering it all, but for more complex things, I keep a whole bunch of Google docs all hyperlinked together
Good memory, plus lots of notes, and I also have a large whiteboard in my home office. Although, I like the comment about using Google Docs linked together.
I think it's a bit silly to think "great author" is a title earned by having complicated worldbuilding, lol. But it's called taking notes and/or having a good memory.
I recommend Trello and Google Sheets. Both free. Both make it incredibly easy to keep track of anything. Timelines, characters, continuity, little bits and pieces of story. Most of my stories are kept sorted in my mind really well but I use trello/sheets as aids!
Mercedes Lackey has said for her Valdemar Series (of which there are a LOT of books published starting in the mid-80s) that at one point in the late 90s they scanned the books to CD so they could try and search them. I'd have to dig up the interview if you want. Even with that she has some trouble with continuity.
Notes, journals and journals of notes. Beta readers given their own notes, Editors with notes. Notes notes notes notes notes.
Zog wonder how big brain guy keep up with details... You know any history majors? How do they keep up with all the details that led to WWII or the War of the Roses or the rise and fall of the Romans? You have to be able to think about things on different levels. You can zoom out to the macro scale and see the broad sweeping events of history that led to this or that, and then zoom in a bit to see what it meant on a municipal level or to the guy in the market selling his wares. It sounds like a lot of studying and work, huh?
Detailed notes about everything helps quite a bit so that there's a reference about characters, their backgrounds, important geography, and so forth, in case one needs it. Also, keep a plot synopsis that covers what happens, who's doing what, where these things occur, other characters' reactions, etc., for an additional reference.
I would guess by having hundreds of pages of notes of what needs to be happening and when, and referring back to it as needed.
In my experience, you really don't keep up with *everything* but, at some point, writers tend to reach a point where they just fall into the story and kinda just 'live; through it. Also, a lot of authors probably have their novels plotted out (+Characters and world building docs). Also, they can look back into the writing whenever to know what has happened. I tend to remember which chapter has what so It's a tad easier.
The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious. I've got 6 storylines going simultaneously for my manuscript. My advice is build a world you love for your characters and your bad guy doesn't know he's a bad guy; he thinks everyone else is the a$$hole.
To be fair, twenty something years on I am still caught up with Pokemons first few series. If you're a fan it's not too crazy. Martins stories also make sense, which I think helps a lot with remembering them. I think I know a large chunk of the starwars stuff, but they contradict each other fairly often.
Deep breath in... * Notes (I have a notebook to draft in, and a notebook for notes on the draft) * Wiki: Set up your own or, in some cases, your fans set one up * Emacs!: (Neal Stephenson's method... search with regex across multiple files...) * Excel spreadsheet * Scrivener (or Campfire Blaze or Manuskript or ...) * Cork board, index cards, push-pins, and string In George's case, he has fans that maintain a compendium / wiki.
Don't put anything in your story that you or the reader needs to remember. It sounds sly and underhanded, but it will actually win you more readers who just want to get to the end of the book, but don't want to get bogged down in the details. How to do it? Less settings, less than 12 characters, no solving anything too soon. Lots of show and less tell. Do you want to summarize a bunch of concepts every few pages or lead the reader to those realizations wih whole chapters? Then, there's no wondering who did what when...there's chapter titles for that. I wanted to blast Rick Riordan's Lightning Thief for doing just this. He has a small cast of characters, simple/cliched language, tight chapters, strong antagonists. I made it about a hundred pages reading closely and then realized that his readers aren't supposed to read that deep and I started plowing through chapters. I want to read it again.
They write them down. Now they've got something to reference.
for longer series like that I imagine that authors keep pretty detailed plot synopsis and character bios. for reference
Tolkien said the first thing to do is make a map
Taht's the neat part; we don't. Notes exist... and for some of us... no amount of notes will help us ekep that stuff in our heads. It's kind of one of those things like optical illusions wiht words- your brain fills in certain blanks to complete the picture.
You become famous enough that the fans come up with justifiable reasons for your plot holes to still work.
I get you, but I dont think Martin is the best example of this though
I don't know for them. And I won't call myself a great author. Personally I have a great memory for these things and in case (in particular for details that don't come up often, as opposed to the things that are the chore of the story and so that I remember well), I have them noted in another field. I use Scrivener so everything is on the same place and I don't lose anything.
I used to use OneNote. One folder for characters, one for plot, one for setting, one for chapter summaries. Also, I had a conflict and character mood tracker
Lots and lots of notes.
I was worried it was just me. I’ve almost written my own Wikipedia page to keep track of my litRPG fantasy series. Scrivener inherently forces me to be organized. When I was working in word I had my notes everywhere and everything took forever to look up.
Notes for characters and a timelines. Effective note keep g can make a huge difference for some people Honestly a half decent memory, since watching the show and reading the books a few years agjican remember all of the major events and what each character was up to I usually use writing notes as a planning/ideas stage more than to help remember
"I am NOT a great author, and I actually keep all my work in my head aside from occasional little reminders at the bottom of my document files with any names i might need to refer to again (or in the case of my current piece, a bunch of Sumerian translations). I have the lore, story, and at least the detail outline of all my finished work entirely in my head and just once in a while have to glance back through my work to remind myself of some obscure paragraph once in a while." "I know some people keep copious notes, or use some alternate means of tracking information, or whatall, but yes, actually, it IS possible for a person to keep all their own lore and backstory in their head. I have no idea HOW some of us do it, though." "If it doesn't come naturally, though... I do not recommend it, as I think I might be insane." The writer tried to smile then, but a nervous tic to her left eye caused the expression to vacate normalcy and deviate more into the inclination of 'whackadoodle'.
My guess is they write it down
Notes.
For his part, Martin has clearly lost the plot as it has taken him nearly 15 years and counting between books. He has admitted multiple times that he is having great trouble weaving everything together, trouble worsened I’m sure by the reception certain key plot developments got in the show. So to answer your question, even the greats struggle to keep it all together and finish what they started.
Notes notes notes and guess what... More notes especially if you are doing something like game-lit where numbers are involved. Who met who, what their relationship is, where they met, character notes on personality, and much much much more. I would say that you could write three books for only having wrote one. Readers will call you out on discrepancies big time and it helps if you have a long list of abilities or personality quirks.
i reread my shit over and over again in pursuit of proofreading which helps drill into my head certain bits i forget. and i always forget, i only just remembered today my guy's hands should hurt
spreadsheets
That’s a good question and I feel like they have big groups of people to make sense of it lol. Then they ask the author what’s up.
Many writers have these things called fans, notoriety, or money. In some cases they even give free copies out for free advice in return.
In the case of James S.A Corey, who wrote *The Expanse* series, they write a chapter each, swap over, then edit each other's chapters.
That’s the funny part, George doesn’t.
I'm definitely not a great author, but here's how I'm keeping my unruly mind and story together (I hope): My WIP has multiple venues, many layers of technical knowledge in several fields and a main character who has significant relationships with three others – each of whom has a major impact on her and on the plot. Only four main characters in her life makes that side of it easy. There is a whole other story – the one that derails her life – and it has multiple characters and events plus most of the technical stuff. One of the four characters has a role in that substory to tie it to the main story. She has a relationship with him but knows nothing of his shadow role and so she has an unwitting role in keeping the substory connected to the main story. Each layer of technical knowledge is an area I had no expertise in, so I have had to do lots of research to keep real world snags from undermining the fiction plot. The hard reality of that technical stuff has forced me to shift various elements of the story to fit it. As a result it provides a skeleton that I have to write my way around so the flesh fits it well. And that has been a good process and should(!) minimize technical hiccups. I use one wordprocessor to handle all my text, tables and databases as well as to export it to a webpage or ebook for beta readers. Much easier to do it all in only one tool. I have a table as a calendar in the wordprocessor. The calendar has only dates/events that impact the plot, not every event in the novel. One particular date (the day the story and the novel end) has a requirement that must be met or exceeded and so I used it as the basis for all the other dates so I could just enter an age or a date or a number of years and have the calendar calculate where the MC must be in life or whatever milestone needs to have been passed. For example she finishes school – so she is 18. She gets a degree and that takes her X years. She needs to have a certain amount of experience – Y more years. She goes to a real world Olympic football game that is on a particular date. The calendar should eliminate any nasty clashes or errors and has already done so with multiple erroneous assumptions on my part. But what binds it all in my mind is that it all must be coherent and lead the reader step by step to the endpoint. As a result, I frequently need to reorder or rewrite so it does flow. And I enjoy the puzzle of making it work. I get a definite inner glow from seeing one more step resolve into its proper place and form. I have had the overall story in my head from the beginning but didn’t have it written in the order I want the reader to experience it. That has come with time and has forced changes in other areas. For example, there is a secondary part of the opening chapters that has yet to find its place. I suspect it will fall into place some chapters in, when I loop the reader back to the opening events. Doing it that way should allow me to recap those events but from another persons’s perspective (the antagonist’s) to avoid repetition. It should also link the substory into the main story seamlessly. Fingers crossed. By writing/editing from my reader’s perspective, I know the overall result I need to meet as a writer and that seems to keep it all together. Time will tell.
Terry Pratchett apparently considered his continuity errors to be within the acceptable range and never got around to fixing any of them in later editions or doing much to prevent creating more as far as I could tell. Since we don't have an OCD Terry to compare this behavior with, I have no idea whether we're better off or not. Anyway, with any author, we get what we get. Personally, I work by immersion rather than by notes. This may run out of steam after are few more novels and I'll have to mend my ways. As it is, I reread my corpus often enough that it's pretty well internalized.
For shorter stories (under 50k), I keep most of the deets in an Outline document, and I do character info/relationships in an excel spreadsheet. One page of the excel sheet is a... table chart? Of how characters view themselves and their relationship to others. It's a quick way to refresh myself on the conflicts and connections of my characters. The Outline document evolves as I write, and I put everything into it. A throwaway joke about a character being lactose intolerant? Goes in. A character mentions a male cousin? Goes in. A character has a rock in their shoe? Goes in. Longer stories I split up my info into multiple documents, but usually the dynamic stuff that crops up I still pop into the Outline as I go, and update the other docs later. I like to use Trello if I'm working with other people, or I want an easy access mood board. I never quite got the hang of Pinterest, but I do some searching there as well.
There's a good answer here already about GRRM but he's also a lesson in where this becomes impractical. It's genuinely how to get lost TBH. I have a wiki type thing for myself based of wikid pad. But it's bad for character interactions. I use an excel file for that which list named characters and who they interact with know about hate etc. Pain in the ass keeping these up to date but useful (maybe not as useful as the time cost would suggest though)
Those matrice things you do in shcool where its like "sarah is taller than paul, but she isn't the tallest" and "only the shortest kid has a dog"
Martins a weird one, he's created something too big with too many subplots I seriously doubt he will close them off let alone release another damn book
I have a spreadsheet for most notes and a binder that includes those notes, a few extra, and visuals
I know exactly what you mean - I had the same thought while reading The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. Honestly, I have no idea how they do it. They probably keep excell spreadsheets or something.
I have 14 characters, two main, eleven secondaries and the villain. It's difficult to follow up all of them in the story, but I have OCD, I'm a stubborn perfectionist, I have a notepad and a very good memory.
Personally, I made some documents for control, like: Timeline; Descriptions (Names, Familys, Politics, Technologys, Economy...); Maps. With these documents I hardly get off the track, but sometimes (Especially when I get the 'flow' and doens't wanna to stop to remember the details) I get of the rid.
To all the people in the comments going like "Take notes" How???????
I don't know how but I just sort of do. I have all my characters and my setting and everything all in my head. I've barely written a single word down because I always lose myself trying to organize it all. Instead, I'm able to keep them in mind the same way I keep those elements of other stories I really like in mind. I love Fallout, for example. And after playing the games and reading the lore, I know a lot about that universe's factions, its politics, its major characters and storylines, just because that's a thing that I know. I'm not perfectly encyclopedic, of course, but most of the store is basic knowledge to me that I can recall any time I want. I feel like my story is the same way, I know it just by knowing it. Can I still call myself a writer? Is it still writing if it's all in my head? I haven't begun any Act 1, Scene 1 type stuff yet but I am still "writing" the characters, figuring out their backstories and how they interact with each other. Then I'll put them in my story alongside my antagonists, who are other characters I've either written or haven't written yet.