Adventures in Writing - Episode 1

Becoming an author can be a daunting and frightening experience for some. Being a writer put you under a lot of pressure. Getting your ideas out of your head and actually written is easier said than done. Sometimes you can have a really great idea, but have no idea how to write it out in a way that would make sense. That's where keeping extensive notes would really come in handy.

The key to writing a great story isn't good gramar, perfect spelling, or even getting the formatting of your pages correct. Its all about the fine detail. Before you can put characters into a new world you'd dreamed up, you have to build the world they'll reside in. To do that you need to write extensive notes. J.R.R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert both did this to extremes, but their worlds and their stories were richer as a result. By building the background to your story and the world its set before hand you give yourself a guide to follow. You're readers will quickly notice if you get a certain detail wrong which you've already established in pervious chapters. This applies not just to books to every other medium as well.

For my own writing I'm using MediaWiki running on a old computer running Ubuntu Server. This is the same software that powers Wikipedia. Installing this and getting it working isn't for everyone, but its proven itself to be an invaluable tool. I've built an extensive Wiki for my world my first novel in "The TruthSeeker Chronicles" series will be set. This includes a detail timeline of the world's history, information about the many races involved, information about the countries involved and their histories. I still have more to do, more to add, and that's ok. The more detailed your notes and information the richer your world will be. Having detailed notes will also help you keep facts straights. Remember, your readers will notice discrepancies in the story very quickly (cough cough, the Star Wars prequel trilogy, cough cough).

If you aren't technically inclined, then use a spreadsheet or database. LibreOffice is your friend, and its much cheaper than MS Office. Having all of that information laying around will also give you material for building data books you can publish if your works become popular enough. The point is to make the information as accessible as possible so you can quickly look something up on a certain detail so you don't make mistakes. Like how EA messed up the ending of Mass Effect 3, an excellent example of what can happen if you don't pay attention to every detail when trying to tell a compelling story. Had they been paying attention that wouldn't have happened. As I said, this applies to all mediums regardless of whether its a book, a movie, a TV show, or a videogame. Your fans will know when you make such mistakes, even when they're small or when you try to make something up to cover up your mistakes.

I'm looking at you Masashi Kishimoto (author of Naruto)!

Its not unheard of for authors to spend up to a year or more in preparation work for the writing of a novel. Tolkien spent much of his free time hunkered down in the trenches of World War I writing out the details for the Lord of the Rings books. So, don't worry about how long its taking while working on those intricate details. There is no such thing as having too much detail when it comes to this sort of thing. The more there is the richer your works will be.