Part of the magic of writing is that every writer’s process is different. I love hearing about how other writers write, and in that spirit, I’m going to share one of my tools for writing: book sheets.
Lately, I’ve been building these in Scrivener, but a Word document would work well, too. Here’s the general information I always include:
For the hero and heroine, each:
- Picture- I like using iStockphoto if I don’t have a public figure already in mind. I create a lightbox for each book where I collect images of the characters, especially the heroine and hero.
- Name- I used to stress a whole lot about the name. Now if a name doesn’t present itself immediately, I wait until I’ve figured out the families, then just name them what their parents would have named them. Much easier than looking up name meanings and etymologies (although sometimes not as fun).
- Short tags- A tiny description of the character, usually only one or two phrases long.
- Enneagram- I love using enneagrams for characters. There are a lot of other personality typing tools you could use, but I find enneagrams to be particularly intuitive.
- Family & friends- The support system for the hero & heroine. Family dynamics are really important to me, so I always want to know what’s going on here.
- A day in the life- This is a recent addition. A lot of times, the characters aren’t doing their day-in-the-life things once the story gets started, but it’s important to know how life USED to be for them.
- Dynamics (How will the protagonists change?)- Big picture, one sentence long overview.
- Antagonists (if any)
- Socio-economics
- Biases
For the book/plot:
- Blurb- 100 words or less.
- Setting- I get really into this. I find pictures to add, sometimes I find realty listings, I shop for furniture. (One of my rich exec characters has a New York loft, pictured left.)
- Symbolism- Usually something in the setting speaks to me for symbolism, so I’ll include that here.
- Theme- The hardest thing, I think. Message is born from theme, so it’s pretty important to figure out a theme. Often I don’t add this until the first draft is done. Then I go back through and punch it up once I figure it out.
So, how bout you other writers out there? What are some of your processes? Do you do a version of the book sheet, too? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
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Beth C.
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Sonja