Using a Character Bible – Is it worth it?

As I embark on my next writing venture after a 2020 hiatus, I realized something. The equation of my age plus the stress of 2020 and the length of time since I’ve written a Frank Rozzani book has added up to me forgetting the details of many of my familiar characters. I remember reading a while back about having a character bible, a book of character profiles. The article I read talked about how this is especially important if you write a multiple-book series with the same characters.

At the time, I said to myself, “I’ll never forget these characters. They’re part of me.” Well, as I get older, I’m pretty sure there are actual parts of me that I’ve forgotten.

As I try to write for my tried and true characters, I find myself searching my previous books for things like dates, names, hair and eye color and other things that would be great to have at my fingertips. As a result, I’m revisiting the idea of the character bible. I thought that one useful resource would be to go to the blogging community of authors, editors and readers and ask for your opinions and experience.

I thought I would begin, however, by telling you what I’ve learned about this tool for those of you that haven’t heard of it or have been using elements of it without realizing it had a name.

What is a Character Bible?

There is no single definition or series of components that make up a character bible. From the research I’ve done, it’s basically a collection of character profiles each of which tell you about the character’s:

  • Name – This might seem obvious, but a character’s name is important. Think of Alex Cross and the numerous James Patterson books bearing his surname in the title. To a much, much lesser degree, of course, there are my Frank Rozzani detective novels that all have ‘Frank’ in some form in the title Frankly Speaking, Let Me Be Frank, Frank Incensed (my personal favorite), Frankly My Dear and Frank Immersed.
  • Physical Appearance/Mannerisms – The characters height, body type, hair color, eye color, physical anomalies and disabilities and other information about how the character looks.
  • History – Information about the character’s backstory, cultural, educational and socio-economic situation and any other relevant information that is material to the plot.
  • Personality – What psychological quirks, conditions or flaws does the character have? What motivates him/her? What are his/her desires? What’s missing from his/her life?

Now, the worst thing you can do is dump all of this information about the character into your story in one fell swoop. You can dribble out the information as needed in small doses. The other thing to avoid, however, is your character developing some ability or piece of knowledge from his background out of convenience to get you past a snag in the story without foreshadowing it first.

What characters should be in the Character Bible?

Again, there is no universal agreement on this, but characters you can consider are those that are pivotal to the story and more than just one-dimensional “fillers” like:

  • Protagonist – The main character or hero of your story.
  • Antagonist The villain or anti-hero of your story.
  • Love Interest – The person that makes your protagonist’s heart flutter.
  • Sidekick – The Robin to your character’s Batman.
  • Supporting Characters – Those colorful folks in the background that give humor, expertise and other key elements to your story.
  • Sub-Plot Characters – The stars of those little vignettes that advance your story through the actions of secondary characters.

It’s up to you, the author, how many character profiles you put in your Character Bible. If you’re a John Grisham or James Patterson type, you probably have less than a half-dozen characters to keep straight. If you’re a Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, or J.R.R. Tolkien type writer, buy a few notebooks to fill.

Tools for Creating A Character Bible

There are several templates out there for you to create the character profiles that will become part of your character bible. I’ve selected some here to give you an idea of what’s out there:

Reedsy Character Profile

For those of you that belong to Reedsy, or even if you don’t, the site offer’s a character profile template separated into various sections. An image of the first page is shown below:

Courtesy of http://www.reedsy.com

As you can see, it’s pretty straightforward and guides you through the information that makes up the profile. I see pros and cons in the level of detail. I tend to only think about what I need to know about my characters, but I suppose the additional information, much of which you’ll never use in the story, might help you get a more accurate picture of what motivates him or her.

Filestage Character Bio Template

Filestage is another online site offering a character bio template in a spreadsheet format. It does have some nuances that the Reedsy template doesn’t cover, but the spirit is the same. I suppose you can create multiple tabs to add additional characters. Here is a snapshot of what it looks like:

Internet Writing Journal

Another character profile format appears on the Internet Writing Journal site. Again, it has much of the same information and you can pick and choose how much of it you’d like to use.

Conclusion

It’s entirely up to you if you want to create a character bible. I’m headed in that direction with my latest Frank Rozzani book so I can make the current book and any additional sequels more manageable.

I’d love to hear from you on your experience with this technique. Have you used it? Have you thought about it? How do you keep your characters straight?

Your comments, as always, are welcome.

Character Profile – Brad Rafferty from Blood Orange and Blood Match

This is the third in a series of posts that I decided to put together to introduce the main characters from some of my work. I hope you enjoy this feature and that it gives you some insight into the process of coming up with characters that I’ve used.

The character I’d like to profile this week is Lt. Commander Brad Rafferty of the U.S. Navy. Rafferty is the main character in my terrorism thriller, Blood Orange. He is also featured in my upcoming book, Blood Match.

Full Name – Lieutenant Commander Bradley Rafferty

Age – Late 30s

Appearance – About 6’ with dark hair and blue eyes. He is in good shape has the clean cut appearance of a career naval man. He enjoys riding his vintage motorcycle. He is fiercely loyal to those he works with and is very patriotic. Think Mitch Rapp and Jack Ryan rolled into one.

Occupation – Rafferty is career U.S. Navy. He is following in a family tradition. He is a highly respected and sought after nuclear weapons expert who is often put into dangerous areas. He is concerned with doing what is right and not always what is politically correct.

Friends/Associates – Rafferty’s friends and associates from Blood Orange and Blood Match include:

  • Admiral Cornelius “Corny” Baker – Friend of Brad’s late father, commanding officer and mentor.
  • Maria Colluccio – Young navy officer and brilliant analyst
  • Alex Figueroa – Fellow enlisted navy man and demolitions expert.

Raffferty’s Backstory – Brad Rafferty’s first priority is his job in the military. He doesn’t have much of a personal life. He has been burned in the past by trying to do the right thing in a political atmosphere where things aren’t always what they seem.

Interesting Facts – Brad Rafferty’s sister is Nancy Rafferty, the love interest for Frank Rozzani, the detective in my five book Frank Rozzani series.

Autobiographical Elements – Rafferty is a compilation of military people that I have known throughout the years with some additional features. I was not in the military due to back issues that necessitated major surgery when I was 14.

Books in which Jonesy appears:

blood match front cover

Who would I choose to play Brad Rafferty in a movie?

butler

Gerard Butler – First Choice

jason-statham-3

Jason Statham – Second Choice

An Excerpt From My New Book

In my last post, I talked about my attitude going into 2016. I also described my decision process for delaying the release of my latest book, Blood Orange, which was set to be promoted beginning on the day that the Paris terrorism attacks occurred.

Now that the new year has dawned, I am excited to revive the promotional activities surrounding this book. Activities include advertising, interviews, and work on a screenplay.

For those of you who have not read it, I’m devoting most of this blog to sharing one of the initial chapters of the book. This chapter describes the action at one of America’s premier sporting events and the confusion over what happens as it comes to its conclusion. Please enjoy this excerpt from Blood Orange, which is now available on Amazon in both paperback and e-book formats. You can get your own copy by clicking here.

Chapter 1

It was the perfect storm. College basketball heaven. The men’s championship game had finally come to Syracuse, NY. For decades, the college basketball Mecca had tried every strategy to lure the big game to arguably the most famous arena in the sport, the Carrier Dome. The governing body of college sports, despite its often tenuous relationship with Syracuse University, could not refute the long and storied love affair that the school and the surrounding community had consistently demonstrated for college basketball. Finally, with a concerted effort from the Mayor, the university, and local businesses, the three games of the national Division I men’s basketball championship were being played in Syracuse to a sellout crowd from all over the nation. The basketball court had been reconfigured in the center of the Dome so that nearly 65,000 screaming fans could have seats to watch the game with countless others watching via live television.

Just hosting the game would have been enough, but to make this event even more meaningful, the two teams that met on this unseasonably cold and misty April night in Syracuse were the hometown Orange and the Blue Devils of Duke University. In the years since Syracuse joined Duke’s athletic conference, an instant rivalry had emerged between the two schools. They were headed by the number one and number two active coaches with the most wins under their collective belts. The two coaches were also close friends and had together coached the USA Basketball Team to multiple Olympic gold medals.

It had been a whirlwind season. Duke had beaten Syracuse at home in the teams’ first meeting by one point in overtime. Syracuse then took Duke to three overtime periods in the Dome for a two point victory. In the conference tournament, the two teams met again in the championship which also went to Duke by three points. Amazingly, the only losses the teams had suffered during the season were to each other.

Both teams had then sliced their way through the tournament field like a hot knife through butter. There were no upsets by Cinderella teams. Both coaches and their squads seemed intent on meeting in the big dance which would be played on Syracuse’s home turf. The other teams in the tournament semi-finals were immaterial as both were beaten by over twenty points. It seemed to be destiny. This was not lost on the coaches. They held an unprecedented joint press conference the day before the game to announce that both of them would be retiring following the game. An uncharacteristically emotional Syracuse coach said that he could not imagine a better way to end his career than by playing the ultimate game against his best friend in his home town. While he did not say it the media would add to his comment, “on the court bearing my name.”

The city of Syracuse was electric in anticipation of hosting the big game, but now there was an unprecedented frenzy. Offices were empty on this Monday preceding the game. Businesses were bracing for the onslaught of overflow fans that could not afford tickets to see the game in person. The area around the Carrier Dome was crowded with people looking to be close to the action.

Now that the game had started, it was shaping up to be another classic Duke/Syracuse back and forth battle. The Duke team fought through the famous Syracuse zone defense with lightning quick passes and a hot three point shooter. The score was tied at halftime. The crowd was going crazy.

As the second half progressed, it was proving to be another close game that would go down to the wire. Thousands of fans in Syracuse and millions around the country were glued to their television sets waiting to see how this game would end. With two minutes to go, the score was going back and forth with a one point advantage to each team with a two point basket. Then, with ten seconds to go, the Syracuse point guard was fouled on a missed layup. He missed the first free throw and then sank the second tying the game. Duke had the ball. The Blue Devils took their time working the ball up the court. The clock counted down as the team worked for the final shot. Five, four, three, two, one…

********

Armory Square, the destination of many basketball fans that couldn’t be at the big game in person, was overflowing. In an unprecedented move, sections of Franklin, Fayette and Walton Streets had been shut down to vehicle traffic so that revelers could enjoy the game. Many of the local establishments had put large screen televisions outside so that overflow crowds could watch the game as they drank specialty orange drinks from large souvenir cups. It was like Mardi Gras and the Super Bowl all rolled into one. The sense of pride in the city as it hosted the big game was higher than it had been in recent memory, maybe ever.

The collective noise of the crowd was audible for blocks and increased in intensity with each basket, turnover, and foul. The game was more than living up to the hype. The frequent lead changes and outstanding performances by players on both teams made it both a thrilling and maddening situation for Syracuse fans. As the game progressed, the fever pitch of the crowd rose. Finally, as it looked like the game was coming down to the last shot with the score tied, the fans huddled together and became quiet. They clung to each other as Duke brought the ball up the court and prepared to take the last shot against the formidable Syracuse zone defense. Just as the Duke point-guard launched a three point shot toward the basket, a bright flash of light was visible two miles away in the direction of the University. It was visible for many miles around and the low rumble that occurred afterward was felt and heard throughout the city. The quiet of the crowd was replaced by collective screams and wails of disbelief.

What had happened on the hill?

The crowd that had been mesmerized by the game was now completely silent staring at the flash of light followed by a small mushroom cloud visible in the distance. Lights went out on the hill, including the famed Crouse Irving clock tower. Lights began to come back on as emergency generators kicked in revealing a cloud of smoke and debris hanging over the area.  Fans in Armory Square clung to each other in horror as the audible sound of sirens began to head in the direction of the Dome. Many covered their faces in horror as the sound of cheering turned to silence and then to muted sobs.

What had happened on the hill?


If you enjoyed this chapter, please read the rest of the book and tell me what you think. Again, you can get your copy today by clicking here.

As always, your comments and feedback are welcome.

About Don Massenzio:

Don Massenzio was born in Syracuse, New York, to first generation Italian-American parents. He is an avid reader. Some of his favorite authors include Harlan Coben, David Morrell, Stephen King, and Hugh Howey. His favorite book of all time is ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.

Don began writing as a way to combat the long hours of travel and numerous hotel stays that are part of the ‘glamorous’ world of corporate travel. He uses writing as a therapeutic outlet. He recently took the jump to sharing his work with others.

His first published long work is the novel, Frankly Speaking. It is the first of a series of books focused on the character, Frank Rozzani, a Florida private detective. The book is a throwback to the days of pulp detective novels with a tip of the hat to Jim Rockford from 70’s television and The Rockford Files.

The second Frank Rozzani detective novel, Let Me Be Frank is now available. His third book in the Frank Rozzani series was released on April 24th, 2015 and is available on Amazon.com in both Kindle and Paperback formats.

He has also published a well-received short story collection that is available on Amazon.com.

Find out more about Don at his web site:

www.donmassenzio.com

Visualizing Your Writing – A Different Way to Analyze What You’ve Written

This week’s blog is a little bit different. I have been posting blogs that focus on mechanical aspects of writing and on other aspects of the independent publishing industry. This week, I wanted to let you in on one of the more abstract aspects of the tools that I use for my writing.

I have always been more of a visual person than someone who learns from the written word. Strange for a writer, but it makes sense to me. When I write, I see the worlds of my characters in my mind. I also see and hear my characters as I write dialog for them. Now, before you think I’m crazy, it’s a technique that works for me and there are times when paragraphs and even chapters appear that I have written on some kind of autopilot. Of course, there are other times when the words are more forced because I want to get a certain amount done. Those sections are never as good and are frequently reworked.

In past blogs, I have introduced you to the mind map and the character map. These are tools that I rely upon heavily.

Here is a quick review just in case you missed those blogs.

Mind Map

A mind map is a technique where you have a central idea (such as a book) and have several ideas connected to it (chapters). Once you have these connected ideas in place, you can start to refine them and move them around to establish their order. Here is a mind map that I did for my book, Let Me Be Frank – Frank Rozzani Detective Series Book 2:

Mind Map - Frank 2

As you can see, when I established the book, I didn’t have a title yet, but the chapters ended up staying fairly true to the final book. Of course, like with any of these techniques, you can deviate at any time if it makes sense to do so based on where your characters are headed or how they develop.

Character Map

I also introduced the concept of the character map. This graphical representation of the relationship among the main characters helps to establish who is related to whom and how they interact. It is very similar to a family tree.  An example, also from Let Me Be Frank, is shown below:

character map

This image shows the relationships within the Indigeaux family. The character with a red “X” is a murder victim. It also shows the Doucet and Monreaux families and how some of the key characters are related. This is useful when I sometimes forget names or relationships when the dialog or narrative is flying into the story.

Now that I’ve recapped these two techniques, I want to introduce a new one that I’ve just started using. It is the “Word Cloud” technique. Word clouds are becoming very popular as a way to show survey and poll results. You’ve probably seen them on TV or on the Internet.

The example shown below is a word cloud generated by the website http://www.tagul.com. This site has a very easy to use word cloud generator that is highly configurable. The example shown comes from a poll where people in California were asked to supply the first word they thought of when describing their state:

California-State

In a word cloud, the largest word in terms of font size is the one that was mentioned most frequently. Tagul actually gives you a count of how many times each word was mentioned. Not surprisingly, the number one word in this word cloud was California. You can see by quick review what the most popular words were in the survey. This particular word cloud has a couple of nice features. First, it is shaped like the state of California. Tagul and other services let you pick the shape of your cloud. Also, the color of the words helps some of the words stand out and can be tied to a legend.

So, you might be wondering, what does this tool, mostly used for surveys, have to do with writing. I asked myself the same question and then I thought I would try some experimentation. I started with a short story.

One of my short stories, Play it again Des, is about a man named Desmond Brown who runs away to New Orleans as a young piano player looking to make the big time. He has some talent, but is not content to pay his dues and put in the time to build up his talent. He meets a strange man, and talented trumpet player, named Lou who offers him what he wants instantly, but with a price.

I took the entire story and used the cut and paste option in Tagul to see what the results would be. I customized the colors a bit and removed words like “the”, “a”, “and”, etc. The results are shown below:

Des CloudAs you can see, the word cloud almost tells the story in the synopsis. The words in red are the ones that were repeated over 50 times. Desmond and Hobo are two of the main characters in the story. They both “play” the piano. Words in dark blue were mentioned between 30 and 49 times. Piano jumps out. Lou, the man who gives Desmond his instant dream, emerges. It’s interesting that the word “Want” pops out as well. This story is all about “Wants”, but the word “Need” is there also. What was interesting to me is that I saw my story emerge from this graphic.

Another useful purpose of this took is to identify words that you over-use during your writing. If words like “literally” or “exactly” pop up more than a few times in each chapter, you might have a problem with repetitiveness.

I decided to see if this technique works on chapters of longer works. You remember my Mind Map that I mentioned earlier? I wanted to see how the mind map boxes matched up with the chapters. Here is an example from Let Me Be Frank.

Frank 2 - Chapter 2This word cloud is from Chapter 2 where Frank Rozzani, the main character, finds out about the case from a police detective, Anita, and enlists the help of his friend Jonesy. You can see that the words “Frank”, “Case”, “Anita” and “Jonesy” are pretty prominent. Also, a popular character from the book, Frank’s dog Lucy, is strongly represented. Again, for a visual person like myself, this word cloud tells me a story and also tells me that my chapter is emphasizing the words that I want to convey in this section of the book.

I encourage you to try this with your work. The help will be twofold. It will help you eliminate words that might be redundant in your writing. It will also help you to see of your story is conveying the right message in a visual sense.

As always, I welcome your opinions and comments.

About Don Massenzio

Don Massenzio was born in Syracuse, New York, to first generation Italian American parents. He is an avid reader. Some of his favorite authors include Harlan Coben, David Morrell, Stephen King, and Hugh Howey. His favorite book of all time is ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.

Don began writing as a way to combat the long hours of travel and numerous hotel stays that are part of the ‘glamorous’ world of corporate travel. He uses writing as a therapeutic outlet. He recently took the jump to sharing his work with others.

His first published long work is the novel, Frankly Speaking. It is the first of a series of books focused on the character, Frank Rozzani, a Florida private detective. The book is a throwback to the days of pulp detective novels with a tip of the hat to Jim Rockford from 70’s television and The Rockford Files.

The second Frank Rozzani detective novel, Let Me Be Frank is now available. His third book in the Frank Rozzani series, Frank Incensed, will be coming out on April 24, 2015 and is available for pre-order.

He has also published a well-received short story collection that is available on Amazon.com.

Find out more about Don at his web site:

www.donmassenzio.com

The Importance of an Editor and Beta Readers for Independent Authors

My blog this week focuses on the importance of using an editor and enlisting beta readers if you are an independent author.

Let’s start by comparing/contrasting independent and traditional publishing. In traditional publishing, an author receives an advance (if he or she is lucky). This advance is usually a fairly small amount. The author may then receive royalties for books sold after a certain number. The royalties can vary from pennies per book to dollars if you are a bestselling author. In exchange for allowing the traditional publisher to publish your work, you receive editing, formatting, publicity, and marketing services. The quality and effectiveness of these services can vary depending on how much the publishing company believes it can make from your book. In the end, very few published authors make a living wage from traditionally published books.

Independent authors know that their world is a different one. All of the services mentioned for traditional publishers are either do-it-yourself or individually purchased from the many service providers out there. Future blogs will talk about which of these services make sense for independent authors, but I want to focus on the two that I believe are the most important and what you should look for in each.

The first, and perhaps most important, service that an independent author should look for is editing. What is editing with respect to a book? There is no simple answer to this. I suppose that editing, in its purest form, is checking your work for punctuation, spelling, usage, and grammar errors. These things are important. You may think, as an author, that you are an expert on these things. You may very well be very proficient in these areas, but over the course of a 70,000 word manuscript consisting of your own work, you are going to miss something. Having a fresh set of eyes with some expertise can help save you embarrassing typos and spelling mistakes.

I am very fortunate. My editor is a dear friend, but not the type of friend that will tell me something is good when it is not. I mentioned before that, in my opinion, editing services can vary. The qualities that set my editor apart is that she is an avid reader and has writing ability of her own. She spots weak story elements and plot inconsistencies and is excellent at documenting them.

If you are using a friend, or anyone, as an editor, you must be able to take criticism and be willing to implement the suggested changes. It is rare that I disregard or disagree with the changes my editor suggests. Your mindset should be that your editor is the first reader of a particular work. If they have issues with elements of your work, this will be multiplied exponentially once you publish your work if you do not change them. You need to trust your editor and develop a working chemistry with him or her to be effective in producing quality work.

Finding an editor can be a challenge. There are, however, various services out there such as eLance and Fiverr. I have provided services on eLance and they do have a decent screening process where you can vet potential editors. I have used services on Fiverr, most notably for my cover art and trailers. Services on Fiverr are inexpensive, but you have to carefully vet your service provider or you might get what you pay for. Of course, I am always willing to share my editor. She is very good at what she does and has bandwidth to take on other clients.

The second focus of this blog is the use of beta readers. Beta readers are early previewers of your book that read through it after the editing process is complete. They look for story element inconsistencies and other elements of your book from the perspective as a fan and a reader. It’s a good idea to pick a couple of readers that are big fans of your writing, but are not afraid to give suggestions.  This process is like having a focus group or preview audience for your product that gives their opinion to you on a small scale before you release it to the relentless general public. Beta readers will spot things in your book that you and your editor missed such as inconsistencies in character traits, likability of your characters, and other intangibles. This is especially importance if your characters span more than one book in a series. You don’t want to publish a book in a series that has continuity issues with previous books.

One famous example of this, and he actually points this out in the forward of his second book of the series, is from David Morrell’s Rambo series. In the first Rambo book, John Rambo dies. When the book was made into the Sylvester Stallone movie, the studio had the dollar signs associated with sequels in their eyes. Since zombies weren’t in fashion back then, Rambo’s fate had to be changed in the movie. The interesting thing is that Morrell had the novelization rights for the sequel and had to right the second book in the series despite having killed off his main character in the first book. In his forward, he tells this story and basically says that he ignored Rambo’s death in the first book and just wrote the sequel. Of course, Stallone went on to make other sequels and Rambo eventually turned into a parody of the original character.

You might ask why, as an independent author, I am focusing on editors and beta readers. To answer that question, download some works from your fellow authors and look at the quality. There are some books of excellent quality in the world of independent publishing. And then there are some that are…not so much. Independent authors have a stigma, mostly perpetuated by traditional publishing, that the quality is lacking in their work. Those authors, such as Hugh Howey, that have survived and thrived in independent publishing have debunked this perception. In my work, I am trying to publish work of high-quality as well. I personally don’t believe this is possible without strong editing and beta readers.

I want to see independent publishing evolve into a force that overtakes traditional publishing. I don’t think that a group of corporate publishing wonks in an ivory tower in New York should decide what books should and should not be published. The recording industry has gone in the independent direction, and movies and television are following. Let’s work together as authors to make our quality stand up against the traditionally published work. Editing and the use of beta readers are a big step in that direction. If you use them wisely, you will recoup and exceed every dollar that you invest in your writing.

If you have questions about these topics or you want to be put in touch with my editor, please let me know at don@donmassenzio.com

Thanks again for making this blog a success. The viewership increases each week and I am happy to keep helping my fellow authors by publishing it.

About Don Massenzio

Don Massenzio was born in Syracuse, New York, to first generation Italian American parents. He is an avid reader. Some of his favorite authors include Harlan Coben, David Morrell, Stephen King, and Hugh Howey. His favorite book of all time is ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.

Don began writing as a way to combat the long hours of travel and numerous hotel stays that are part of the ‘glamorous’ world of corporate travel. He uses writing as a therapeutic outlet. He recently took the jump to sharing his work with others.

His first published long work is the novel, Frankly Speaking. It is the first of what will be a series of books focused on the character, Frank Rozzani, a Florida private detective. The book is a throwback to the days of pulp detective novels with a tip of the hat to Jim Rockford from 70’s television and The Rockford Files.

The second Frank Rozzani detective novel, Let Me Be Frank is now available.

Prior to finishing his books, his published work was comprised of short stories that will be merged into a collection in the near future.

Find out more about Don at his web site:

www.donmassenzio.com

Keeping Track of Your Characters – Who is Who and What Have They Done?

This week’s blog is another opportunity for me to share a technique that works very well for me during my writing process.  Throughout my personal and professional life, I have been horrible remembering names. I can remember phone numbers, addresses, and useless facts that make me desirable on any trivia team. The writing process has revealed my one memory flaw to be a challenge for me as well when it comes to remembering character names, physical descriptions, life events, and ages.

When I hand wrote my first novel in a series of notebooks, I found myself having to write character names and characteristics in the back of one of the notebooks so that I could flip back and forth whenever I needed to figure out who did what and where they came from.

When I switched to using Scrivener along with my laptop, desktop, and tablet (depending on where I was doing my writing), I tried to come up with a better way to organize my characters and their back story. Let me first say that I don’t like to plot out every detail of my characters’ back stories. I would rather have details revealed to me as they occur or are needed during the story. That being said, failing to keep key details about your characters could come back to bite you. You’ll want to keep track of their marriages, children, illnesses, education, and other things that might end up feed plot elements down the road.

So, how do I do this? I actually have two techniques that have helped me keep things straight. The first is a picture. I create charts, or what I call ‘character maps‘ that are like mini organizational charts for my characters showing who they are and how they relate to each other.

I’ve included one of these charts that I used for my second book as the cover image for this blog. The chart shows groups within some of the key families within the book and how the members relate to each other. In the view of the chart that I included, there are members of three families shown. One of the characters happens to be the murder victim within the book and her designated box is x’ed out to show that she is dead.

I keep the charts related to my current project along with the mind map (see last week’s blog) on a bulletin board near my desk at home. I also have an electronic version of each that I can bring up as needed when I’m writing on my computer while traveling.

Another tool that I use if I need more information on my characters is a matrix showing deeper details about the characters.  I use a row for each character and the columns are used for such details as the character name, what books they’ve appeared in, their physical appearance, etc.

Shown below is an example of the matrix for some of my characters in my Frank Rozzani detective series books:

Character Table

This matrix gives me a quick view of who the characters are, when they first appeared in my work, what their personality traits are, and what significant events shaped who they are. It has been extremely helpful to me and helps me to overcome my memory gaps. It also helps to cut down on inaccuracies that can plague authors when they are writing a series of books featuring the same characters . It may seem like a lot of work, but it can be helpful and actually save time in the long run.

I have seen other suggestions around organizing characters. There are those that espouse writing complete and detailed biographies for your characters. This may work for some authors. I have always been a person that prefers to work smarter and not harder. The information in the character map and the character matrix that I have shared have been enough for me to provide continuity to my work without locking me in to biographical details that might change the characters’ evolution.

I hope that this has been helpful to you as authors.  I believe that as an independent author, with some measure of success, sharing tips with you is the right thing to do. There are plenty of readers out there and if these tips help you to create a better product so that you can entice readers to your work, then I welcome you to use them.

I also wanted to thank those of you that have been reading my blog. Last week, I doubled my best  ‘viewership’ of this blog. As I continue to drum up ideas for a weekly blog, your suggestions are welcome. If there are questions that you have about writing or suggestions for some aspect of writing for which you’d like to see a blog, please let me know and I’ll be happy to entertain them.

About Don Massenzio

Don Massenzio was born in Syracuse, New York, to first generation Italian American parents. He is an avid reader. Some of his favorite authors include Harlan Coben, David Morrell, Stephen King, and Hugh Howey. His favorite book of all time is ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.

Don began writing as a way to combat the long hours of travel and numerous hotel stays that are part of the ‘glamorous’ world of corporate travel. He uses writing as a therapeutic outlet. He recently took the jump to sharing his work with others.

His first published long work is the novel, Frankly Speaking. It is the first of what will be a series of books focused on the character, Frank Rozzani, a Florida private detective. The book is a throwback to the days of pulp detective novels with a tip of the hat to Jim Rockford from 70’s television and The Rockford Files.

The second Frank Rozzani detective novel, Let Me Be Frank is now available.

Prior to finishing his books, his published work was comprised of short stories that will be merged into a collection in the near future.

Find out more about Don at his web site:

www.donmassenzio.com