How I wrote a book - Part 4: How to keep control of your story

Everyone who has ever started to write a book knows that it is not as easy as it seems. And let us be honest: most of us cannot make a living from writing, so we struggle with a normal job, try to find some time for friends and family and then finally, squeeze in some time for writing. Of course, it is just a natural consequence that you will lose focus and every time that you find some time for writing you need to dive back into your story.

And then you get confused: Instead of just keeping the flow, you don’t remember which eye color your character had on page 20, when you have reached page 300 after months of not writing a single page. The consequence is that you lose a lot of time finding the right passage that allows you to continue with the story and then might lose your motivation to write on this day. It is annoying. The most important thing in writing is that you type words like a maniac but not being able to keep the flow will make it very hard.

I am really impressed of how a writer like G. R. Marting (Game of Thrones) manages to create such fantastic fascinating worlds with tons of characters and background stories. I am not able to keep all of this in my head. I am a confused artist!!! When I go to the supermarket not having a list I come out with tons of things that jumped into my eyes, but I most of the time I forget the things that I went there for. So you see that I need help. And I started to make lists. Lists of the appearance of my characters, lists of general characteristics, lists of landscape, towns, gods and so on and so on. Now I can just open my excel file, take a quick look and continue writing. It eases the process and helps me to focus on the important things and on plot development.

I encourage you to keep lists although you I know that sometimes for creative people it is hard to use something like a excel file ;) Still you should keep your lists in order. They will help you to write a consistent story.