Something Trudi Canavan tweeted about trying to keep track of multiple narrative threads made me look at what I was doing. I’m in the middle of cleaning up The Outcast Chronicles trilogy. They are big FAT fantasy books with multiple narrative threads that weave in and out.
Because I work and have 6 kids, I’m constantly interrupted and the only way I can keep track of the story is to keep a document open on my second screen that covers the book chapter by chapter, scene by scene with a note of whose VP the scene is in and a sentence about each scene. To make sure I’m not neglecting a narrative thread I colour code the narratives.
This way I can see at a glance if a character is getting too much time on centre stage.
The thing is, when I devised this method I caught myself trying to colour code the narratives based on the personality of the characters, because colours have personalities don’t you know. (Synaesthesia, anyone?)
There, proof that writers are weird.
