Create a character board. This is not a ‘do or die’ thing, but some people (like me) find them helpful. Whenever I read a magazine, I tear out images of people who look interesting. Could be because of the mood of the picture, the personality of the model, or the clothes that are worn. I collect them in a big plastic file box. When I’m about to start working on a new novel, once I’ve figured out everyone’s name, I’ll sort through my magazine pages and find an image that fits. For me, character boards are a necessary part of the process. In fact, if I misrepresent a character, the story is just…off. Once I chose a picture for my heroine that was a little too gentle and passive. When notes came back from my editor I realized I hadn’t just miswritten my heroine, I had miscast her; I hadn’t gotten her personality right. So, I fired her and literally had to replace her image in order to recast her. This is the board for my current story. I keep it on the wall to the side of my computer. That way I can talk to my characters* as I write. (*occupational hazard)
Draw a map. If you have scenes set in a building or house, draw up a floor plan. Doesn’t have to be fancy, but it will keep you from making consistency errors that you’ll have to go back and fix later. Ditto for a street or section of town. Or an office. Or building.
I wrote a historical that was set in the Dark Ages in an era before there were fireplaces. There were places to kindle fires in homes, but they were built in the center of the room and there was a hole left in the ceiling for the smoke to escape. Every scene I set in that home had to be re-written, once I found that out, because I had blocked movement in my scenes around an assumed fireplace that was set into a wall – not one in the middle of a room.
Leave XXXs. How draft-y should a draft be? A lot of writers suggest writing your first draft as quickly as you can. Mostly, I agree with that. Decide, right now, that you won’t stop and figure out exactly what your heroine is wearing in each of her scenes or exactly what your hero eats for breakfast. I would like to point out here that most of my characters show up in the nude for my first drafts. Clothes are a luxury that my first drafts just can’t afford. Food, clothing, home decorating…all of these are things that are not worth stopping the momentum of the first draft in order to explore. Finer details of just about anything are also included in that category.
In my historicals I’ve been known to use the comments feature to leave myself notes like this: describe color of eyes/dress. Don’t use gems to compare or ocean/sea – heroine is peasant in land-locked France. (I’ll address this idea in more depth later in the month.)
Metaphors and similes make a story sing, but sometimes they require too much brainpower for the first draft. Ditto the right word. I’ll just leave XXX when I can’t think of exactly what I’m trying to say. In the second draft, I search on ‘XXX’ and fill them in as I come to them. (Sometimes I have over 500 XXXs to fill in. Sometimes I’ve had a thousand.) Oh – and minor characters that I haven’t had time to name yet? XXXpolicewoman or XXXlittle boy. See what I’m saying?