Writing question for youuu. Iâm so curious what your experience is with writing multiple long serials at a time.
How to you keep everything straight in your head and remember the direction of the plot/character arcs for each story.
Sometimes when Iâm writing even a small fic, i find I can get lost in my own plot and wonder if what the character is doing makes sense compared to how I was writing them a month ago etc. idk if that makes any sense??
Just wondering if you have a go to system for remembering all your different fics and recalling what you wrote like a year ago to keep characters and plot feeling consistent.
(I really appreciate all the time and effort your put into all your asks. You are a lovely human being for offering so much of your expertise and experience to us!!)
I definitely think having somewhere to organise some of your thoughts/ideas for the story can help. I used to just use Word, and now I use Obsidian to worldbuild and keep a lot of details together.
The reality though is actually a lot of details are just in the story, and the best way to refamiliarise myself with those is to reread some (or many) of the earlier chapters. I can't write "cold" where I haven't reread at least some of the previous chapters to get back into the character mindsets etc.
i find I can get lost in my own plot and wonder if what the character is doing makes sense compared to how I was writing them a month ago etc. idk if that makes any sense??
It does, and I think it bears asking the question: Are you writing the character like yourself? Or are you writing them to be their own person? Because it's easier to fall back into a character's mindset if they are their own person - for example, if you're more mature than you were a month ago, that doesn't necessarily mean your character has any reason to be, or if you learned something about say, love or anger, that doesn't mean your character has learned those things.
Additionally, I think...we are going to change as people. Our stories will change and grow with us. When we get a novel from an author, it's sometimes easy to imagine they were the same person throughout writing it, but that's rarely the case. Your situation and concerns are universal to writing, anon, in that sense. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski was written over 10 years and in that period of time he went through a lot of changes, evolutions, emotional states, and growth. But the characters within his story still feel like themselves. And did they benefit from the author changing and growing over time? Very likely! Learning more about life, ourselves, and writing, makes us a better author.
And don't forget, anon, editing exists! If you go back to the beginning of a story one day and think 'shit I really don't love this anymore / I'd do things differently now' you can just change it. You can actually do that as many times as you want! (But probably stop at some point, editing forever isn't really the point for most people).
In terms of character continuity, it takes time and practice to really get focused on their motivations and what's changing for them over time. If you've forgotten their motivations, and can't work it out from the story or the character, then that's a story/characterisation problem you can work on and grow more skills in. That's an opportunity for improvement, and it will only make you stronger to notice those times and then think 'okay I need to write down the motivations and/or make them a lot more obvious in the story.' Rereading should always tell you what the character is going to do next and/or what they're heading towards, if it doesn't, then sitting with your story and working out what you want it to say and what you want the character to grow towards will lock you back into place.
If you come back to a story you haven't written in a while and your first thought is 'I have no memory of this place' then reading it should solve that for you. That's the sign of a pretty solid story! And when it doesn't, that lets you know what you can keep working on. And as authors, we can always be working on something. :D
(I just want to add I mean rereading where you kind of read like a reader, and not at all like an editor. It's not about fixing mistakes, it's about getting the "vibe" of the story, how it feels, imagining what you'd want to happen next as a reader, and/or what you hope would happen next if this was a book/serial you were reading that suited your tastes (which ideally it is, if you're writing it!) It shouldn't take long to do at all, because it's not about fixing anything, it's about re-immersing yourself into the world, and creating something you love out of it. Instead of thinking 'what should happen next' - thinking more along the lines of 'what do I need from this story' or 'what would I love to happen next' (which is going to be different depending on whether you write horror / thriller / romance / psychological etc.) is a lot more freeing. Because...you can just do that, it's allowed!
But yeah rereading =/= reading with editing brain. Pretend you're rereading your favourite WIP, and then when you get to the part where you need to keep writing, you'll often have an idea of where you most want to go next for your character/s, and an idea of what they need to get to where they need to get to. And if you don't, that's where brainstorming different ideas and picking what you like most / what works most can help!
Just wondering if you have a go to system for remembering all your different fics and recalling what you wrote like a year ago to keep characters and plot feeling consistent.
My go-to system is truly rereading. It's not even looking at my worldbuilding notes (something I should do more and forget to do). The story tells me nearly everything I need to know. It tells me about the characters, the foreshadowing, the plot points, and what my characters want and don't want. In fact before finishing each story, usually about 10-20 chapters before the end, I do a massive reread and take note of all the giant plot lines (and some of the smaller ones, of which I can guarantee you anon, I have forgotten some of), and start to weave them back in again. Up until that point, usually reading the previous 1-3 chapters is all I need to keep writing. I don't have a go-to page of notes, because I don't write down plot points and I don't plot my story. I trust that everything I need is in the story.
My worldbuilding notes are frequently for what I consider "minor details" that I might not have put in yet, or that might be hard to find - eye / hair colour, visible/visual characteristics, the names of family members and family relationships, pheromone scents in omegaverse, ages, etc.
Not everyone is the same though. Some folks would never forget the physical characteristics of their characters, but might not remember all of their character's motivations (something most people should at least work out before they start writing, even if the motivations change over time, particularly in serials where things can change and multiple arcs are normal), and in those cases, writing down notes somewhere can help. That's the stuff I don't need to write down anywhere, but then I need to write down eye and hair colour. Meanwhile someone else might be like 'well eye and hair colour is easy, but what the fuck did this guy want again?' What you forget most is the stuff you should be writing down most, somewhere you can find it again when you need it.
Try writing down different types of notes and seeing what's most helpful to you! It might be setting notes. Or emotional notes. Or motivations. Or goals. :D There's no reason you can't try a bunch of different methods, eventually you'll notice what you're referencing the most.
You are a lovely human being for offering so much of your expertise and experience to us!!
My expertise/experience suits my style of writing, but it doesn't suit everyone's! So it's important to focus on the things that will help you most and ignore the rest, because the one universal constant in writing advice is that advice does not apply universally to all writers and styles of writing :D
If you feel that character motivation is the thing you struggle with, then that's the place you make notes to give yourself extra support. If I find that easy, that doesn't mean you have to find that easy. And if I find something else hard, that doesn't mean you have to! We all have our different strengths and weaknesses in writing after all.
Rereading might be more helpful than you think though!
