Writing Notes: Style Sheet
Style Sheet - helps you keep track of what’s going on in your novel.
Who’s who, what’s where, and when X, Y and Z happens.
Record your preferences for the micro elements of your book ... things like spelling, punctuation, the rules about the way your fictional world works, and how you treat the various elements of the text (from paragraphs and headings to narrative, speech and thoughts).
Parts of a Style Sheet
You can include anything you want but a solid, usable style sheet that'll really help you keep an eye on what's going on will include at least the following:
character names, histories and traits
how you’re going to handle point of view
hyphenation and capitalization
key geographical locations
building names and layouts
language choice
punctuation style
spelling preference
tense choice
timeline information
treatment of dialogue and thoughts
world-building rules
Different Style Sheets
Some writers like to have everything in one place; others prefer to have several documents, each of which records different types of decisions, and toggle from one to another.
It’s your choice – whatever helps you work most productively.
So, for example, you might create different sheets for the following:
the main character names and features, and the organizational, family or time-frame groupings they belong to
a record of key events in the timeline (particularly useful if your novel covers multiple discrete time frames)
geography: environments and buildings (especially important measurements, such as distances, heights, number of storeys, that if nonsensical could impair clarity)
spelling and formatting preferences
Source ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References
