Joined: 29 Nov 2004
Posts: 183
Location: Northern UK
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How do you keep a long fanfic with a complex plot organised, and avoid internal screw ups?
The answer is your "concordance".
Essentially, a concordance is a series of notes, timelines, details about characters that you know, but might never tell the reader. It is notes about certain plot elements that you will go back to, so that you can remember to pick an apparently dropped magical rose, in chapter 34 and have it return in chapter 45. It is your plot guide - a skeleton version of what you want to write.
Timelines
If your story is longer in time frame than a few weeks, you will need a timeline, in order to avoid pitfalls. How detailed it is to be is up to you, but I like my details precise. I've written two major sized stories, which span several years. Every event in those stories is precisely dated in real time, and sometimes I have the timing down to the hour of the day they occurred in, too.
The reasons for such an anally retentive timeline is my need to be fire proof. The first one I did was a conjectured backstory for Snape and therefore it had to fit in with canon. I wrote the story, and then went back and checked my timeline, against canon, and the Harry Potter Lexicon (you should bookmark that site!) - I was not going to have anyone tell me that what I had written could not be possible. There was another good reason for getting a well worked out timeline, which was that I wanted to write a very dramatic scene (melodramatic, my critics would say) where Snape found Lily dead at Godric's Hollow and cracked up and I did not believe I could fit it into the timeframe around the Potters' deaths, and Dumbledore turning up with Harry at the Dursleys. Careful canon study and a look at the Lexicon proved I had a window of about a half an hour. I've still got that near minute by minute analysis of 31 October 1981 somewhere.
Without a timeline (and I started writing my present WIP without one) you may find that you are contradicting yourself - and the more detail you write, the more likely that is. I had Draco Malfoy age three years between a chapter, before I went back and straightened this out. As a result, I now have dates and year of birth for every single character, canon and original. Snape was born on January 29 1960, since you ask... There's a reason for that, by the way, and it is not astrology.
Having a clear timeline will also prevent a character being in two places at once, or having embarrassing event clashes. And so on. I find spreadsheets can be your friend here.
Details
Descriptions of characters - even if I tend to be minimalist in describing physical characteristics. Over description, especially of females tends to read like bad Mary Sueage.
Sketches of places, photographs - I have photographs of all non-Rowling locations, so that I can see them as I write (though the prototype of my fictional farmhouse is actually in Wiltshire).
Sketchmaps - drawn (badly) by me, so I can see where everyone is going.
Ordnance survey maps of parts of Northern England, which are relevent.
Notes about things. Objects like a magic shackle, ingredients for potions I made up, and so on.
Stick drawings of complex scenes so I can "see" the action I am describing.
Story Outline
A bare bones version of what is going to happen. A map of the story, if you like.
You should ideally prepare stuff like this early on. It's much easier to have this before you write, than try and fix stuff if you have already written. I screwed up a change of clothes and it took ages to fix, in the end I had to read with a notepad and note each change over, so that the beginning and end products were in harmony. No one noticed - but I did, and that bugged me. I apply logic when reading (my daugher never misses a continuity screw up in films she watches - never) and like to feel I'm reading something tight.
Tolkien claimed that there was only one mentioned "thing" in the Lord of the Rings (book) that he could not provide a background explanation for. It was a comment of Aragorn's about Gandalf in Moria: "He is as sure of finding his way as the cats of Queen Beruthiel". He later wrote an explanation and backstory for the cats. I like that. I'm not suggesting we go that far, but Tolkien's attention to detail is wonderful.
And generally, a nifty concordance will not only make your story have a good internal logic, but will help you get into the zone - where your own ficverse has a kind of reality.
So get chartin'!  None of this is wasted, I might set an original story in these parts of England one day, so I have my research ready. |
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