Planning and continuity

The book and everything about it

A novel comes with a second body of writing: the outline, the research, the notes on who has green eyes and who lost a brother in book one. These answers are about keeping that material where the manuscript is, and about holding a series together when it runs to several books.

Most of the trouble is drift, and it is quiet. A plan kept apart from the prose stops describing it after the first serious revision, and a character note written before chapter one is out of date by chapter twenty. Nobody notices until a reader does. The pages cover habits that slow the drift in Word, Google Docs, and plotting tools, and where it helps to keep plan and prose in the same file.

The answers

• How do I keep my outline and my draft in one place? — Outline view in Word, headings in Docs, and keeping Plottr in step.
• How do I keep research notes next to my manuscript? — Side-by-side windows in Word and Docs, and anchors for notes on a passage.
• How do I keep character details straight across a series? — Setting up a series bible and keeping it current.
• How do I keep a whole series in one place? — One file or several, and the Google Docs size limit.
• What goes in a character profile? — The fields a draft will check, and a copy to paste.
• What goes in a series bible? — Five sections, and the fields a second book needs.
• How do I reverse outline my draft? — Seven columns, and what to look for once they are full.