Writing

In my line of work I'm a proficient programmer. One problem of writing a large program is making it readable even when the code is very long. It's a problem called scalability.

I find some similarities between writing a novel and writing a program. Especially when it comes to internal consistence. If you write something big, you WILL forget things that you have written before. You can't keep everything in mind all of the times. And nothing take the reader out of the immersion like when they notice that the rules of the universe have changed halfway through the story.

At least that's how it is for me. I can watch even the wackiest movie and like it, as long as the movie is consistent. But a plot hole totally break the immersion for me and make me hate the movie.

The way programming get around it is to use conventions and rules. Good programmers learn to write the same thing always the same way, including things like indentations and constructs.

An example would be for and while in C/C++. They both are used to make loops, and all loops can be written using either one of them. But C programmers are taught to use for if the end of the loop is known prior entering it, and use while if you don't know when the loop will end prior entering it. This way if you see at a glance the type of loop without reading all of the code.

Another things are colors. A good IDE (An editor for code) will give different colors to different keywords, so that a programmer can tell at a glance what is happening.

As I said, I find similarities between large programs and novels, so I decided to use rules and colors in writing my novel. It help the reader keep up with the story, and help me in always keeping the story consistent with the rules of the universe.

By no mean I consider this to be the only, or even the right way to write. It's MY way to write. Writing is a creative task, and like with coding there might be optimal and suboptimal ways to do things, but as long as it works, there are no wrong ways. This is my personal opinion on the subject, and is how I do things right now. This is my first novel, and I learn as I go. Feedbacks are always appreciated.

Colors and Dialogues

When I read works from other authors, sometime I come across conversations between multiple characters. The problem is that in those conversations is really hard to understand who is saying what. My solution is to put the source of the dialogue at the end of the phrase. I consistently use the same special characters to identify the various type of dialogues and I use colors to identify the gender of the source.

Types of dialogues:

"Simple Dialogue" (Source)

[Thought] (Source)

*Sound or Action* (Source)

"Scream" (Source)

[Important thought] (Source)

*Great noise or important action* (Source)

""Many people talking"" (Source)

[[Many people thinking]] (Source)

**Large noise or action from many people** (Source)

Gender of the source:

Neutral

Male

Female

Baby, Old, Mixed or Undefined

POV Switch:

POV1

--------------------------------

POV2

Spreadsheets

I have spreadsheet with info about characters, their personalities, age, etc... Spreadsheets with the timeline of the world at different scales, description of the world, rules of the world, etc... This way when I go forward in the story, I don't have to remember the details, I just have to look it up. This helps me ensure internal consistency.

Plot, Snippets, Chapters and Sections

There are several steps when I write a chapter.

First is the plot. I have a large scale plot that describes what's going on and what's going to happen.

Then each chapter has a bullet point plot that describe what story thread are advanced and how. This is the bullet point plot for chapter 10.

Liara's Growth

>First day of school

Church Storyline

>Council report

Cataclysm Storyline

>Describe Forbidden City

>Describe Dragon Plaza

>Call upon the dragon

After this I write many small pieces of the story that I call snippets, a term I borrowed from programming. I write many of them, usually out of order. Right now I have dozens of snippets. Like describing a lesson at school, magic battles, magic lessons, stories from ancient times, court life in kingdoms I have yet to introduce, etc...

Then I pick snippets that I like that push the storyline forward the right way, and put them inside the chapter. Usually I decide for an overall theme for a chapter and stick with that.

The result is the chapters you see. A large title with several smaller chapters in it I call sections. Each section advance a particular storyline.

The POV of chapter/sections is a tricky thing to handle. The story need to be told from the right POV to flow well. Most section are told from a single POV, sometimes I switch POV inside a section.

Where and When

Since I have spreadsheets, it comes easy for me to write where and when each snippet take place. If I as author knows this, it's much harder to mess up consistency. A common consistency error is having a character in multiple places at the same time. Another is messing up the time needed to travel, like a carriage arriving after an old men travelling by foot alone in the woods.

Feedbacks

A problem novels have in common with programs happen when a developer is closed in his own little world, and develop features that he thinks important. But aren't. Meanwhile the developer might ignore a feature that the user actually want. This happens all the time, and in programming is solved by alpha ad beta testing.

Example:

A developer make a game thinking that users want big gun models. Too bad users don't care about that, and instead want a customizable crosshair. Too bad the developer had no idea that was the case. The users are unhappy and the developer 'wasted' his time.

If you like this story, and think I am doing things wrong, let me know with reviews or comments. I read them. I write the way I think is right. Sometimes there may be things I do wrong, and I have no idea are actually wrong without feedback from you, the readers.