As a reader, and someone who made like... A 50 chapter fanfiction that never needs to be known exists or how to find it, (we all have a point in life where hormones make us do or say or write stupid things. Let's not drag it out) I have learned some things that I wish to bring to light in an effort to help make a better story in general for authors to write and readers to, well... Read. To that point, let's get started.

I'd like to say that, in a strange sense, writing a book needs to be meta. What I mean by that is, writing book starts by writing a book. I know, it sounds redundant, ridiculous, and frankly a bit stupid, but let me explain.

You see, a book is more than the plot, it's the characters, it's the world, it's personalities, and events, it's so so much effort, it's like building a Jenga tower, but the blocks are hand carved. Each time you make it higher using an old block shape, you need to keep it the same shape, refine it, make sure it matches or that the blocks around it are good enough to cause it to change shape. If you suddenly use a different block by accident because you mislabeled things in your head, suddenly the Jenga tower collapses in a weird space and you have to figure out why.

I know, an abstract concept for something relatively straightforward, bear with me I do this shit.

So, what I mean by write a book to write a book, first, you need a world, if you can write the details for the topographical locations, that's a good start, you make your areas, you give them descriptions, what you are making isn't a story, it's a self reference guide for your story. It's a device that let's you know where everything is. To put it into proper terms, you combined an atlas, with local tourist guides of each location, threw in a beastiary, and wrapped it up with every newspaper talking about current news of the area, and a crafting guide complete with a resource guide.

Basically you are making a primarily guide for a game in a sense.

Now, let's move forward as to WHY you want to make this behemoth that is the "dummies guide to my world", that's actually quite simple. It's so you can keep your own facts straight. Nothing can ruin a book like getting your own information wrong. A typo here or there, yeah that can be annoying, but if you read enough books you see it still happens. I dunno if nobody paid for someone to read it over and check for that, or there is no editor or what, but typos are small beans compared to the mountain in chapter 3 suddenly being moved across the plains of halandaise and somehow being replaced by an ocean, unless you have a magic space warping creature that fucks with the topography every now and then, but that's an idea I'm not sure even I would touch to be honest. A book survives on it's readers, readers are fans, and having concrete moments and places in your story can give rise to some amazing shit like fanart. Sometimes it means you might be able to use funds from the book to get a good artist who is a fan, to read through and draw and color some of these moments, immortalize that scene where Sir Alfandregal tripped over his pet shadow tiger's tail, and managed to stab his spear straight into the throat of the wimblejangle bubble breather. Who knows. You fucking describe a creature well enough and that shit flies off the page for you.

Getting back on topic, once you make this reference guide... Then you need to add the "Appendix Of Important People And Shit" and this is where you keep traits and short histories of the various major characters and shit you need. Sometimes you kill a character, does this mean it's not necessary to keep them there anymore? No, one, it's a great way to immortalize them, two, if you fucked up somewhere in how they might act and have to rewrite shit, you have a great way of not only keeping people separate, but also knowing what is more likely.

"Alfred McGillicuddy handigrab van woldershints- a naive young man with an unnatural level of attentiveness to his facial hair, said that sometimes he is sure his beard will warn him of dark times to come, many are unsure if he was merely eccentric, or if it was true as it seemed this unseen beard sense allowed him to somehow completely circumvent traps, whether they were physical, political, or emotional. On one occasion he halted our group before we created a hill stating, and I qoute, 'my beard tingles, much like the time before I learned of my uncle's death at the hands of roving Naga pirate gypsies for his outstanding debt with their floating brothels and his hoard of compromising lingerie for them. How I learned of this I shall not tell, know only that over this ridge lies a death of uncomfortable magnitude, and mayhap we would be best to wait for five minutes, to allow the area to air itself out.' what we learned five minutes later, for most of us anyway, as corporeal Sean haven't art maugerbrauden decided his words were nonsense, created the hill, while the corporeal was off losing his lunch after warning us to wait, we later found a large group of ****** that seemed to have expired whilst ********** in the middle of ******* and that somehow their matriarch horned albino ******** had somehow survived the attack of the ****** and it had something left not only a gruesome sight, but also an unbearable smell, which caused the young corporeal to be quite visibly scarred for life, and seemingly traumatized by the idea of cooked snake and baked beans. We are unsure just what he saw and smelled, but many of us see the haunted look on their faces when we near the snake filled black beans boglands and we thank Alfred for his words."

It's shit like this... In a less er.... Strange way, that can help keep your characters straight and true to themselves, and if you keep it updated it allows you to take their character as a whole and make the optimal choice to keep them doing what they do. Whether that means they somehow do a crazy man fighting cultists for his "wee little men" that they stole from his lawn, or maybe a Knight errant who is off to slay a dragon. Keeping tabs on your characters and possibly even having accurate tabs on the wider world you have made allows you to set in motions certain things from the shadows. On top of all of this, by keeping a good record of the world allows you to possibly even start multiple intertwining series within the same world that interact tangentially by pushing an action in a new direction, allowing you to do crazy things with multiple characters and stories and possibly even having a self works crossing. Like how toriko and one piece had a crossover. It would be like having two fire emblem games in the same world and era and you can swap party members for one chapter or another.

And depending on what genre you write, it can be easier or harder, for a standard fantasy, I highly suggest using a word document but printing it out, so you have a hard copy in the event of a worst case scenario, although paper and pen can be nice too and add a little bit of a home touch to it. On top of all of this, it could end up being like the hysrule historia Loz, a guide to help make sense of everything that happens in a story. Much like how Narnia had their giant book of everything and a timeline. That's just good note taking.

In the event of a litrpg, I highly suggest an Excel spreadsheet sheet on top of it, using Excel means you can make a stat page, and then have your work done for you in a lot of ways by using various equations that reference other stats and cells within the spread sheet. You need to do a little learning to get the hang of it, and sometimes certain things will have a value added ability that can toss in errant numbers, but if you do it right, and you keep it up to date chapter by chapter, you have the ability to keep stats accurate on a mathematical level. On top of that, you can take the original spreadsheet, and copy it to another page in the Excel document every chapter, that way if you absolutely HAVE to go back and fix something, you have period accurate data of the character to help you fix any errors you may have made. As opposed to wondering how many skill levels he increased between this or that chapter and what that means for the story and logic in built by your efforts.

For anything else... Well... The basic reference book is enough for most stories. Although if you wanted you could divide it up. If you have artistic talent I would highly suggest drawing many of the assets yourself. Maps, diagrams of buildings, town architecture, characters, whatever. If you can make a portfolio of all of this, it can be a side book for the series. Who knows. A little bit of lore can often be quite nice when the world is well made.

Remember, chaos is not your friend, and going back to fix these things when your mind is a tangle can sometimes be the death knell for a story. The first and final nail in the coffin when you have some seventeen active characters to keep track of.

So it may be a bit extra work, but it's often worth it as it makes a more complete and better story. :3