Word-Whores: Series Bible

Friday, September 11, 2015

Remembering and Keeping Track of the Crazy

Former SQL Database Administrator and Developer here. So you'd imagine that I have a bullet-proof structured system for data input and retrieval. Indexed. Primary keys. I never lose anything.

HA HA No.

Somehow, there's a stigma attached to bring techie solutions into creative endeavors. Maybe because databases are their own rabbit hole that can and will suck your writing time right out of you. However. There are a few useful lessons that came from the database trenches. They do actually dictate how I maintain series data.

1. Never build a database when a flat file will do - this has nothing to do with how much data you have to store and everything to do with how you access that data. Spreadsheets and most text files are searchable, so unless you need to connect data across files or across series, you aren't likely to need the kind of storage and search functionality a database offers. DISCLOSURE: My series bibles are in Excel.

2. One copy is no copy - unless you're saving your files to a striped, mirrored hard drive array, you are one truly crappy day away from having no books, no series bibles, and no hope of escaping a nervous breakdown. Case in point: day before my very first phone call with the lovely lady who would become my editor, this guy decided to reformat my hard drive.

A rare photo of computer literate cat doing literate things at the computer keyboard.

Gods love modern technology, modern cloud storage solutions make it so you don't have to turn your garage into a refrigerated server farm in order to protect your work. I use Dropbox, but it could be any cloud based storage. These services offer version control as well as remote access to your data and a modicum of protection from catastrophic hardware (or feline) disaster. HOWEVER. In no way is this an adequate substitute for a solid backup plan. It can be a part of a backup and recovery plan, but a backup service that does automated, time-stamped snapshots of your hard drive reduces your chances of crying, face down, in a bottle of vodka. It isn't ideal, I admit. My back up plan isn't as robust as it should be. Because I work between two computers, they operate as backups of one another. It's great. Until the boat sinks. So this is a case of please don't do as I do. I aspire to having a better back up solution in place. Working on the details.

3. Structure your files - If you organize your file tree, half of your organizational work is done for you. I prefer to keep all of my writing related files under one home file folder. This is for ease of back up. I can designate one target file folder and know that all of the subfolders (which encompass every single WIP ever) will be backed up. It also makes it far easier to move vital data from one machine to another when the inevitable happens and you have to replace a machine. Having to hunt through every last file folder to make sure I have every story tidbit makes me cranky. Did it once. Learned my lesson. It's simple stuff. A typical WIP file structure will have couple of elements. I name the file folder whatever the working title is going to be. There's a history subfolder and business subfolder. If the WIP is a series, the file is named for the series. Each book within the series gets its own working title subfolder, then history and business (for each book). The Excel spreadsheet that holds the series bible goes into the file folder for the entire series, as do any other tidbits of data accumulated for the series.

This is all pretty basic stuff. The true issue is this: It doesn't matter how brilliant your organization is. If you don't consistently and methodically keep your data entry up to the minute, all the structures and naming conventions in the world will not help you. A series bible that is just a bunch of stuff dumping into a document but that's updated every second a new THING turns up in your series is vastly superior to the elegant database that only gets updated once in a great while - usually after you've forgotten half of what you'd meant to record.

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Linda's DragonCon Top Ten Random Eavedropping List

This is a 10% on-topic post, and a 90% off-topic post.

Here's your 10%:
I retroractively kept a series index after Fatal Circle because I needed to, and have updated the character list religiously ever since. I also created one after the fact and during rewrites for an unrelated large and as yet unpublished novel Ghelvok's Fire during re-writes to help with the world building.

My advice: do this as you go. Scrivener allows for it. USE IT.

DragonCon 2015 Westin

The 90%:
I am just returned from DragonCon and, as always, I compiled a list of the random snippets of things I heard as I wandered...things that make me laugh.

10.) **Every answer during our Cards Against Humanity game Monday night.

9.) I'm not going to go into all that detail with just my one thumb.

8.) Ok...so...you wanna just get the dwarves and go?

7.) What does a were-shark drive?

6.) I'll totally come and organize your apartment in NYC if you just write-in a part for me. Seriously, I can clean.

5.) You gotta read this so you know I'm not making it up.

4.) It's really overwhelming...what do you do as a lizard person inhabiting a Pangea-like Earth?

3.) You'll hear more euphemisms for the word penis than you've ever known.

2.) Oh, no, no. This part doesn't need batteries at all.

1.) To speak in the common tongue, there are a lot of ratchet-ass hoes at my school.

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Wrote a Series, Forgot the Details: Series Bibles

The fastest way to be crucified by your fans is to contradict the characters, the relationships, and the world you created. Maintaining a series bible is a common way for authors to keep their whosies and whatsits sorted.

Some truly motivated authors start with a blank journal then go all scrapbook queen on it. From 'zine clippings to fabric swatches, there is no detail uncatalogued. Hell, they even paste calendars, perfume samples, and recipes in there.

Opting for all the conveniences of tech, there are those who have turned Pintrest into their series bible. The uber visual site lends itself to using reference images to map their worlds and peeps, plus it allows the author(s) to share it with their fans.

Then there are those supremely analytical authors who create Access Databases with tables and queries (the other kind of query). The series as a constantly growing beast has every bit of minutiae recorded, tagged, and logged. Book, chapter, page number and paragraph.

Me? I'm a mid-effort sort of tracker. Since I outline my books, everything I need is in that primordial Word doc. One doc per book. Easy copy and paste from one book's outline to the next. Additions added as bullet points under the headings and sub-headings. Score one for Team Plotter.

Here's an example from my Spring 2016 release NIVURN:

Challenges of Environment:

£ Challenges: Terrain = The ground is frozen solid, permafrost. It is all ice and snow on the surface.

o Burrowing down to the magma layer is highly risky and hazardous. The permafrost is stable but unyielding cold. Below that is silt, shifting and unstable. The ground caves in with any type of digging.

o There are short willow trees and plants that grow horizontally in the thin “melt sheet.” These feed the herbavores.

o The coast of Nivurn is littered with thermokarsts – marshy islands amid the thawing permafrost caused by the tides of the Pogichan Sea. At high tide, the buildings are on silts and seem to be house-ships on the sea.

£ Challenges: Food = Vadrigyn eats rocks. In a frozen tundra, there simply aren’t any. She’ll have to harvest/steal them from others. It makes her highly predatory.

£ Challenges: Weather = She’s a fire-child; she doesn’t do cold and wet. It’s actually detrimental to her body. The longer she stays in Nivurn, the weaker she becomes.

£ Challenges: Shelter: Tents (migrant) or igloos/ice villages (stationary).