Sketch

I kind of got things out of order a little with how the whole editing thing went. Namely, character sketches.

That was one of the suggestions from my editor, who told me I should spend time writing a background sketch for each and every character in my book.

Face-palm. I knew that and I totally bypassed it during my writing. It was another of those techniques I should have been able to pinpoint as one of the undefined problems with the whole thing. I kept track of certain tidbits, like eye color or references to things like hometown or relatives, but never developed a full backstory. If you read anything on how to write a novel, most every one will tell you to write out sketches for your characters. Just like world-building in SF or fantasy, it’s incredibly important.

I spent several days, probably a week or more, doing exactly that. Probably 95% of what I came up with was never used in the book, but it gave me a glimpse into more well-rounded characters. When I did one of the edits, I was able to use some of what I’d written in a character sketch to make a better character for the reader.

When I wrote the second book over the early part of last year, I did character sketches as I introduced new characters into the book. For my third book I’m doing it like I did with First: writing the entire draft, then doing the sketches before the initial edit, and using those to enhance the book. Not sure which method is better, but in each case I’ve done it where it seems to make sense. Even if I did ignore the conventional wisdom with the first book and had to be reminded.