Doug Goodman

Why do my posts have a religious theme this week?  It wasn't intentional...

A couple days ago I received a preliminary edit from my editor-in-chief (my wonderful wife).  She had some really good points about characterization and flow, which I have hopefully addressed and will continue to address as I work through another draft of the book, which is on version 4.0.  (I think versions 1 and 2 got me to the rough draft.)

To help me with keeping everything straight, I am developing a bible.  Not "The Bible" in a religious sense, but "a" bible, which is used by network writers (and presumably some novelists) to keep things straight. 

The kinds of things that go into the bible are characters, settings, modes of travel, special posessions, etc.  The bible can be a very useful tool as it keeps a writer from saying that the protagonist has a fear of heights in Chapter 1, and then having the protagonist easily scaling Mt. Rushmore in Chapter 28. 

I did not set out to do "world building" when I started writing this novel.  My goal was to write a kind of pioneer's space western, a Little House on the Praerie meets Firefly, but without the war.  By adding the science fiction elements, though, I ended up building some worlds.  So this bible is tailored towards what planets do people live on, what are the locals on those planets, and what kind of strange vehicles do they drive?  What kind of equipment is used and how does it work?  It is the sort of thing that I did not record while writing the novel -- and I would not encourage anyone to write that way -- it is much better to let the writing come out freely rather than stop it for bible-making.  But I think collecting the data will help me as I edit the book.  Already I have almost three pages of bible written.  Maybe now I need to add a few "thou shalt nots" into it...