Welcome to my Writing blog, I am currently posting about my writing style. You might wonder why I am since I am not a published author. The reason is we all have our own way of writing published or not, by reading or hearing how others write might help others to develop their own style or those who have been writing try something new or add to their writing style. I have also decided I am going to post this series as another page on the side so I don’t keep writing about, unless something else changes or is added to this style. Today’s post is on Project Folder, if you have not read the first two posts I suggest you read them, since what I am going to write about today is about halfway marker in the process of telling a story. Shall we continue:

Project Folder:
After sometime not necessary when I have the main characters name I will make a folder under my projects fold on my Mac. Yes, I have a Mac and they kick ass. Back on topic, when I first get enough ideas grouped together I start to figure out what kind of media would be best for this story to be told on. I am not a writer, writers write, I am a storyteller, yes writing is part of it, but in today’s world, you can tell a story in many different ways. On the big screen of a movie theater, or video game, novel, card game, board game, comic/manga/anime, etc. My idea for the story must fit into one of those medias.

Now the story could easily fit into several, what I am looking for is the media I will first tell it through. Echoes I knew from day one when I first started gathering ideas it was going to be a TV series. I have never questioned if it should be a novel instead or a video game. It will be a TV series, and maybe a movie however I doubt it will ever be a video game or novel. However, you never know.

Once I know the media I will give the fold with its name under the media fold it fits into. This means the ideas are strong enough that I believe I want to spend the time to develop into all I can. Echoes have one of these folders, but the next two areas have yet to be done that comes with the folder.

Project Bible:
This project bible is there to help me keep thing straight, it is extremely important to me that I do not contradict anything. So when I say you can only teleport this way, I cannot make a new way to teleport in the story lets say if it is novel of nine books, in book six. However, I can if I know a head of time I want more then one way for people to teleport, the person who thinks there is only one way will be established as only knowing one way, but the other way revealed in book six will be possible either in a similar way or a completely different way that might be far out of the area of the person who only knew one area.

My Marks of Eilira, the series takes place in two worlds Earth and Eilira. Eilira you can only travel through gate from Eilira to Earth and back. There are two ways, which I will not get into. In book Five, a way to travel across Eilira is introduced by two characters experimenting. It also works on earth by limited.

This however, is well established in the project bible. The new way to travel is discovered as the story comes to life. Same goes with how magic works, how armies of the past were structure. I put everything into this bible, currently the Project Bible for Marks of Eilira is 313 pages long, now you have to take in account that I also have detailed story outline that adds about a hundred and fifty pages to the bible or it would be in the middle two hundreds.

Story Map:
As I mentioned before I am an outliner, I need to know how the story is going to begin as well end. Once I have that I can start to fill in the blanks, as I start to map out the story. In Marks of Eilira, I wanted seven at start, but that lasted a whole two days as I thought too many people are doing series with seven books to match Harry Potter. So, I decided on eight books and it has been that way ever since. It has changed to nine while mapping on book five; it quickly went back to eight.

Once I have an idea of how long the story will be as in Marks of Eilira Eight books or in Echoes six seasons. Side note, I do not get to decide how many seasons there would be, it kind of impossible to get that many if no one watches is the show, or if it is a hit the network might want more then that. Anyway, if this show ever gets on TV and makes it to six the story will end at six, as well my involvement, I will not be involved in any project that exceeds what I know it should be.

Anyway, once I know the length I map out the story, I have full detailed outlines of all eight books of Marks of Eilira. Book eight the final book is 78 pages long, only because it is a very detailed outline. As I said before Echoes does not have this, they have documents read for me to start but they are blank except for the front page with the name of the series, my contact information. Echoes I have mapped out the beginning of each seasons and ending, but the middle still needs to be filled in.

This comes to the I need to know the end of each book or season so I can write because I need to know where I am heading. In Marks I knew up to book four the ending of each book and the title of each book, most changed except books 2,3 & 8. Books five through eight took a while for me to figure out where I was going, mainly because I did not know the ending when I started working on this series back in 2006. Outlining was still new to me then, when I got that ending it made a world of a difference, which really helped me get focus all eight books flowing together, which is so important.

Character Profiles:
Along with the Project Bible, I have separate bible called the Character Bible, just like J.K. Rowling I write out character profiles for all my characters. I know what there screen name would be write down to the day they were born. Mino characters get one, but not as extensive as major characters. If a character shows up once or twice like passing them on the street, I do not write a profile for them. They have to have a part in the story to get a profile.

I am working on draft two of book one of Marks of Eilira; I will say all the character profiles are not done. The ones that matted for this book are, as will happen as each book gets written.

Tomorrow we will focus on the actual writing part, it will be a much shorter post compared to what I have been posting and Tuesday we will be wrapping up this series. Fell free to post your thoughts, questions, comments. I am always interested in reading how other writers write.

Tim