Therefore when I describe the northern edge of Sibera in April, I want to have my description match reality for the 0.1% of the people who might read the book and know what it is really like there. Part of my OCD I guess.
Since our story takes place around the world as the story unfolds, I needed to track my characters in their venues. I actually created a spreadsheet on the computer to track each character's progress through his or her story arc. Mainly the major characters are outlined in detail, with minor characters not more than one or two sentences.
Then when I am about to work on a scene from the outline, I flesh out more of the details just before I write it. I read the post by Fictional Cowboy on the by Rachael Aaron and recognized the knowledge branch is what I recently started doing to help my writing speed and flow. Now I need to see if I can expand into the other two directions as well.
During my research to write this novel, I found that this genre (with a little soft sci-fi rolled in) should be in the 95K words range. So I am tracking that number as I write out each scene. I pretty much know the last words of book one already, in order to set up the close and cliff hanger for book two, so I need to do what I can to keep on track to that end. My spreadsheet is doing that for me so I can focus on the overall story.
I will have to say that much of my inspiration for the actual character dialogue comes to me as the characters begin to speak. The more I write on their behalf, the more real they become to me and the more they speak for themselves. I guess I should be paying them.
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