Writing Tip (6): Checklists (Plus Facebook Revisited)

Writing fantasy or science fiction means that you get to make stuff up -- yay! The trouble is, my memory is never as fantastic as I think it is, and so I'll make something up, put it in the story, and then a few weeks later when I want to use it again somewhere else, I can't remember it! So then I have to scroll through pages and pages trying to remember where exactly I mentioned it (and I can't use the "Find" tool because I can't remember how to spell the word I made up, or I can't remember what the word is at all!)

Eventually I compiled a document that I labelled Fact File. I arranged everything into categories (Creatures, Humans, Places, Different Names for the Same Things That Exist in Our World, etc.) and now every time I make up something new I immediately add it to my Fact File :-)

Here's another way of being organised...

Science fiction and fantasy novelist Steven Harper, author of WRITING THE PARANORMAL NOVEL, has created checklist worksheets to help you write your own story of the supernatural.
(Click on the image to be taken to a .pdf of each checklist)

Facebook Revisited

After reading all the comments on my Things I Never Knew About Facebook post (and doing some thinking), I came to the conclusion that it is best to have both an ACCOUNT and a PAGE.

You see, the page is cool and everything (especially if you've made it big and you have lots of fans!), but it's sort of a little bit selfish, because the page can't go and "Like" and "Friend" other people. So if you're wanting to also "give back" then you need an actual account that you can use to interact with other Facebookers.

Which is why you'll now see both of these on my sidebar :-)







If it so happens that you become awesomely famous and people are searching for you all the time on Facebook and sending friend requests to your ACCOUNT, when actually you want them to be "Liking" your PAGE because you don't have a potting clue who they all are and you don't really want to be "Friends" with all of them, then you can go to the Privacy Settings on your account and adjust them so that only people who are already your friends will be able to search and find you.