{"id":2681,"date":"2011-10-12T05:00:52","date_gmt":"2011-10-12T09:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allandouglas.com\/blog\/?p=2681"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:41","slug":"using-a-compendium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/using-a-compendium\/","title":{"rendered":"AVOID LITEARY PRATFALLS"},"content":{"rendered":"
Ken Consaul is, like many writers, a man of diverse backgrounds.\u00a0 He has been a custom home builder, general contractor, cabinet shop owner, restorer of classic cars, waterbed salesman, loan officer, and several less savory vocations we will not discuss. He is a painter and writer and makes reproduction antique furniture as a hobby.\u00a0 He blogs on occasion at bonnershouse.com<\/address>\n
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Ken Consaul is the author of Bonner\u2019s Road West<\/em>, a family saga about two young people, their fortunes joined by the tragedy of a cholera outbreak.\u00a0 Together they decide to continue on to Oregon with another party of emigrants.\u00a0 They marry and, at Fort Laramie in Wyoming, hear tales of the discovery of gold in California.\u00a0 They split from their party and form another, determined to make their fortune in the new territory. Serialized into five segments, Bonner\u2019s Road West <\/em>is available at Amazon.<\/address>\n

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It\u2019s the middle of the night when inspiration jolts you awake.\u00a0 What a great idea for a new writing project,<\/em> you say.\u00a0 Leaping from bed, you start writing down ideas so you don\u2019t fall asleep and then forget everything by morning (BTDT).\u00a0 The words line up effortlessly.\u00a0 The sentences are concise, clever, and lead effortlessly to the next gem.\u00a0 Finally, with notes appended for future scenes, the muse departs and you return to a self-satisfied rest.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Desirous of a new project, I opened a file I created under the very circumstances just described.\u00a0 It was to be my attempt at a crime thriller but life intrudes\u2026.. I expected to open this up and have a good laugh over my midnight ramblings.\u00a0 The start isn\u2019t half bad, might be worth a go.<\/em> I read through to get re-acquainted.\u00a0 Halfway through the second reading I discovered my main character had departed work in one car and arrived home in another.\u00a0 Correcting the glaring error, my next move was to create a file called COMPENDIUM.\u00a0 I\u2019d been through this before.<\/p>\n

While writing Bonner\u2019s Road West<\/em>, as the cast of characters, locations, and story lines grew to unmanageable proportions, I discovered memory to be a fickle and spiteful companion.\u00a0 Retention fades as more junk accumulates in the attic. \u00a0Attempting to place one word artfully after another; I\u2019d find myself recalling phrases or keywords and thanking Word for the \u2018find\u2019 menu.\u00a0 I\u2019d be clacking away on the keyboard, churning out inspired prose and suddenly some detail about the character\u2019s history seemed oddly out of place with something written weeks before.\u00a0\u00a0 Where did that scout say he\u2019d almost frozen to death the winter before?<\/em>\u00a0 If you write, you know the little nagging voice in your head that won\u2019t shut up until you find out.<\/p>\n

An author needs to manage the story much like a director runs his stage.\u00a0 Bonner\u2019s Road West<\/em> is historical fiction so fact checking and consistency were vital to maintaining a cohesive tale.\u00a0 Whether you write sci-fi, fantasy, or crime fiction, every story has characters and a place.\u00a0 The place may only exist in your mind but you have put players on a stage.\u00a0 They enter and exit the story but they don\u2019t go to their day job.\u00a0 They sit offstage playing cards or gossiping. When they reappear they need to look, sound, and act like they did when last they trod the boards of your story.\u00a0 Readers will notice if your character limps off with a bad left leg and returns to dance the night away.\u00a0 One of the more famous gaffes is in Robinson Crusoe<\/em> as Robby gamely swims naked out to the shipwreck and fills his pockets with stores.\u00a0 The details keep the storyline intact as the play moves from scene to scene.<\/p>\n

How can I avoid such literary embarrassment<\/em>, says the aspiring author?\u00a0 The compendium is your friend<\/em>, says I.\u00a0 A compendium keeps the story straight and could have put some pants on Defoe\u2019s hero.\u00a0 I keep mine ordered by character.\u00a0 This worked for me because my characters were always on the move and maps were readily available.\u00a0 I could put a pin in the map and write a paragraph of notes about the locale and what happened.\u00a0 The characters remained and carried the story so it was natural to list the players and their characteristics.\u00a0 Each time a new character was \u2018hired\u2019, I added them to an alphabetical list of each character and wrote several lines, sometimes before the detail was needed, about where they came from, what horse they rode, what weapons they carried, whether they could read and write and such detail as might be necessary to keep the illiterate teamster from reading the last rites over a fallen comrade. Do it for yourself as much as your reader.\u00a0 You don\u2019t want to awake at three in the morning as that nagging little voice asks where your character\u2019s pants are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ken Consaul is, like many writers, a man of diverse backgrounds.  He has been a custom home builder, general contractor, cabinet shop owner, restorer of classic cars, waterbed salesman, loan officer, and several less savory vocations we will not discuss. He is a painter and writer and makes reproduction antique furniture as a hobby.  He … Continue reading “AVOID LITEARY PRATFALLS”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[11,29],"class_list":["post-2681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tools","tag-tools-2","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21622,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2681\/revisions\/21622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}