Embracing the Fiction Author Journey

58. Crafting continuity: A writer’s guide to style sheets

• Erin P.T. Canning

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As your story expands, do you find keeping track of the evolving ideas and details overwhelming? What about if you’re writing not just one book but a whole series? 

In today’s episode, you’ll learn how you can maintain consistency and track story threads, regardless of whether you’re working with professional editors or beta readers. 

You’ll walk away knowing how to better communicate with your editor about their offerings, including whether they’ll create a style sheet for you. Erin also shares the importance of using style tags in writing programs like Microsoft Word or Google Docs for seamless navigation, both in your manuscript and style sheet.

Whether you're a seasoned writer or just starting, this episode provides valuable tools to enhance your storytelling journey.

Topics discussed in this episode: 

  • Why style sheets make all the difference
  • Which sections to include in your style sheet and why
  • How to track story threads across a series

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Erin P.T. Canning:

As your story expands, do you find keeping track of the evolving ideas and details overwhelming? What about if you're writing not just one book, but a whole series? In today's episode, you'll learn how you can maintain consistency and track story threads, regardless of whether you're working with professional editors or beta readers.

Erin:

Welcome to Parents Who Write, the podcast that helps parents pursue their writing dreams. I'm your host, Erin P.T. Canning. I'm a mom of two young boys, a writer, editor, and writing coach. My mission is to help you regularly make time for your writing, find your voice again, and confidently share your stories so that you can own your identity as a writer and be a happier, more patient parent.

Erin P.T. Canning:

Hey friends! Thank you for joining me for another episode of Parents Who Write. Today I'm going to talk to you about continuity issues. I know how challenging that can be when you're writing a story, and it grows larger, and your thoughts and your ideas start evolving and changing. And keeping track of everything can be really overwhelming. So... what I'm going to talk about is tips for trying to keep that stuff together, trying to keep those ideas straight, and when you change your mind, how you can remember which decision you finally went with. And my primary method for doing this is to create a style sheet. I will say that if you are working with a line editor, ask your editor if they are going to create a style sheet for you. You can ask them that when you are setting up your expectations of working with your line editor to say, Hey, what services do you actually offer with your package? And a style sheet may be one of them. I do offer a style sheet with my clients. I tend to build it as I go because of the fact that I want to make sure that your characters have the same hair color throughout the entire story, along with other additional details that are pertinent, and I want to make sure that you address all of those. If you want to start building your own style sheet though, you absolutely can. And when you're working with an editor, you could always give that to them and say, hey, here's my style sheet. It makes it easier for us to cross reference. And check, you know, if we see any inconsistencies and be like, Hey, you know, you described in your style sheet that your character is 25 years old, but in your manuscript, you described them as being 22 years old. Which one do you want? So we can communicate that and make sure everything gets synced up. If you do want to go ahead and create a style sheet for you, then here are the sections that I recommend that you include in your style sheet. And you can do this for a single book, or if you have a series, you can create a series style sheet. And mine is for a series, so I'm going to talk about how to do both. But honestly, I had to create one for my Aerytol Saga. I didn't actually do one for Ruins and Redemption, but now that I'm moving on to book two, there's just too many things I had to keep going back to book one and be like, what did I say in there? How did I describe that thing? Who was that person? And having to scroll through your previous manuscripts to find that information is way too time consuming. So you can, add that information to your style sheet and it makes life so much easier, especially when you're heading into more and more books in your series and you're like, who the heck was that person, several thousands of words ago? Okay, here's what I recommend that you include in your style sheet. Oh, you know what? Let me preface this. Use your style tags in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, whichever it is that you use for keeping track, or whatever writing program it is that you use for your stories, use your style tags. So check episode 25 of Parents Who Write, where I explain how to use style tags in your Microsoft or your Google Doc. That will make it so much easier to navigate both your manuscript and also your style sheet. So the first section that you would use, or that I recommend, is the References section. And this is if you find yourself going to websites over and over again for describing clothing or, sometimes I even Google, facial expressions. Please help me explain facial expressions, to just get clearer images of how to show that instead of tell it. Um, Renaissance clothing. I kept going back to this one website over and over again. So you can just, honestly, you can bookmark them in your bookmark tab if that's what you want to do, but you could also have them on your references, uh, style sheet, if it's just something that you tend to use a lot. The next section that I recommend, and this would be an H1 level, again, if you use those tags, would be Stylistic Choices and Notes. I've got a perfect example of this. Grammatically speaking, we don't capitalize the names of seasons. So spring, summer, winter, fall, those are not capitalized. But maybe your book is very elemental focused or very nature focused if it's a fantasy book that deals with elemental magic. So maybe you do capitalize those words. That would be another stylistic choice that you might want to put in there, a note that you can remember. The next section that I recommend is a timeline. And you can have that start off with, like, outside of your book. So, for example, for me, with Ruins and Redemption, I made sure that I listed that Adeline's father died two years prior to the start of my book. He died two years ago, not five years ago, because I kept oscillating between those two decisions, which showed up in my manuscript. And thank goodness my developmental editor pointed that out. And I was like, okay, no, this, her father has been dead for two years. And so that went into my timeline where I put a H2 underneath that, for outside the series. So I I've, compartmentalized my timeline based on outside of the series, like before the books begin, and then book one, book two, et cetera. And then for book one, my timeline information that I put in there was like. My character disappears into another world. And I needed to know the date that she disappeared into another world, and she's a professor, so I had that she disappeared right at the end of her semester. In my head, being a college professor, I thought that that was going to be the summer, and then I looked up that, that spring semesters actually end closer in April or May? And I was like, oh, that doesn't work. So I had to Google when summer semesters typically end and get that date and be like, Oh, okay. So this is actually when she teleports to another world. And then I also needed it to coincide with the N H L finals. And so I also had to look up that date, and I don't want to look it up every time to be like, when did she disappear? When is she, like, what, what is happening in the real world while she's gone? So I added those dates to my timeline. It's captured. I don't have to Google it yet again when I need that information. The next section that I suggest is continuity details. These are important. This is where you're going to put in stuff like magic system rules if you are writing a fantasy. This is where you're going to put in maybe family tree lines that you need, especially if you're writing a romance series and you've got all these different characters who are interacting with each other and the books start overlapping. Continuity details you might want to put in, that family tree information. Honestly, that applies to fantasy as well. But, um, so for anybody who's writing erotica or BDSM, that's where you might want to put in information like do your characters practice that lifestyle 24 7 or is it only when they've both agreed to certain times of the week or day or when they're at the clubs or whatnot? The next section that I have that's very, very, very, very important is characters, character names. And I alphabetize these. And I also do break these up with subheadings in my documents using those style tags with H2s to break up book 1, book 2, book 3, reader magnet. So, under character names, you're gonna want to include physical descriptions, their full names. I mean, Adeline's last name is Yates, but it wasn't always. I don't remember what her original last name was. Yeah, I totally, I totally forgot, but that had to be updated in my style sheet to make sure that I didn't change her name throughout the series. Uh, nicknames are included in there. Date of birth would be important, or at least age at the beginning of your, say, book one. Any pertinets details that shape the core of your character. So for Adeline, in that example, it's that her father died two years ago, and then her grandmother, her last remaining living relative, died eight months prior to the beginning of book one. And then I also put in that she, she feels very alone. That's her Achilles heel, and yeah, any, anything along those lines that just help you to remember the core of your character. You might also want to put in there, actually. Not might. Do put this in there. Jobs. List their jobs. I, when, especially when you're writing series, or you've got epic fantasy, and you've got so many characters, I don't remember who Rupert was. I had to go through and be like, who was that guy? Oh, he was the metal worker dude. Cool. Or I was like, hey, Recca. I remember talking about her. What was she again? Oh, she was the gardener. Cool. Okay. So. Put their jobs in there. That'll, that'll help too. And you might also want to include their likes and dislikes. The next section that I include is terms slash word choice. And I break this down actually with ABCDs. And I only use the letters that I need, but I use that second tier to break them down by letter. And terms and word choice, that can be stuff like, say for BDSM, within that culture, they like to capitalize Dom but lowercase sub. So I would put under D, Dom, capitalized with a D, and then sub, lowercased with an s, so that I remember, yes, that's the way that I want this in this book. Or, if I'm working with a client, I'll be like, do you follow that? Do you not follow that? What method do you want to use? So that it's in the style sheet, and it's consistent throughout the entire series. Anything else? Let's see. Oh! I, gosh! I kept forgetting that Her Majesty, and His Majesty, and Your Majesty should all be capitalized, but my lord and my lady are lowercase, so that went in my terms slash word choice. What else did I include? Oh! Distances and speed! Honestly, yeah, I want to say that this really could apply to most genres, but I know for me, with writing fantasy, it was necessary. Distances and speed. I am so tired of how many times I had to look up how many miles can a physically fit human walk in a day. And then how fast can a horse travel, with a walk or a canter or a gallop versus a trot. I don't want to look that up every time where I'm trying to figure out how many days it takes for my characters to get from point A to point B. So now I have that included in my style sheet under distances and speed. And then for distances, I tracked that, from Lameiría, when they get to the shore to the capitol, it's 225 miles. I was like, okay, cool. And then I was able to calculate, based on that mileage, how many days it would take for a human to walk versus they're now on a horse, et cetera, et cetera. So, this way I have realistic timelines, and we don't have situations where, you know, my characters need to be somewhere and they're, they're poof there within a few hours. And it's like, nope, sorry, transportation doesn't work like that back in the day. I remember another writer who was dealing with hiking, and she needed to calculate, okay, if I need my characters to get from point A to point B, and they're hikers, she needed to know how many miles that would be, and because even though it's fiction, it's realistic locations, so she still needed to track all of that. So, speed and distances. Very, very important one. Okay, next section is places slash locations. You can just put the name of the location if that's what you need. But for me, like in book one, Adaline revisits the bridge that divides, or actually connects, the elven side of the Neutral Territory with the human side, and she spends a lot of time on that bridge, so I describe that bridge over and over again with her doing other activities on that bridge. I don't want to have to keep going through my manuscript and being like, What exactly was it? And what do you call the balustrade versus the balusters and the finials on the bridge? I don't, right? So I just, the very first time I described that bridge, I captured it. I put it in my style sheet. I can go there very easily and be like, all right, what does this bridge have again? What are the features? Awesome. She spends a lot of time on Front Street, so I just captured that street name and then I quickly described, I just took the description right out of the book and plopped it into my style sheet. So this way, you know, in another book, when she finally goes back to Front Street, I will have it there, and it's very easy for me to capture the essence of Front Street yet again. For fantasy friends, you might want to include a pronunciation and word guide. I have an Elvish pronunciation and word guide. And then under that I have subsections with pronunciation for all of my vowels. And I also have an Elvish glossary. So every time I create a new word, it goes in there. Easy for me to reference when I need to put stuff together, try to come up with some Elvish sounding names. And that, that is really everything to include in a style sheet. Now, here's the thing. Having a style sheet is priceless when it comes to continuity across your series. When it comes to tracking threads, things that you foreshadowed, things that you're kind of like, Ooh, I really want to make sure that I come back and address this thing. Two things that you can do with that. One, create a threads subsection in your style sheet, right? Give that an H1 and then you can say book one, book two, threads that you want to, that you want to capture. The other thing that honestly you could do is, in your manuscript, highligts that thread and make a comment bubble and just say, I really want to make sure that I finish this thread. So this way when you're going through your manuscript later on in your revisions and you come across that bubble and you could be like, Ooh, did I actually tie up that thread? Yes or no? And it's very easy for you to see and identify. If you have that many threads across the series. So you're done with editing that book and you're not ready to address that particular thread yet, then that's where you've got it at least highlighted in the manuscript. Right before you're ready to publish or to upload to Atticus or whatever it is that you're doing with your document where you don't want any comments in there anymore, that's when you're going to take that and make sure you move it into your style sheet under thread slash foreshadowing. So that I'd be like, yes, I want to make sure that that these all do get addressed in time. That is it for tips on how to maintain continuity and track all of those phenomenal ideas that we create when we are editing and, or when we are crafting these amazing worlds that we want to tell. I hope you found this helpful. As always, happy writing.

Erin:

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Parents Who Write. Ready to stop circling around your manuscript? As an experienced professional editor, I can help you finish your book with confidence and direction. Learn more by visiting parentswhewrite. com slash editing and book a free 30 minute call with me to discuss what's right for you.

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Erin P.T. Canning

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