Character Tool for Novelists

Posted on December 29, 2020 by Kirsten

I built this guided notebook originally for my own use, to help me create, document, and track characters as I write my novels. Now I’m making my Character Tool for Novelists available to other writers.

Built originally for my own use, Character Tool for Novelists has space to help you brainstorm and document up to twelve characters, including everything from their names, physical features, and family trees, to major life milestones and unconscious needs. The dimensions are 5×8.5 inches to make it easy to carry and store.

I use notebooks to plan and work out my novels. I know not everybody does — some writers do everything electronically. But for me, notebooks work.

One reason may be that I’ve kept journals my entire life. When I sit down with notebook and pen, something happens in my brain. I can ask myself questions and get answers back. It works great for my creative process.

Another reason is that using notebooks gives me a break from screens. I like being able to move around, sometimes, while I’m working on a novel. I like being able to switch from my desk (stand-up) to a chair once in a while.

So the system that I’ve developed over the course of my fiction career (five published novels, a half dozen in process, numerous shorts) is to use blank notebooks — usually around 5-6 x 8 inch size to make it easy to carry around including when I travel — for brainstorming novels, working out problems, and early drafts of key scenes.

When I started work on my Marion Flarey novels (first one, Once Upon a Flarey Tale, available here, second one, Fo Fum Flarey, out now too!) I added something new. In addition to the blank notebooks for general brainstorming, I bought a package of Moleskine Volant journals and dedicated them to working out the characters, using a template that I replicated for every character in the books.

Moleskine notebook I used to create characters for my Marion Flarey novels. — Ugly but it worked: one of the Moleskine journals I used to work out the characters for my three Marion Flarey novels.

This proved to be a breakthrough for me as a fiction author. I’ve come to appreciate how important it is to fully imagine my characters before I get too deep into drafting an actual novel. It makes them come alive, which helps me enormously with everything else, from plotting and conflict to voice.

Having dedicated character notebooks imposed additional discipline on my planning process. It forced me to go through the foundational work of creating my characters and bringing them to life in my mind. As a result, before I began drafting my first Marion Flarey novel, every major character for all three books was fully developed in my head, including physical appearance, personality, backstory, and their hopes and dreams.

I have no doubt that one reason readers are enjoying Once Upon a Flarey Tale so much is that I “put in the work” on character development.

My dedicated character notebooks also helped me in practical ways. If I forgot a detail about a character — eye color or last name — I could easily look it up. It’s saved me both time and hassle.

But — speaking of saving time! — what I didn’t like about my system was that I was using a blank notebook, which meant I needed to replicate my character template by hand over and over and over.

So I decided to harness my Indie Author skills as a book designer to create and publish a “notebook” that would come pre-printed with the template — and Character Tool for Novelists was born :)

A tool for writers

I published Character Tool for Novelists using Amazon KDP and set the price at $7.99 USD; at 233 pages it’s roughly the cost of a similarly-sized lined journal, and at that price I make around a buck per copy. I chose white paper to make it as bright as possible; I personally wish the paper was a little thicker/higher quality but I’m limited by Amazon’s parameters, and in any case I wouldn’t want to make the tool any more expensive.

The tool has two parts. The (very short) first part provides space to let you list all of your novel’s primary and secondary characters by name, including nicknames/aliases. One section (pictured below) is a straight list of primary and secondary character. Another section is more of a workspace to brainstorm names and track them alphabetically. This ensures you don’t use the same first letter for more than one character (generally a no-no for modern novels).

Character Tool for Novelists by Kirsten Mortensen — Character Tool for Novelists includes space for you to list all characters in your novel by name and nickname/alias. A separate section (not pictured) lets you also list them alphabetically. I use the alphabetical listing to avoid using the same first letter for more than one character (giving multiple characters names that start with the same first letter can make it harder for readers to keep track of them).

The second part of the tool comprises the character template itself, with space for 12 characters altogether. Each of the 12 templates includes space for: names and name meanings; family trees; friendships; major life milestones; physical features; dress/clothing styles; personality traits; skills, abilities, and talents; occupations and finances; possessions/properties; social identities; habits, tics, and pet peeves; interests and hobbies; conscious aspirations; unconscious needs; journeys; archetypes; and thematic roles.

Here are a couple more pictures to show you what the interior looks like.

But wait! There’s more! Since many of us need space for more than 12 characters, I’ve also built a companion notebook, Character Tool for Novelists +15. This notebook doesn’t include the part one described above; it comprises only the character template, replicated an additional 15 times. It will be out by the first week of January The USD price is $8.99 since it’s a little longer at 279 pages.

Character Tool for Novelists Plus 15 — Need space for more than 12 characters? This companion tool replicates the Character Tool for Novelists template an additional 15 times.

I’d also love writer’s feedback, so if you try the tool, let me know. Have I left enough space for character elements? Should I add sections to the template? Anything else I could do to make the tool more useful?

Thanks for reading!

Speaking of data

Posted on January 26, 2015 by Kirsten

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a terrific blog post up that looks at a number of publishing metrics that have been reported by industry peeps lately.

I’ve just added this line from the post to my list of favorite quotes:

There’s an awful lot of common knowledge floating around in the publishing industry, most of which is not based on any reality at all.

Yep.

(For context, see my posts on indie author marketing, e.g. here and here.)

writers, writers, an ungovernable bunch …

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Kirsten

Megan McArdle has a column up about the meltdown at The New Republic.

It’s an interesting read in general for anyone in the writing or publishing business.

But in particular, I chuckled to myself when she began describing some of the reasons running media companies presents special challenges. “You’re not running a normal type of organization,” she writes. “You’re running a professional group.”

And so you encounter a number of problems:

… the difficulty of getting creative types to produce great stuff on demand; the astonishing amount of autonomy that journalists need, because it’s impossible to write hard guidelines, and too expensive to supervise long hours of reporting and typing; the fact that great writers are frequently terrible managers and editors, which screws up the normal management pyramid; the simultaneous need for speed and accuracy; the fact that media employment selects for a cluster of personality traits that resists closer management; the professional ethic that will stymie you when you decide to make a different set of trade-offs between competing priorities such as speed, accuracy, and the need to monetize your content; the fact that writers, especially in the digital age, frequently take their audience with them if they leave, making it even harder to impose discipline …

As someone who has earned a living as a professional writer for many, many years: yep. That pretty much sums us up :)

She self-pubbed, got a Harper Collins contract . . . and now is self-pubbing again

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Kirsten

That sound you hear is another old taboo exploding.

It used to be that authors with book contracts pretty much had to do what publishers told them to do. Right?

If you got big enough you might be able to throw your weight around. But most authors had little if any power.

So this is definitely another milestone moment in 21st Century publishing trends:

Novelist Polly Courtney has dropped her publisher HarperCollins for giving her books “condescending and fluffy” covers aimed at the chick lit market.

There was a time when Courtney would have had to accept whatever covers/marketing decisions her publisher made.

Not any more — because now she has options.

quote of the day

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Kirsten

[T]he writer’s imagination, that magical entity from which ideas arise, has other principles besides ars gratia artis. It’s more apt to come up with ideas if there’s a use for them.

—Lawrence Block.

In a post about short story as a literary form–and how epublishing may revive it.

A tale of beer and books

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Kirsten

Out there in The Long Tail you’ll find some mighty fine brewskies. P.S. Southern Tier, please bring Iniquity back. Thank you.

Only imagine: MSNBC has a story up about beer sales, and lo and behold, they’re plummeting — for mainstay brands like Bud, Old Milwaukee, and Michelob. [UPDATE: sadly, story no longer there…]

Of the 23 “largest selling beer products” in the U.S., “eight . . . have lost a staggering 30 percent or more of their sales between 2005 and 2010.”

Yikes.

But here’s what strikes me. For years, we’ve been hearing that “digital” is killing the publishing industry. Digital is killing newspapers. Digital is killing music.

And the focus for the most part has been on the medium. You’ve probably heard “kill the medium!” arguments along these lines:

Blogging makes it too easy for know-nothings to pose as journalists. Result: newspapers face too much competition from low-quality websites. Newspaper circulation plunges.
Digital music is too easy to steal. Producers can’t control their product any more — people are getting for free what they used to have to buy. Music sales plunge.
Self-pubbing books is too easy. Now unvetted self-proclaimed “writers” can put their better-hold-your-nose junk on Amazon or B&N with a click of a mouse. They are squeezing out legitimate publishers. Print book sales plunge.

But here’s the thing. With beer, you take the medium out of the equation. People can’t buy or sell beer in digital form. It’s an analog world experience still, thank doG.

So beer becomes a control case.

Right?

You have your traditional, old school industry — all those gargantuan beer brands that our grandfathers used to drink — and you have this nascent (well, still sort of nascent) decentralized craft brew movement with its funny labels and quirky flavors.

And what happens?

We learn that when people have a choice, lo and behold, they will abandon “safe,” boring, insipid products and seek out interesting, imaginative, vibrant alternatives. In proverbial droves.

This also suggests IMO that “brand” — which you may have noticed has been elevated in the past couple decades to near-mystical status in the marketing lexicon — is actually not enough to carry a product. On the contrary, “brand” has some mighty heavy clay feet.

Anyway, a prediction. Bud, and Old Milwaukee, and Michelob (which btw is in my WP spellcheck. Really? My spellcheck doesn’t recognize the word “spellcheck” but it generates its red squiggle if I type Michalob or Michelobe? Really????) are already working furiously behind the scenes to launch a stunning new menu of “craft-style” beers.

Second prediction. Book publishers will engage in a parallel activity, if they’re not already. And they’ll figure out which self-pubbed products sell well (possible examples: shorter novels; serials) and start assembly-lining e-books into those niches with a vengeance.

But without offering author advances ;-)

All hail the book machine

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Kirsten

Those of you who know me personally know that for many years I’ve worked as a marketing communications professional supporting some pretty big, name brand companies, including one fondly known as an anchor company here in Rochester, NY. And as it happens, over the course of my career, I’ve had occasion to write about some of the more sophisticated printing devices these companies manufacture — machines that can produce one-off items from digital files.

Since I also follow the book publishing industry, I’ve been waiting for years for the day when book publishers would embrace the technology.

Good thing I wasn’t holding my breath.

Oh, I know, per-book cost goes way up — it’s a lot cheaper, per copy, to do a traditional print run of 10,000 or a million books than produce them in onesy twosies.

But in a world where just-in-time manufacturing principles are now the norm, it would seem a no-brainer to work these POD technologies into the production stream somehow. Think about it. You’d have a database of your content on the back end. Orders come in from distributors via a front-end web portal and are automatically sent to the printer — nobody would need to touch them (lowers your overhead right there). Suddenly the backlist is relevant again, it’s available to respond to demand. And as new media arises — ebooks, say — you just hook up a new output path, kind of like the Smashwords Meatgrinder.

I suppose the idea of transitioning to such a radically different production model was too wearying for publishers. Heck, they don’t even have their rights tracked in databases yet, apparently.

That said, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the entire industry will shift to a just-in-time model, albeit belatedly. But in the meantime, bookstores are installing POD systems, essentially taking over the production piece of the publishing business.

The above link is a story about The Expresso Book Machine, invented by Jason Epstein, 83, the guy who also came up with the concept of mass market paperbacks(!)

The Expresso Book Machine is basically a digital POD printer + book binder.

But get this. The article’s author, Ilya Marritz, first notes:

People in the book industry revere Jason Epstein, but they are increasingly skeptical his latest innovation will take off. The Espresso Book Machine is bulky, its menu of books limited mainly to backlist and public domain titles and users can’t operate the machine on their own – they need help from trained bookstore staff.

Guys, the reason titles are limited to backlist & public domain is that the publishing industry hasn’t realized, yet, that it needs to support POD with current titles. So it’s kind of two-faced for “people in the book industry” to be “skeptical.” Instead of being skeptical, how about building an infrastructure to feed the POD stream?

Sigh.

Contrast with this a couple paragraphs later:

But the machine has proven to be a hit with customers. More than 1,000 books were printed on the machine in the first four weeks for prices starting at $8 apiece. Kurtz said the main attraction to the Espresso Book Machine is that it is a tool for self-publishing.

Not surprising that self-publishing has emerged as a strong use case. Indie writers “get it.”

But IMO, if this were marketed properly, with the proper front end, it would be a huge hit with consumers as well.

There is absolutely no reason on earth I shouldn’t be able to go online, order a book, the book gets printed at my local bookstore (or library. or supermarket) where I can pick it up — or maybe a courier brings it to my house later that day —

I should be able to do that by clicking on a link of a book review I read on a blog or online newspaper, or from my e-reader.

I should be able to do that from a kiosk in a bookstore.

Think about it. Bookstores would no longer have to be mammothly expensive warehouses (that’s all a big box store is, when you think about it — a warehouse with carpet and escalators). They could be salons, gathering spaces designed more like living rooms than commercial spaces.

Bookstore managers could stock based on real time data about what is selling or to support promotions they’re running. Poetry reading tonight? Print one or two copies of books by major poets and set them out for sale. Holiday coming up? Local paper run a review of a new title? Author in town for a signing? Ditto.

But most of your titles, you’d sell not by putting out physical copies but by generating opportunities for word-of-mouth sales and by running in-store promotions. I love golf, for instance. Think I wouldn’t notice if a local bookstore kicked off spring by hosting an event by a local teaching pro in conjunction with a sale on golf titles, make it a Masters tie-in?

The possibilities are endless, literally.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz once said that he envisioned Starbucks as “the third place” — the not home/not work place you spend time because it’s comfortable and familiar and you feel welcome there.

There is absolutely no reason bookstores couldn’t also become “the third place,” but only if the business model supports it–which means you have to lower overhead. Smaller footprint, no more warehousing books based on publisher push instead of local market pull, and emphasize creating communities rather than moving product.

Could happen. Would like to see it, personally. I’d hang there.

“I’m out of the advance business and I’m out of the inventory business”

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Kirsten

Just watched a 6-minute interview with Jane Friedman, former CEO of Harper Collins. She’s now CEO of Open Road Media, a publishing company she co-founded to so she can play exclusively in the digital space.

Key things in her remarks that caught my attention:

She describes advances and inventory as the two things that caused her most stress when she was in traditional publishing. Little wonder: an advance is a gamble and inventory is a huge cost-burden.

She describes her new digital venture as entrepreneurial. From her lips, that’s code for “I believe there’s a lot of money to be made.” One source: author’s backlist titles. “Backlist was always something that completely interested me.”

She places a huge emphasis on her new company’s ability to market its authors. I find this interesting because as we know from reading writers like Dean Wesley Smith and J.A. Konrath, that writers no longer need “publishers” for . . . you know, “publishing.” So what’s left for “publishers” to do? That would be marketing.

She envisions ebooks as multimedia. “We are bookending the text with video.” “Enhanced biographies” embedded at the end of some ebooks include text, video, photos etc.

Pop goes the book bubble

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Kirsten

In NY Daily News, Alexander Nazaryan — writing about Border’s troubles — makes an this observation:

What happened to real estate is now happening to books: An industry colluded to push an overpriced product on a public whose purse strings were tightening and whose tastes were changing. Demand dropped steadily, but supply kept soaring – only now is it coming down to earth. Nothing reminds me so much of those tracts of foreclosed houses in Florida as stack upon stack of hardcover books, desperate to be bought for $25.99.

[UPDATE: link no longer works… sigh.]

If you scan the covers of vintage pulp fiction books, one of the things you may notice are the prices.

The vast majority are 25 or 35 cents.

What would a 35 cent book cost in today’s dollars? According to this online inflation calculator: $3.09.

When’s the last time you saw a brand new $3.00 paperback in a bookstore?

Some might argue that the reason mass market paperbacks have doubled or tripled in price is that there’s now an infrastructure that, in aggregate, raises the quality of our books. They’re better vetted, better edited.

But I suspect that if the quality of the writing is better, today, it’s thanks to the vast industry devoted to teaching craft. The writers are better.

What’s really happened is that the publishing industry isn’t set up to keep prices reigned in. That’s never been a priority for it.

And as a result, print books are overpriced.

And with a quarter of a million or so titles published every year in the United States alone, of course the whole thing was ripe for a collapse . . .

The coming nonfiction e-tsunami. Watch out for floating “Babe Ruth bars.”

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Kirsten

Website Magazine cites a research report from Yankee Group [UPDATE: link no longer good, sorry!] that estimates ebook sales will reach $2.7 billion in sales in 2013. That’s compared to $313 million two years ago, in 2009.

Quite the leap.

Average prices, meanwhile are expected to drop to $7.

The article suggests that the downward price trend is one reason for the explosion in sales. Makes sense — it’s basic economic principle, after all.

Given that Website Magazine‘s audience is web developers and small business owners, it’s no surprise that the article veers to the topic of self-publishing white papers, how-to’s, and re-packaged blog posts. It also suggests business owners jump on the trend by publishing ebooks themselves:

Expertise in any industry can be used to create an e-book in short order, then sell that material or use it as a promotional or cross-sell incentive.

True. But I hope business owners realize that self-publishing a badly written, poorly organized ebook will be a liability, not a smart business decision. And I think it’s a stretch to suggest that the average small business owner can expect to “add revenue along the way.”

Business owners who self-publish should expect nothing more than pocket change. They should focus instead on the value of the ebook as a promotional tool.

Yes, there will be exceptions, but only if the venture meets at least one or two of the following criteria:

It already has an audience — i.e. it’s an established business vs. a start-up nobody’s ever heard of;
The topic is both catchy and compelling;
The business does a great job at PR and marketing the ebook;
The ebook offers information of genuine value;
The ebook is well-written enough that readers can understand and apply whatever it’s trying to teach them.

What percentage of ebooks in the coming nonfiction tsunami will meet at least two of those conditions, do you think?

And what percentage will more resemble floating Babe Ruth bars?

kirsten mortensen

little blog big planet

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