Wikis and Glossaries and Timelines - oh my!

Happy Birthday, Seekerville!!!! It’s so good to be back! Thanks to Tina for inviting me!! And thanks to Mary Connealy for suggesting this as my topic when I saw her at the ACFW conference last month.

I was talking with Mary about how to keep characters straight and showed her my HEA TV website. Thus this blog post was born.

THIS IS CAROL'S HEA-TV!

All of my books (23 of them!) are set in the same story world/universe. That royal wedding on the TV in the background? It actually happened in another book. The girl on the swim team who befriends the lifeguard-hero’s little sister? Her dad is the drama teacher. They get their own story later.

And so on.

Eventually, it’s hard to keep track of everyone and whether the couple from eight books ago, who show up in this one, have a kid now. Or more than one. What’s actual universe canon (that is, published for readers to see) and what’s just in my head?

I saw this suggestion in one of the Facebook indie groups and decided to try it myself. It’s still a work-in-progress just to get it up to date with the releases I have now, much less keeping up with new ones.

So here are ten things you should know about your own wiki site.

 1. Wordpress

Many of you are familiar with Wordpress. I use a self-hosted Wordpress, meaning I own my domain name and use Wordpress as a base for everything on the site. Another option is Drupal. In fact, I heard about this from author M. D. Cooper who uses Drupal as his base. His Aeon 14 series website is fantastic.



2. Why its own website

There are valid arguments for keeping it as part of your main website. In fact, that’s what M. D. Cooper does with his. For me, I decided to keep it separate. It seemed like my website, especially the back end, was already pretty busy with the stuff it usually has - blog, book list, etc. - so I decided to go this route.

 I use www.hea-tv.com for my wikis, etc. HEA TV stands for Happily Ever After Television - my universe’s version of the Hallmark Channel. It’s up to you which way works best in your situation.

3. Wikis

We’re all familiar with Wikipedia. It’s a sometimes-reliable source of information about pretty much anything you ever wanted to know (and then some). There are websites you can use to create your wiki for you. Wikia and Google Sites are two options. Creating your own wiki allows you to retain control, and I’m all about retaining control whenever I can.

Within Wordpress, there are about a zillion different plugins you can use, including a number that will help you create wikis. I use Yada-Wiki. It allows me to create custom tags, an index, and table of contents. Some will allow you to let other users create or edit wikis for you, but I’ve chosen not to.

4. Wiki Categories

I currently use three categories. Okay. I use one category, but I have plans for three. The main one is a Book Synopsis, but have plans for characters and locations/businesses. This is the wiki for my most recent full-length release, Heart of a Prince. Warning: spoilers!

Each page has several parts:

• Buy link and back cover blurb

• Timeline (just dates and, if available, a link to the full one)

• Table of Contents with links to the rest of the content

• Locations

• Main Characters

• Secondary Characters

• Tertiary Characters (these may be main characters in another book – this is JUST their role in THIS book)

• Businesses, etc.

• Summary

5. Spoilers!

The summary is a full thousand words or so of SPOILERS! I try to make it very clear that this site is FULL of them and there’s always a chance you’ll accidentally run into one for a book you haven’t read yet so enter at your own risk, especially if it’s a book later in the timeline.

6. Timelines

The most requested timeline I’ve had is for my story universe as a whole. I have a simple timeline on my main website and a more complex one on the HEA TV site. For this, I use the TimelineJS plugin. M. D. Cooper’s timeline is much more complex. I haven’t quite figured that part out yet, but I’m working on it! There are other timeline plugins out there that may work better for your needs.

I’m also working on putting together timelines for each book. Here’s one for Discovering Home, book 1 in the Serenity Landing Second Chances series. Spoiler alert!

7. Glossary

We usually think of glossary as a synonym for a dictionary. That’s not quite what I use it for, but it’s the best term I’ve got.

If you look at the Winning the Queen’s Heart wiki, all of the names, etc. in the lists are underlined. If you hover over one of them, a bubble should pop up. For instance, tertiary character Professor Putane’s bubble says “Professor at Serenity Landing University." He’s barely mentioned in passing so that’s all he needs, but he’s been in a couple other books as well. The main characters, or characters who are main characters in other books, will be more details.

Eventually, the ones for main characters will be replaced with character wikis that include any known biographical and physical information (birthday, physical description, etc.) as well as a character synopsis with everything known about the character to date. In theory, it’ll be updated with new information (birth of a child or death of a parent, etc.). At least some of the locations, businesses, etc. will also be replaced with wikis.

For this, I use the CM-Tooltip Glossary plugin. It’s simple to use, but if there’s a special character in a name, you may need to actually copy/paste the word into the glossary entry page.

8. Other Plugins

I use the WP-ShowHide plugin. It gives the clickable “show more” option in the longer lists/summaries.

Slideshow is a more versatile plugin that does just what it says - runs a slideshow on any page. There’s one on the landing page.

Carol's My Book Progress Snapshot

Author Media, run by marketing guru Thomas Umsttatd, has the MyBookProgress plugin.

I have the upgraded version. It’s more visible on the left side of this timeline page on my main site. (You might want to update your progress more than I do though...)

9. For readers

A lot of readers (me included) wish they had time to reread the books one and two before book three releases. But, let’s face it, with all the fabulous books out there, that’s not always possible. This provides a “one-stop shop” to catch up on anything everything. Lying awake at night thinking about that book you read six months ago? (Please tell me I’m not the only one!) You can scan the character list to remember the name of that barista who always got the coffee wrong.



10. For me

Let’s face it. I can’t remember all this stuff. My 23rd release comes out next month. I do (attempt) to keep a story/universe bible up-to-date, but it’s on paper and can’t be lugged around very easily. This gives me a portable place to look it all up myself, or to find the date that the baby was born on (so I know how old he is now).

Do all authors need a website like this? Well, no. But authors do need to keep this information somewhere so we don’t contradict ourselves. This way gives your readers a place to find the same information if they choose.

Authors, how do you keep track of this sort of thing? As a reader, would you find something like this useful from your favorite author?

Leave a comment today or ask a geeky question and your name goes in the plugin for the winner's choice of any Carol Moncado stand-alone ebooks. You can view them all on Carol's Amazon page here. 

Reclaiming Hearts- from
 Serenity Landing Second Chances series.

& Seekerville is tossing in a Starbuck's card because
 this was a very hard class.

Two winners announced in the Weekend Edition.

When she's not writing about her imaginary friends, USA Today Bestselling Author Carol Moncado prefers binge watching pretty much anything to working out. She believes peanut butter M&Ms are the perfect food and Dr. Pepper should come in an IV. When not hanging out with her hubby, four kids, and two dogs who weigh less than most hardcover books, she’s probably reading in her Southwest Missouri home.

Summers find her at the local aquatic center with her four fish, er, kids. Fall finds her doing the band mom thing. Winters find her snuggled into a blanket in front of a fire with the dogs. Spring finds her sneezing and recovering from the rest of the year.

She used to teach American Government at a community college, but her indie career, with nearly two dozen titles released in the first 3 years, has allowed her to write full time. She's a founding member and former President of MozArks ACFW, blogger at InspyRomance, and is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency.

Guest Blogger Deborah Raney: Doing Time

A writer friend mentioned recently that she was having trouble keeping track of the timeline for her novel. I've struggled with that, too, and it got me thinking about all the different ways I've tracked time in my novels.

Eighteen years ago when I wrote my first novel––a family saga spanning ten years––I taped eight sheets of paper together, drew horizontal lines in various colors to represent each character, and made hashmarks along the line for significant events in each character's life. That sounds so clever and wise until I tell you that I only created this timeline after an editor discovered, just before the book went to press, that I had some characters in college for most of the ten years––and they were still working on their bachelor's degrees. Oops. I quickly cobbled together the timeline and sorted things out in the nick of time.

In my next book, all the action took place in one year's time, so my timeline for that was a simple list down the lines of a legal pad. Easy.

I've never been good with anything number-related, but another writing friend's husband had put together an Excel spreadsheet that calculated all kinds of data about a novel, including timeline, page count, percentage left to write, and I-don't-remember-what-else. I used it for several books, then somehow hit a button that messed up the algorithm that calculated the numerics (I just made that algorithm thing up, but I pushed something wrong and that was the end of that).
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My next book had a mystery thread running through it and I needed to do a bit more plotting than my usual seat-of-the-pants method to set up some red herrings, so I tried the index card method. Blue cards for my hero, pink for my heroine, and each card containing the date the scene took place and a sentence about the action. It actually worked pretty well, but like any plotting method I've ever tried, it took all the fun out of writing for me because I hate knowing the ending before I get there––whether reading or writing.

So with my next book––my tried and true women's fiction––I tried simply labeling each chapter and scene with a date. My intention was that those notations would be for my eyes only and I would delete them before the book was published, but I found those datelines caused me to "cheat" and not write decent set-ups for each new scene. I ended up having to go back through the entire book and weave in timeline cues for the reader. I love rewrite and editing, but that was not fun and I was terrified the book would be full of continuity glitches.
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Christmas of that year we received several freebie calendars from local businesses. Since I keep all my calendar events on my computer and iPhone and only use one paper calendar, I didn't need any of the giveaway calendars, but as I was getting ready to toss them in the trash, I noticed that one of them had nice big sqares for each day. A light went on and I knew I'd discovered my perfect timeline tool.
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For the last dozen or so books, I've kept my timeline on a discarded calendar. I never tell the reader the actual year of the calendar I'm referencing, but using a calendar this way has helped me avoid the pitfall of having a character go to church on Sunday morning and three days later gripe about how much he hates Monday mornings. (Yes, that's happened––but thanks to my sharp-eyed editors I don't think a timeline gaffe like that ever made it into a published book.)
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Since I don't plot ahead, after I write a scene, I simply jot on the correct day's square something like: 5 p.m. –– Mitch and Shelley argue at the post office. Seeing those squares lined up Sunday-Saturday helps me organize my characters' lives the way I organize my own.
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I did use the dateline-at-the-beginning-of-scene method in my newest series––with the dates in the actual book––and I think it worked well since those novels each had a thread of suspense, but I had to remind myself not to forget to use "markers" for the reader for time of day, day of week, season of year, weather, etc.
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I've used the Scrivener software for several years now, and love the idea board, notecards, research options, and other features of the program, but I haven't really found it helpful for keeping timelines. My go-to method for keeping track of time continues to be the paper calendar method and I eagerly look forward to those hometown giveaway calendars every year.
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How about you? Have you found a creative way to keep track of your novel's timeline?
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Here are a few links you might find useful in creating the timeline that works best for you:

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Using Microsoft Excel:
http://www.microsoft.com/education/en-us/teachers/how-to/Pages/timeline.aspx
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Using Microsoft Word:
http://www.microsoft.com/education/en-us/teachers/how-to/Pages/creating-timeline.aspx
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Creating Your Own Calendar:
http://timeanddate.com/calendar/custommenu.html
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Using Three-act Story Structure:
http://www.filmscriptwriting.com/thethreeactstructure.html
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Scrivener Software Purchase:
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
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LifeTrack App for iPad:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lifetrack/id343166527?mt=8
(Haven't tried this one, but it looks promising!)

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If you'd like to be entered in a drawing for Deb's trio of "Hanover Falls," please mention it in the comments section, then watch our Weekend Edition for the winner!

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Deborah Raney dreamed of writing a book since the summer she read Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books and discovered that a Kansas farm girl could, indeed, grow up to be a writer. After a happy twenty-year detour as a stay-at-home mom, Deb penned her first novel, A Vow to Cherish, which won a Silver Angel Award and inspired the acclaimed World Wide Pictures film of the same title. Since then, her books have won the RITA Award, HOLT Medallion, ACFW Carol Award, National Readers' Choice Award, as well as twice being finalists for the Christy Award. Deb teaches at writers' conferences across the country. She and her husband, Ken Raney, love small-town life in their native Kansas––the setting for many of Deb's novels. They have four children and four precious grandchildren who all live much too far away. Visit Deb on the Web at http://www.deborahraney.com/.