I thought I had everything planned for my new book.  It’s my first novel and I know that I have a beyond-rotten memory and keeping track of the story was going to be an issue.  I have a number of neuro-divergent traits that affect memory and when I read a book, I can turn a page and forget the names of all the characters – even the main ones.  The names of the places where the action is happening and pretty much any other details of the story become lost in the dark and silent stillness that is my mind.  There is a bonus with this memory issue though, I can finish reading a book and go back to the beginning and enjoy it just as much the 27^th time through!  I’m the same with movies. 

 I’ve already published four books but each chapter in those books is a stand-alone thing and rarely includes any dialogue, so I knew it would be a huge challenge to remember what character number 7 did in chapter three when I am writing chapter 24.  I’d have to re-read the whole book to get to know the character again before I could move on – and that would slow me down a fair bit in this writing.

Having worked extensively with Excel in the dim and distant past, that is where I turned to.  I spent a few weeks building a simple (yet complicated) spreadsheet where the entire storyline was laid out.  Down the left hand side of the spreadsheet are all the characters complete with copious notes about what they look like, age, ranking in importance to the story, what they do in the storyline and how that turns out plus any interactions with other characters. 

Along the top of the spreadsheet all the chapters are laid out in sections that depict specific parts of the story and when you cross-reference you may find that character number 3, when he appears in chapter four will be doing such-and-such a thing with character number 5 (who will also have notes from her point of view).

Down the right hand side there are columns for places, major events, and background info such as religious beliefs, how the transport system works, and when they last had a haircut.  And there is a final column which lists all the million and one things I need to research so that there are no glaring technical errors.

With all that done, I started writing the actual book.  It was working perfectly.  I knew exactly where the story was going and then, in meditation, the main character told me that I needed to include XYZ into the story. 

What?  But XYZ is actually a really good idea so I went back to the beginning and started turning the storyline around so that the XYZ event could happen.  And then it happened again with another major character.  And with a third. 

I had a choice:  I could tell all the characters to shut up and stop interrupting my meditations; I could stop meditating, or I could listen. 

I chose to listen. 

The story line is based on a past-life regression I had a few years ago.  It’s a great story, but when you allow the characters to tell what really happened, that great story becomes a potential best-seller!!!  I’m beginning to wonder if I should change the genre to a Thriller instead of Fantasy!

I’m 16,000 words in, I’ve just finished chapter six, and the original main character hasn’t even been born yet. This character is me. It’s who I was in that past-life regression and it appears that I am not as important as I like to think!  He’s now been moved from the number one position on my spreadsheet to number five.  The character that wasn’t supposed to survive beyond the first chapter has suddenly become the central pivot point for this book – and the series that I now know will follow.

In a lecture from Collette Baron Reid, she said to listen to the soul of the story; to let the soul tell the story.  Oh boy – it’s not just the soul of the story, it’s the souls of every character in the story!!!  And they are all clamouring for attention and everyone of them has a wonderful thought about what to include!