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[delphinidae]

Hello everyone,

I'm new here, and with my first post I have a question - has anyone found a good way to keep track of which characters know what and how they know it?  I keep finding myself getting lost and trying to keep track of what the characters know, what the reader knows and how.  I'm trying to build suspicion of one character as a red herring while dropping a few clues as to the real culprit without being too obvious, and I keep getting mixed up - the more I write, the harder it is.  I recently discovered Scrivener and that is making it easier - I love the index card on a corkboard feature for getting an overview - but I was just wondering if anyone here has any tried-and-true method for keeping track of these things.

Thanks so much!

Melissa

[MTH]

I write each chapter and keep it as a separate file until the end. In another file I make an outline which contains all the chapters in the order they presently are, where I note the plot development, what the reader knows or a character knows. Another reason I keep the chapters separate is because as I write I often find that moving some developments father back or moving them forward makes a better story. It's also easier having an outline because you can look at the outline sequence chapter by chapter and move things and see how it might help or hurt the story. If you decide to move chapter four to chapter six, you can try it on the outline and then easily see what ELSE needs to be changed because of this. Having each chapter in a separate file means you don't have to cut and paste a long document and you can make the changes you saw in the outline swap more easily. Anyway, this is one of the things that makes writing a difficult job...