Day 302: Series Character Overview spreadsheet

I’ve felt terrible health-wise for the past week, and today was the first day I’ve woken up and didn’t feel like roadkill. I still don’t feel 100%, but I want to try to get work done since it looks like almost the entire month of March has been a loss, in terms of my writing.

I actually did do some work on my Hawaii novella on March 24th, even though I didn’t post on my writing blog that day, but I only got a couple hours of work done before I started feeling sick (menstrual pain). After that passed, I also had IBS issues and I didn’t start to feel better until today.

I’ll be working on Snowflake step 2 for my Hawaii novella today. I realized that when I worked on it on the 24th, I’d marked them as steps 2 and 4 when in actuality, they were too detailed and were more like steps 4 and 6. So I will work on step 2, then go on to step 8 and blocking.

I’m also trying out a new desk arrangement that I hope will be better for my core and back. I’m using a buckwheat meditation pillow to sit on and I found a bamboo computer laptop tray that extends to the right height for my keyboard and trackball. I’ll see how my back feels today.

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I finished Snowflake step 2, but before going to step 8 and blocking, I worked on the characters’ spiritual and romantic arcs to make sure they were cohesive, and then also filled in the Series Character Overview spreadsheet for both of them.

My Series Character Overview spreadsheet is very simple, but it gives me a quick glance at each of the characters’ external, spiritual, and romantic conflicts. I have one column that has:
Archetype
Job
Wound/unerasable sin
Background/Ordinary World
Spiritual conflict
Needs to learn
Scripture
Doesn’t want to be with him/her because:
Needs him/her because:
External goal
External conflict
Villain
Inciting Incident
Disaster 1
Disaster 2
Disaster 3
Why am I passionate about this book?

Then to the right of that column, I have one column per character and I fill in those factors. For the “Villain” and “Why am I passionate about this book?”, I will often have the same for both the hero and heroine, but the other cells are usually specific for each character.

I will do a column for each character in the entire series, so for my Hawaii series, I have 16 columns, with two characters per book. This helps me to make sure I don’t accidentally repeat the external, spiritual, and/or romantic conflicts for another book.

My Series Character Overview spreadsheet actually is very much like a combination of Snowflake steps 3 and 5, except in spreadsheet format rather than a paragraph. I also have a file with my character information, but my Series Character Overview spreadsheet is more of a summary of the main characters in the entire series.

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I finished my Series Character Overview spreadsheet for the hero and heroine in The Wedding Kimono, so now I’ll work on Snowflake step 8 and blocking.

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Did some Snowflake step 8 and blocking, but intestines started cramping so I decided to stop.

I’m not sure how to feel about my new desk arrangement. On one hand, the bamboo tray is great for my typing and trackball, but my back doesn’t feel fantastic. My posture is better than my old setup, so it might simply be that I need to get used to this.

Outlining: time spent: 2 hours, 53 minutes

Blocking: time spent: 1 hour, 57 minutes

Editing: Time spent: 0

Writing: Time spent: 0

Writing: Total number of words: 0

Writing: Average speed (sprints): 0

Writing: Overall writing speed: 0

Time spent doing other writing-related business: 0