I am certain there are many authors out there who can just sit down in front of a blank page and start spilling their literary genius all over it without preparing the a roadmap of what they'll do and still end up with a really good manuscript, but most of us aren't luminaries and can use -actually, we should use- all tools at our disposal.
If any of you has played old fashioned table role playing games, you might remember the joy of filling up your character sheet and start creating something or something out of dice throws and a few sets of rules. Now imagine if those rules didn't exist and you just started swinging blindly into the general direction you'd like your character to go. Seems kinda difficult, right?
The same principal of the character sheet can be used when writing long stories. Start by building layouts for your characters, almost like the aforementioned character sheets. Write down their details: age, nationality, hair color, virtues, flaws and whatever else you feel can be summarized in no more than a few words. Then, when that basic layout is done, write a few paragraphs describing it's background, motivations and story.
This text won't necessarily make it into your final draft -and probably not even into the first one- but having this particular, encapsulated information will prove useful when you properly start your story and the characters have to interact amongst them.
Having a separated folder with all your character sheets will help you order your ideas and what characters should and should not show up in your tale.
And besides, writing a character profile outside a given story is a great exercise.
Have more techniques you use to organize your ideas? Share them in the comments, I'll be more than happy to read them!
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