My ensemble cast is growing. I swear I outlined backstories for our four intrepid high school age werewolves (nee football players – an idea stolen from Fire From the Sky and every Army recruiter in the last century).
I couldn’t remember who came from where and had what. “Open that backstory file,” I thought to myself. Half an hour later, I admitted defeat. If I had written it down, as opposed to just thought about it a lot, the file has vanished. It probably saved to some wildly unrelated directory without me noticing. Terabyte drives are not an unalloyed good.
Backstories.odt now exists – in the right directory – with a list of characters and their pasts. “Their pasts” are a paragraph, but as things come up, I now have a place to note the detail.
For example, Ken (our sheriff) has: 35 at start. Dad was a cop. Rookie in city. People too crazy. Relative (uncle-ish) died. Left place in Kier to ‘anyone who wanted it and would live there’. Ken called; only one cop job in town, happens to be available. He took it and the place. Family not thrilled, but the sale money wouldn’t have been much, so not too pissed at him. Eventually became Sheriff.
Don’t know his dad’s name, what his mother did, what city, what relative, how big a family, who hired him, what happened to that person, how one becomes a sheriff, or where the two city cops (one formerly Ken, the other mystery person) are now.
I don’t even know how big the county in which Kier is located is. I’ll probably need to look it up, eventually. No, Kier is not real, but the location is.
Now I have a place to write it down if it ever comes up. No reason places cannot have an entry in a backstory file.
BTW: The entire point was to send one of the guys to get some SciFi movies for the dungeon. The question was: Which guy would have some? Three hours later, that not quite throw-away question is answered: Rick.
Update: Most of the places in the book are real places. It’s post-apocalypse South Dakota. All the roads are still in the same places. The featured image is Pete’s farm. I have no idea what that really is, but it is in the right place and easily findable without typing lat/long coordinates into Google Maps. I don’t give directions, but someone sufficiently motivated could figure out a lot of it. I plan on road trip later this summer to see it all for myself.
Marked Up 