The Worldbuilder Diaries: Organization of Characters

Keeping track of your characters can be a daunting task, especially when working on a larger series. I can’t claim to have the best tips or answers to all of your burning organizational questions, but I can share what I do.

Lists

I often make multiple lists of characters for any given project. One is always a standard list of names that I can refer back to. This list includes main characters, side characters, and any character that is named otherwise. It helps me keep track of which names have been used so I don’t duplicate any.

Then I create other lists as the project goes on. For my epic fantasy works, I usually have one dedicated for each faction, and sometimes others based on character roles. I’ll use The Mage War Chronicles as my example today, since that’s the project I’m actively working on.

I currently have six separate lists for the series, beyond the standard name list I keep. There’s a list of dragon-kind, one for human mages (which is then split between the Oracle’s followers, the Triad’s, and those unaffiliated with either group), another for the mercenaries, one for the various assassins (split further into which guild they belong to), etc. A few characters appear on multiple lists.

With so many different factions in the series, this was the best way I’ve come up with to keep track of everyone, who they follow, and which side they’re affiliated with.

For instance, the character who goes by the alias of Specter appears on three separate lists: the mages, the assassins, and the Sevanni. He is first introduced in book three of the series and plays a significant role in books five and seven. As the series progresses, his role naturally evolves, so I make additional notes to my lists as needed.

Side note: I don’t make nearly as many lists for standalone books, since they’re usually not as involved as series are.

The Primary List of Names

As I mentioned above, I make one of these for every writing project I start. When I first started writing, it was nothing more than an alphabetized list of character names with brief notes on their role if they were a minor character.

More recently, I’ve adjusted my approach a little bit, thanks to a tip I got from fellow author, Kat Kinney. She suggested trying to limit the number of characters whose name begins with the same letter by starting the list with A-Z and filling it out as the project evolves.

I was intrigued by the idea, because I have a habit of overusing the same first letter. By the time I saw her tip, I’d already published the first book in The Caein Legacy, and if you’ve read that series, you know there are some “favored” letters for names there: Andrew, Alexander, Colin, Claire, Chela… It was a little too late to update those books at that point, but I’ve started to implement it for my newer projects.

My first attempt at using this method was with Wraith and the Revolution, and I found that I really liked organizing my character names this way. The only downside was that it forced me to change the spelling of one of the main characters’ names—Zorin Johnston had been a fixture in some of my earliest writing attempts, back in middle school, but in the final novel his name was changed to Sorin. There would have been too many Z names otherwise, and his was the easiest to change.

Limiting the use of the same letter for names makes sense from a reader perspective too. It’s easier for a reader to recognize a character name if the first letter is unique from the rest, than if a book has multiple of the same letter (but I do make an exception for names within the same family. It isn’t that unusual for siblings to be given names starting with the same letter.)

The Sub-Lists

Each secondary list I make is unique for the series, and I add more as needed.

When I first started writing The Mage War Chronicles back in 2020, book 1 only had two lists: the dragon-kind and the mages. Those happened to be the types of characters featured most prominently in book 1.

When I started in on book 2, I added the split to the mages list to differentiate between the Oracle’s followers, the Triad loyalists, and the mages unaffiliated with either side. I also added the mercenaries to a separate list.

Then in book 3, I added the Sevanni, as the main character is that species and the bulk of the book is set in his home land.

But for Wraith and the Revolution, I didn’t create any sub-lists. It’s a standalone, and the notes I made to the main character list were sufficient. The nature and how many lists I create is dependent on the project…and the larger the project is, the more lists are typically needed.

I know my method won’t work for everyone, but it works for me. Hopefully this will help someone out there with wrangling their characters into some kind of order.