Organizing My Characters

“Look at me, Conan!”  She threw wide her arms.  “I am Bêlit, queen of the black coast.  Oh, tiger of the North, you are cold as the snowy mountains which bred you.  Take me and crush me with your fierce love!  Go with me to the ends of the earth and the ends of the sea!  I am a queen by fire and steel and slaughter — be thou my king!”

— Bêlit

(excerpt from, Queen of the Black Coast, by Robert E. Howard)

Characters

Because world-building can be such a daunting (and sometimes overwhelming) task, I wanted to make sure, from the beginning, that my project was well organized and intuitive.  To that end, I’ve been trying to spend a little time each night organizing and editing some aspect of my [World-Building] project.  Lately, I’ve been organizing my [Characters] folder, which has many character-template files in it, all at various levels of completion.  Some of my main characters are decently defined, but they lack depth, personality, history and motivation right now (all of this will be refined later).  Most of the files are just generically-named placeholders of future characters I may need for my story plots (the cast of characters, as it were).  Here’s how my [Characters] folder is organized right now:

[Protagonists]

• [Heroes] — This folder contains all of my male lead characters.
• [Heroines] — This folder contains all of my female lead characters.

• [Allies] — This folder contains important secondary characters, including family members, friends, sidekicks, and mentors.

[Antagonists]

• [Villains] — This folder contains all of the main villains, including overlords, warlords, and arch-villains.

• [Henchmen] — This folder contains all of the main villain’s subordinates, including body-guards, bounty-hunters, spies, and assassins.

• [Adversaries] — This folder contains any character (excluding the villain and his underlings) that might get in the way of the protagonist’s goals, including rivals, traitors and scorned ex-lovers.

[Neutral Characters]

• [Supporting Cast of Extras] — This folder contains ambivalent characters (neither friend nor foe), like merchants, inn-keepers and bar-maids.

[Cannon Fodder] (expendable enemies that must die!)

• [Human Enemies] — Includes: enemy soldiers, rival mercenaries, elite assassins, savage cannibals, raiders, marauders, thugs, criminals, lunatics, zealots, fanatics and cultists (just to name a few).

• [Monsters] — Oh, yes! Monsters!  Lots of Monsters!  Everything from giant carnivorous predators to summoned hell-spawn to man-beast monstrosities!  I have a special character-template for monsters (more on that in a later blog post).

This style of organization may change as I move forward with the project.  I may combine some folders or add others later as needed.  So far, this method of organization is working for me.  I will go over some of the variables that I include in my character-template files in a future post...