Using Scrivener for Creating Characters

As part of my recent round of edits, and in celebration for having current(ish) drafts of the books, I started doing some serious worldbuilding.  I also decided to get some in-depth character sheers/reference pics for my characters, since I had finally pinned down their arcs and stuff.

But where to keep it all?  Before this time, I kept all the info scattered across Pinterest boards, word docs, notebooks, and the dark recesses of my memory.  I tried looking into a few sites, and while I found them a little helpful, I also have limited internet access (and mostly on my tiny iPhone, which is no fun).

So I decided to try using Scrivener.  And I think it works, so here is my process for character building within Scrivener.  Enjoy!

First I set up a new Scrivener File.  I titled it after the world, and saved it to my documents.

Next order of business is to get organized.  I started a folder for Characters and made another one for Places.  There is already a Templates folder.  I also create a Timeline folder and another folder for misc. things that I might want to look up.  If you have lots of animals in your book, you might want to do a Animal folder.  Then I customized the icons to things I felt fit the contents.

Then you create your templates!  Follow the instructions to create templates for character and place sheets. 

Personal Preference: I set each group of questions in a different font.  This makes it a little more organized and easier to quickly find something while hunting for it.

Once you have your templates, you can start entering in all your characters and places.  Don't fill out the sheets, we're not there yet!  Pick a template, and select "Create with Template."  Name the page with the character's name and drag to where you want it on the sidebar.  Repeat until all your characters are entered in.  I like to have them alphabetized, but you can drag and drop to arrange however you want - order of importance, age, appearance in story, you name it!

Now it's finally time to start filling out the character sheets, and this is where Scrivener really shines.

Pull up your first character and start filling out the sheet.  When you reference another character (maybe a parent, friend, or enemy) or place (birthplace, hometown), double click on the name and make a Scrivener link.  Now, whenever you click the link, the screen splits and you can pull up the file on that person or place.  So you can easily make connections and make sure you aren't missing anything.

Creating a link

Click the link and it pulls up that page.

For pictures, you can insert into the sidebar.

The sidebar can also be used to create labels for your characters. You can tweak this however you want. I personally use them for keeping track of the races of everyone: are they Raybirn, Telae, Roche, etc. The label I use also shows up on the index cards, so I can see at a glance where each person hails from.

For creating timelines I made a new folder and created a new document/index card for each scene. Now I can see at a glance how things play out and can easily move around and rearrange scenes by dragging and dropping the cards. Once I finish getting the timeline created, I will include notes on the cards, most likely about what each scene does to move the story forward (just haven't gotten to that part yet, lol).

I hope you enjoyed this sneak peak into my Scrivener file and maybe got motivated to try a few things out for yourself!  (Please bear in mind that Scrivener can probably do waaaay more than this; this is just how I use it.)(And I didn't really bother with the tutorial. I watched it, got overload, forgot everything, and decided to do whatever I wanted.)

Also, haven't done any worldbuilding yet with Scrivener.  Might do a post on that someday, if I feel like whatever I decide to do turns out alright.