: Re: How to keep track of characters' location, within a longer narrative? I'm currently working on a piece which has characters coming and going. Basically, sometimes a side character is near the

@Carla500

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I use Excel.

You do have to keep track of your own material — nothing will do it for you — but a basic spreadsheet with columns of Chapter, Scene, Location, Day of Week, Time of Day, and maybe Characters will do wonders for keeping you organized.

My answer to Is there any good time-line software out there? is similar enough to useful, but it's not identical, so I'll adapt that idea here:

Ch4|Sc16|The docks|Wed|03:12|Tony
Ch4|Sc17|The docks|Wed|04:17|Sasha and Bear
Ch4|Sc18|in front of Sasha's house|Wed|12:30ish|Alex, David, Elliot
Ch4|Sc19|FLASHBACK Sasha's house|N/A, First Day of School|Morning|Sasha, Alex, Bear, Mom
Ch4|Sc20|Sasha's house|Wed|afternoon|Sasha,Alex, David, Elliot

Some notes: for times, you can use vague terms like "12:30ish" and "afternoon" or "morning." It doesn't have to be precise if your narrative doesn't require it.

If you have people in multiple cities at the same time, you will need columns for each city so you can keep track of the time difference. This is very important if your story has modern technology (the phone or greater) so that if Person A is in Berlin and Person B is in Hong Kong, they're aware of who might be waking up whom and so on.

I added in a FLASHBACK note, so that it's clear that while the action of the scene is taking place 20 years back, it's not occurring in the "present" of the narrative.

If Sasha leaves the docks, at the end of the scene, add that in your last column. "Sasha and Bear talk, then argue. Sasha leaves." Maybe you have a row in between saying "Sasha en route home" or something.

The upshot is that keeping notes in a row-by-column condensed format can be very useful in shorthand terms of figuring out where and when everyone is.

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