Maps and links

 This week I'm 5,000 words into writing the third novella for the series I want to self-publish.  The series is about a military starship who travels the vast expanses of the universe.

When I wrote novella one I threw in a couple of space stations (which I didn't name), but most of the action took place on one planet.  That was relatively easy.  I just needed to draw a map of the continent my characters were travelling across.

When I came to novella two, they were crossing a lot more space, and putting in at many more space stations.  I realised I needed a star map to keep those journeys straight.  So I took a piece of blank paper and started drawing in space stations.

I'd already created the Outlier colonies, those worlds which were furthest away from the Central worlds,  So I put them at the left hand edge of my piece of paper, and started moving towards the right.

One of the characters who needs rescuing works for a civilian shipline which normally travels the Zurrial Triangle route between the Outliers.  It sounded good when I named it, but I had no idea where it was.

So I created a roughly triangle-shaped collection of space stations, with a scatter of planets close to them.  So far, so good.  That triangle linked to other stations in the Outliers, but then I realised that if people were travelling between the Outliers and the Central worlds there needed to be a spine route between them, a central highway.

So I created the spine route of more stations back towards the Central worlds.  I haven't set any story action in the Central worlds yet, but I realised that, if I do, I'll need to draw a complete new star map with the stations there.

Over the series my characters would be putting into the same stations multiple times.  Every time they dock, two of my characters go on-station to get information from local contacts.  That meant they'd be meeting the same people multiple times over the series.  So I needed to create a new list.  I needed a list which linked those contacts with the stations they inhabited.

So now, as well as my usual character table which records the names and details of characters, I also have an extra list recording contacts and their stations.

I haven't yet come across any problem caused by my not doing the maps and lists right at  the start, but it does mean I'm going to have to go back into that first novella and name the stations I didn't.

Oh, well.  At least the lists should help me keep things straight for the rest of the series.