Creating a Family Saga - FS9 - Keeping Track of Characters and Threads

I am going to attempt to respond to Bill as he does so well in his weekly Mailbags. I owe it to him, and to the rest of my readers. If you are new to “The Homeplace Saga” stories, characters and time periods, you will also want to read at least Episode FS8, in this Creating a Family Saga series, and a few others, as well. As a starting point, let me remind you that I originally created the “Back to the Homeplace” initial story and set of family characters in 1987. I’ve lived with them a long time. I revisited them in 2009 with the intent to polish and publish that first novel in 2010, which I did. This was followed a year later by a continuation of the characters, setting, and family saga story in the second book in the series, in 2011. It was at about this time that I created my Developmental Wiki to begin the process of organization to which I believe Bill refers.

You can view the wiki at: http://__homeplace.wikispaces.com. Remove the __, of course. I put that in so that HubPages does not penalize me for two many links in this hub… ;-)

Note the left sidebar in the Wiki: About This Wiki, Character Files, and Oak Springs Directory. These are my quick reference guides. At Character Files, the main characters each have links with icons on that front page. However, all characters are listed, alphabetically by first name, on a link near the bottom of the page. This list was initially created so as not to duplicate names in those first two novels. It has since been expanded to include names of characters added in the third and fourth novels that followed, as well as the stories added by way of the blog stories, such as the one now running each Friday.

The Oak Springs Directory has a full list of the businesses and governmental agencies in the town of Oak Springs, the setting of all the stories, with icons for each. Click on them, and you get a page with more detail, background and history, on each entity. Often there will be links to the owners of the business, if they have a personal page. This is an ongoing work-in-progress. However, of course, I can go to these resources at any time to refresh my memory on any questions I might need to recall, or build on.

All of my “The Homeplace Saga” family saga, historical fiction stories are based on my extensive family history research background and personal family observations along with experiences over an already extended life span (I’ve outlived my father by 15 years at this point, for example). As I created the stories set in the 1980s and 1990s, the content of the stories was closely related to the (more than) 150 years the same family had been on the farmland in the same location… a Century Farm plus a half plus. To further understand these motivations, bit-by-bit, over time, I found (internally, personally) I had to discover (that is, create) the family history of this McDonald/Bevins family back to near State of Missouri statehood. This resulted in a skeletal ‘family tree’ in my best genealogical form, including a fully computerized database - right along side my own real family history.

With dates and life-spans, births and marriages in place, to fit with the known ‘facts’ from the first novels, I began writing some short stories about ‘The Founding,’ beginning in 1833 with the arrival of the first four ‘founding families’ in the Oak Creek valley, which would become the home of the town of Oak Springs. Three of these first stories were published, over three years, in a Regional Writer’s Society Anthology. A lot of actual research of the time and place (turned out it was the northwest corner of Shannon County - site of a state park, no actual settlements) went in to making the fictional site as realistic as possible. I even drew maps with the topographical features and then added the settlements as they occurred in my stories. As a good genealogist, of course, I created a Census in 1840, in 1850, and 1860 just as would have been done in real-life. Creating those census data sets, of course, then became the reference point for the characters, the people of the valley. I grew up in a small, rural community like I was creating, so I knew how families inter-married, new folks moved in, some folks moved out, and the patterns of children and schools and businesses developing. I used the actual U.S. Census data for nearby counties for surnames, given names, and for businesses of the time period.

At first I used all hand-drawn maps, then I went to computerized maps, to keep track of all the people on the various farms. Then, when the town was formed, just like in real-life, I platted the town, and began to record who owned which lots and where each business was located. That map has gotten quite detailed up into the 1880s. There was one big problem, however. This spot in the U.S.A., in Missouri, was right on the dividing line of the North and South in the Civil War. Towns in this location were totally wiped out by marauding bands, from both sides. So, this created more stories, and revisions (start over again after the war) to the maps. All but two people left the valley, living in caves, but who came back? More stories… you can read them all in the Short Story Collection book, or you can read them in the blog. They are all there. Between the maps and the census reports, adjusted, updated, and re-recorded, you have the organization of the 1833 to 1880s where those stories continue to this day, on HubPages. BTW, the most recent census set, for 1885, is about 15 typed pages long, with every family and every child…

This will be the 143rd Hub in this set, plus 20 in the Weston Wagons West for Levi Weston, and 24 in the Murder, He Figured book of Raynor Crimmons… in addition to the four novels and the Short Story Collection that all are about the same characters and setting over the 1833 to 1999 time frame, with more to come.

For every new hub I create, I do often go back and read from one to ten previous ones. Some require reading, or at least scanning, more than 20 hubs. I’ve grouped many of the episodes, hubs, into groups of 20 and put them in ebook formats. Frequently I use the Word file for these to do key word searches for that time period to check a fact (such as wedding details) as I need to know something about a person or a family.

That is how I go about it, Bill. Hope it is helpful, to you as well as my other readers. This was kind of fun. Soon, the Super Bowl will be on. Go. Broncos! ;-)