Hey everyone! Happy February! I hope everyone is doing well!
For this post, I decided on another writing tip! This one is a little bit different than my normal writing tips, as it doesn’t have to do with writing directly, but rather more as something useful for a writer, and a fantasy writer especially.
Now perhaps you’re not one of these people, but when I write, my writing tends to be longer rather than shorter. And the longer my stories get, the more complex they tend to become. I’m a sucker for family relations and family reveals (like Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker’s father, for example), therefore, it’s only natural for me that my characters are often connected one to another.
And when you have over ten characters who are all related to each other by someway or another, sometimes it would be helpful to see them all together in one big family tree.
And that is where this writing tip comes in! There is a site which I love called Family Echo. It is a free, online family tree maker. Unlike other family tree sites which hook up historical and factual data to real, actual people, this one allows you to put in whatever info you wish about the person (or character) and go from there. All you have to do is create an account and get started! My current family tree for my fantasy story has almost three-hundred characters already on it!
If you have a growing amount of characters who are related to each other, or just want to have fun laying out the relationships between a few characters, I would highly recommend using Family Echo’s site for your character family tree building needs!
I hope this writing tip will help anyone who’s been struggling to keep all their characters straight! How many characters do you have on one family tree? Will you be using this site to create a family tree for your characters? Let me know in the comments below!
My next writing tip will be on how to easily create a vast family between multiple generations of characters who aren’t even mentioned in the stories. Stay tuned for it! God bless! ~ Kay Leigh
Kay Adelin 