When you're writing a story, do you make family trees? I obviously would since I'm attempting to write a family saga, and I wanted to get my characters organized so I wouldn't get them confused when I began writing. What do you think of this tactic?
I think for anyone with generational or complex family relationships in their story would find a family tree very helpful - and there are several free programs for genealogy which would also allow you to keep track of your notes on the 'family history'.
Yeah, it's pretty useful. It's also pretty useful in historical fiction, sci-fi-, or fantasy epics where you might have relatives all involved in a story.
I made a family tree for my main character. I am thinking of making trees for more characters too. At least the most important characters.
I'm with Drusilla. I usually do family trees for the MCs only. One of my biggest family tree I did went from my MC from the 1700s all the way to my MC in modern times.
I'm currently working on a historical, and the family tree (condensed) of the title character is a major planning tool for me.
I think this is a great tactic. For a short story I'm working on I plan on making a family tree since the main antagonist is the uncle to my main characters who are twins. Well technically I have it planned that he's their step uncle, but still in my opinion their uncle.
I don't usually do this for my stories - if a relative needs to be mentioned they pop up but for one story involving an inherited company I had to trace the history of the company down through the forefathers and show how certain decisions changed the shape of the company and how the company changed hands. It was helpful especially on paper where I could tape it up near my work space. When I do things on the computer, I can lose track of them in a hidden folder, sometimes there's nothing like good old fashioned paper!
