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Sims 3
Each expansion pack gives you more items to choose from in creating your characters and homes. It's a game, not a designer, but I have turned it into the building program for my characters, homes, and scenery. If you decide to play the character you create, you can make her an author--but writing is considered stressful and not fun by characters...hmmm....
Keeping Track of the Details in Your Novel
A novel is a big writing project for an author and one of the biggest challenges facing a new novelist is continuity. There are a million details to keep track of over the course of hundreds of pages. A mistake will leap out and your reader and pull him out of the story and that reader will be a potential publisher. If you want to be published, the details matter. I'm not a detail person, so this has always been a challenge for me.
The first time I tried to write a novel, decades ago before I switched to non-fiction, my young hero was an only child right up until he had an argument with his little sister in chapter three. Oops! I learned I need to keep track of things like this. If I listed a fact, I had to record it somewhere. This is particularly important in a published series, where you have to be consistent through many books.
I recently read a book in which the main character, who was staying in an abandoned house, mentioned three times not having any electricity, and yet he turned on the television he found in the basement. If the author had referred to it as a battery-operated television, I would have moved on, but instead, I stopped being involved in the plot to wonder how the television worked. I decided the television was magic since the character first found and watched it in the basement, but in a later scene, it was in an upstairs bedroom, from which he then walked into the back yard. (Really? From the second floor?) Later, someone else watched that television in the living room, and yet no one ever moved the television set. Pretty soon I was ignoring the plot and focusing only on following that television set around the house. You don't want your readers focused on a minor detail in your novel instead of your brilliant plot, so make sure you know where the television is, what floor the bedroom is on, and what color the hero's eyes are. If he hates peanut butter in one chapter, he'd better continue to hate it throughout the rest of the book unless you detail a change a heart. If he goes to the store to put food into an empty house, he can't eat anything that wasn't purchased during that trip if you outlined what he bought.
In my current project, the challenge is rocks. I have sixteen stones that need to be found by the time the climax arrives. The heroine finds one each time a turning point occurs in the story. However, I eventually realized I wasn't sure how many rocks had been found or if there would be exactly sixteen turning points before the climax. I use colors in my outline to keep track of POV, so I decided to give the rocks a color as well. Each time one is found, I note it in my chosen color. I also went through the outline and decided when the rocks needed to be found in order to be certain I had enough turning points and that I didn't forget to put a rock into the scene. As silly as it seems, some reader will count those rocks and call you on it if you're one short or two over.
You probably created a character sheet when you started developing your book. Make sure you check it before adding descriptions or minor details. You may also want to create item sheets, keeping track of your non-human things. Consider making pictures, as well. I used the Sims 3 game to create the house for a mystery I'm writing for the fun of it. (At least for now, it's just for fun.) I realized I had no clear idea of how the house was laid out or which children shared bedrooms. When the mother goes to check on her frightened children, where does she go? Now, when she checks on the three year old, I not only know where the bedroom is, I know exactly what is in the room and who shares it with that child. I found the game's house builder was easier to use than an architectural design program. I also used the character builder to create the people in the story so I'd know just what they look like. This was a little limited, since I had to make all the children the same age and I had trouble choosing clothes that met the style of one teen, but it gave me the general idea. I don't draw and finding pictures in magazines wasn't helping me. My characters didn't look like models.
Call to Action: Go through your manuscript and make a file for all the details you've included. Make sure of little things. What flowers are in the flower bed? Does the heroine have to stand on tip-toe to reach the top shelf? What outfit is she wearing today? And most importantly...where is the television set? If you mention something, you have to stay consistent until the situation changes.
I keep a binder for every writing project. I print everything out and keep it here for safety and for when I want to read it over in a more comfortable place. I like those covers that let you put a picture into them. I use something related to the book--in this case, the building my book centers around.