I’ve had some questions about the nuts and bolts of how I write, so I’ve decided to dedicate a post the The Book Making Machine or BMM.
The BMM is a software tool that I develop myself. It’s a php/mysql web based tool that I use to keep track of essentially everything in my setting. I’m mostly an amateur developer, so I run the tool locally within my home network so that I don’t have to spend too much time hardening it.
So, as for what it does, it’s relatively simple. It keeps track of:
– events
– cast members
– genealogy
– affiliations
– locations
– titles/ranks
– units (military, but also things like who might work for an organisation or company)
– distances (to calculate travel times)
– locomotion (modes of transport and their speeds, also important for travel times)
– species
– calendar
– map (early days this)
I’m going to add storylines soon too, so I can see all events/cast/locations etc. associated with a storyline within a setting in one click.
Obviously this tool is critical. In a setting like Tales of Vatan the feudal aspect and by extension the genealogy of families over thousands of years is important. Obviously I can’t remember all of that, for Tales of Vatan there are over 1200 characters so far. Most of them are not actually in any of the storylines, but they serve to tie the genealogy together (and as you generate them they often inadvertently lead to their own small stories).
I’m not going to post any screenshots of setting related data as its more or less impossible to do that without it leading to spoilers, but I think it’s clear that this tool is pretty important for me to keep everything in order.
I know there are commercial programs that many authors use to do more or less the same thing, but I just want infinite customisability and the BMM has served me very well so far. Sometimes, when I don’t know where to go with a story it also helps to put into place either because I just randomly add people and places to fill things out or because I develop some more functionality.