Do you write stuff down?

[Kay M]

Is your daydream all kept in your head, or do you write or draw stuff too?

 

I have a whole folder of it on my computer-I keep a diary in my character's point of view, I have a spreadsheet of all of the main information on each character in her huge family, a family tree, cartoon pictures (from those create your own stick figure family websites) representing all of the family members and their kids, as well as the main character's friends and regular characters in her life, like the people she works with and her neighbours. I have one that I use to plan the addition of babies to the family-currently four characters are pregnant-so I have planned out their due dates, and think of possible baby names, flip a coin for sex unless it is important to the story, and I even have countdown widgets to their due date, that I have hidden away in a secret area only I can see, in a forum I created-I do the same thing with all of the babies born over the course of the story, starting from about two years ago, as well as my daydream children's ages. I have drawn the layout of my character's blog on Paint, the diary I keep is written as if she has a blog. I wanted to create her a blog, but I didn't want people to believe me at first and then realise the character isn't real. I also have some short stories I wrote, mostly from my character's point of view, but a few from other relatives of hers. I cant write the whole daydream as a story, as there is just so much going on at once that it doesn't translate well into words. I have a document of Q&A posts, based on questions asked real large families I follow online (in my daydream, my character has 16 kids). Then I have a random document that has everything else in-I planned my character's wedding, I have random descriptions of the main character giving a tour of various rooms of her house, in detail, a list of all of her pets names and species, put together a shopping list for such a large family (based on my own cooking for me and my four kids, but made big enough for my imaginary partner and 16 kids), planned out what Christmas gifts I would get my daydream kids (for two years running), thought of new storylines for the future (like that the crazy religious aunt who has been claiming to be pregnant with the second coming of Jesus for years will actually find some way to get hold of a baby and use it to gain her reputation back in the cult she is in, and I plan for one of the characters who has just gotten a boyfriend to get pregnant (done) and then be in a rush to get married while heavily pregnant, then end up as a total bridezilla, lol).

 

Written down on paper, I have a folder in my drawers that contains drawings of the family. Sometimes I like to recreate pictures that my character had taken, like her wedding photos and family photos. I also have a floor plan of their house drawn out.

[Cordellia Amethyste Rose]

Wow, that's amazing.  I'm 34 and have building the same fantasy world since I was 9.  There have been so many changes and story lines since then that I can hardly keep it straight, let alone figure out how to write it down.  I turned a couple of the story lines into stories when I had to write for class, and I wrote a couple of very limited descriptions for a couple of people, but I would never have the energy to do what you have done.  

[The1andonlyAbber]

Wow. I thought I was the only one who kept such careful records! My daydream takes place on a bunch of other planets that don't even exist. My character is part of a species of aliens that I made up. Since my daydreams don't take place in the real world, I have to write down a lot of stuff because, well, I can't just Google it if I forget it, LOL.

[The1andonlyAbber]

I have drawings of characters, lists of names and ages of each person in my character's family, a little factfile on each of the more important characters, a record of my daydream storyline, drawings of random things from my imaginary world, a partial floor plan of my character's family's house, a list of imaginary planets, maps of places in my imaginary universe, a fake scientific article I wrote (well, some random researcher in my imaginary world wrote it, but of course in real life it was me) on the genetic structure of my characters' species, a list of government officials in my characters' empire, lists of things that are unique to my characters' culture, food webs (alien planets don't have the same animals that Earth does!)...just to name a few. I tried making a family tree for my characters' family a few times but it didn't work because there were just too many cousins, LOL. I've even thought about drawing some star charts (my character lives in a fictional galaxy), but astronomy is not my strong suit. I also write down minor things that are hard to remember. For example, my main characters are going to be in a play soon, so I'm going to have to write down a list of who gets which role.