Character Status Focus Sheet Create a character portrait chart to know your character. A handy sheet to keep track of your character's, um... characteristics, after all, you don't want him rubbing the scab on his left shoulder in chapter 24, after watching the knife cut his right shoulder in chapter nine. I slightly customized this sheet, but the basic form is from one of my favorite writer's book, "The Complete Guide To Writing Fiction and Nonfiction, And Getting It Published, by Pat Kubis and Bob Howland. This 290 paged paper back is an absolutely fabulous reference book. An incredibly detailed index helps you find your answer immediately. Concise and concrete information is demonstrated with perfect and telling excerpts. I highly recommend this book.
Character Goal Focus Sheet Whether your plot is serious or comic, it must first work as a story. This sheet is a brief template for making that difficult thing happen. This sheet will help you write the barest bones of a story, so that with ten sentences or less, you can find out if you have an interesting, workable story or not. This Cheat Sheet comes directly from a book called, "The Comic Tool Box, How To Be Funny Even If Your Not" by John Vorhaus. Don't be fooled, you can't go wrong with this book, no matter how dark or gothic your story. This amazing and amusing little paper back dedicates a huge portion of text to solid story structure. Vorhaus feels, and rightly so, that the more solid the story, the funnier it will be. He goes into great detail for each of the nine questions on this sheet, using examples from books and movies. This book is worth buying just for the jokes-- but story structure is dead serious, it can make or break your book.
Story Boarding Focus Sheet This is a brief sheet for producing scenes with impact. This sheet helps focus your mind and find the heart of the scene-which is conflict- and bring that scene to life. This sheet is meant for each small scene, but can also be used to outline a chapter or book. Story Boarding gives you time to think, a breathing space before writing, to connect the pulse of your scene to the larger rhythm of your novel. This Story Boarding sheet came from "The Weekend Novelist" by Robert J. Ray. Don't let the casual title put you off, this book is quite technical on the art of writing. Ray has a detailed chapter on Story Boarding and uses Anne Tyler's Accidental Tourist in his example.
Driving Forces of Motivation This sheet helps you decide exactly what kind of person your character will be. Realistically, your bad guy cannot just be bad, and your good guy cannot just be good. This sheet demonstrates a couple of different complex personality profiles and how to combine them for maximum effect. It helps analyze the secondary characters in your story-- after all, every character from the hero to the bell hop, has his own personal motives and agenda, of course, you don't need to show all those motives, just keep them in mind for realistic dialogue.