Decades ago, I wrote The Castle in the Attic, a middle-grade fantasy novel.
To both the publisher’s and my surprise, it became a best-seller. Readers wrote asking me to write a sequel which I did eight years after the first book in what we began calling a series. The Battle in the Castle continued the time-traveling story of William and his best friend, Jason, who go back to the 15th Century, taking a bicycle with them.
The books were praised as award-winning modern classics and readers clamored for more stories of William, but I had other ideas in mind. And this writer has found that she must follow where her imagination leads.
So decades passed and during Covid, while waiting for the launch of my memoir for adults, Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies, the world of William and Mrs. Phillips called to me again so I wrote a prequel set forty some years before William’s story. And now that the memoir is firmly launched and finding readers, I am starting work on what will be the fourth and final book in the Castle series.
And I need help.
As a writer, I’ve never been able to make use of a program like Scrivener which seems to simply duplicate how I handle my files and folders on my computer. But when you’re writing the fourth book in a series, you suddenly have many more characters to juggle than when you started. So I’m forcing myself to create and commit to a genealogical chart for the characters, a file that is titled WHO KNOWS WHAT WHEN, a chart that shows the four different time periods I’m working in (1944/1366 and 1987/1415) and so on. My brain is scrambled.
I’d love to hear from anybody who has used AI or any other program that helps a writer to sort and streamline this level of detail. Although my first reaction to the idea of Artificial Intelligence was pure horror and I continue to be furious that companies have scanned my books to train AI bots, I’m beginning to wonder whether AI might be in fact useful to a slightly muddled writer like myself. Perhaps, like other tools and platforms I use for research or editing, AI can push me deep into the creative process faster than I can on my own. Maybe it will let me spend less time worrying about William’s actual birthdate and more time figuring out how he feels.
I am polling several of my tech whiz friends and relatives. More soon. And I have posed your question to chatGPT. I will forward you the answer in an email. Bonne chance!
Interesting idea! Maybe AI could do some of the donkey-work for us and not just be the threat we all fear. Thanks for the thought, Elizabeth - maybe something other than my ageing brain could be doing some of the plotting...