I thought someone might find this interesting, so here it is! – It’s the two sides of the piece of paper that I used to help me plot out Pent’s Story. On the one side, like so:

is a map of all the characters and how they relate together. As you can see, some of them I didn’t name at first – or at all, until it came to actually writing. And I did some digging on the Fire Emblem Wiki to find out all I could about Etruria. This chart was an amazing help to me. I recommend this method to everyone writing about a group of more than three characters.

While actually writing the story, I used several lists in each chapter:

A short synopsis of the chapter plot

A list of the heroes, including their unit class, personality, age, origin, and sleeping arrangements on the march

A list of other characters with a one-word reminder of who they are, crossed out if they’re dead – looks like this:
Ocery strongnoble                               Lorad Ceciliafan
Aldash gobetween                               Lesil Louisefan
Deis Oceryland                                     Rhost Douglasknight
Vork Clericdude                                   Blier weaknoble

And at the bottom, a more detailed synopsis of the plot, with the part I haven’t written yet highlighted in red

And a list of what everyone is carrying in their packs (each holds up to five items, as per the game rules)

The other side of the paper:

is just a map of Castle Wrigley, Pent and Louise’s home, to give me a general idea of how it all fits together. But unfortunately, I have no sense of scale, so the ballroom is massssssively huge, and the kitchen is the tiniest thing. But they’re in the general place that they are in my head. Except I forgot the cute mini-towers on the corners. Oh well. Someday I’ll do a picture of the front of the castle. There is also a third story, which is more of the same of the second story, but with more servant bedrooms. I didn’t draw anything on it.