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Managing relationships
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The diagram editor and the
expert novel explorer makes use of the relationships that you add to characters,
places, things and events.
A relationship is used to denote parentage, marriage, ownership, belonging - any
kind of link that you can think of between two characters, between a character and
an object, a character and a place - indeed any two 'entities'. Add as many relationships
as you can. For example if you have a place such as 'seashore' and a thing
such as 'seashell', relate the two entities! If you have an event such as
'wedding day' relate all the characters present to it, relate any gifts
to it, relate the setting to it. Relate everything you can to everything you can.
It is time consuming, but you will find if you put enough into it that it will help
to structure your novel no end. The process gives placement to things, family relationships
to characters, etc.
You will find that relationships help you to flesh out a scene or a character. A
character in isolation may not be interesting (or indeed easy to write about) but
add parents, siblings and so on and you start to make the character real and in
doing so you make your writing both richer and more consistent at the same time.
Within a diagram, an entity is displayed (perhaps with a thumbnail) within a rectangular
area and the relationships are automatically drawn as arrows between them. Any time
you add a new relationship between two entities any diagram that includes the two
will automatically incorporate the new relationship.
For example if you create a diagram for the 'wedding day' describe above,
include the wedding day event and then all the characters present at the wedding
you will automatically get an understandable and meaningful diagram.
The relationships between entities are also shown within the
expert novel explorer as shortcuts. Hence relationships are both useful
for visualization in diagrams (e.g. in family trees) and in navigating and organizing
your novel.
For more information on relation ships see the diagram editor
and the expert novel explorer .
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