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What are you writing about now?
Wow. I'm not quite half-way through the text and I have a LOT of named people in it. Many of them are one-offs, often a bit more than a bellboy saying 'Telegram, sir!" and exiting stage right. A whole lot of them are mentions of people who the reader never meets in my story, such as many of the kings and princes of the Noldor.

I need to come up with a graphical way of showing who in the list of people is "important" to the story, who is just mentioned in passing, and who is a one-off. I have badges for the various Point-of-View characters, I can use them in the Appendix. Maybe I can use the international "passing ok" sign or road lines for the folks just mentioned in passing or a minor one-off instead of a badge graphic.

But first I need to finish making the list!
 
One possible means of indicating who's important and who isn't could be by use of description. If the bellboy characters are given barely a glance, they're usually not important(which can be used for dramatic effect if done right for characters you wish to surprise the readers with later). If, on the other hand, you want your readers to give them a longer look, giving the characters more of a description helps.
 
Ok, I have 9 pages in the appendix listing the various personages mentioned in the text, and not including Eru and the Valar. That's with only a few explanations of who they are.

Right now, I have 3 columns in the tabular layout for these names.

Name, Notes, and Description. I'm going to use a graphical key in the Notes column. A number of personages are referenced but they never appear "on camera" in the story. Example: A character seeing Turgon's banners arriving at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. I could just have a character note the appearance of reinforcements and not mention whose troops they are. Turgon isn't in the story other than that. But it adds colour to the story for people who DO know who Turgon is, so I mention it. In effect, they are just someone referenced by someone else in the story. I'm going to use an image of an opened reference book in the Notes column. I thought about using a line drawing of a camera with the international No symbol over it, i.e., the personage is "off camera", but aside from being a fun joke, it's not appropriate to my text.

There are also minor characters - to this story. Sometimes they just wander into and out of the main character's lives. Sometimes they are important to the main character's lives but only peripherally to this story. So, I want an icon for that. In the same spirit of a joking icon, I could use a baby carriage (because they are a minor character). Again, not the aesthetic I want and probably also confusing. Any ideas?

For the POV characters, I'll use the icons I've already designed for them.

I'm also making the best of this situation by putting in a small essay that asks the reader to imagine this is just a small taste of what an elf who lives for thousands of years might encounter if they venture out in the world - and since elven memories don't fade (thought they can be mislaid).
 
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(This is a draft layout in MS Word. The real layout will have coloured badges and the badge images will have transparent backgrounds (so they won't like white squares on the ivory paper. MS Word is painful for complex text and image layouts, so I won't do the fancy stuff until I'm ready to lay out the book to print and bind.)

I put this together to include a lot of text exposition without making it seem like a lot of text exposition.

Do you like the idea of it?
 

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Query: what are the graphical keys explicitly for? Why not leave it to the reader to discover how important a character is or is not? I ask because it would break immersion in the story for someone like me to see graphical keys or something like that on the sidelines of the book. Footnotes can be useful, but even they take me out of the story sometimes.
 
Sorry, I was unclear. Two different situations:

1) In the Appendix listing all the personages in the book (and only there)
Next to their name would be a graphical key denoting they are just someone in the world who was mentioned in the story by the characters. Or that they are a minor character or a major one. Partly it's to add visual interest to an otherwise dry appendix, partly its to make it less intimidating in case someone opens the book to check it out, sees the appendix, and panics at the number of personages in it. Also, it explains who those referenced people are (that the characters obviously thought were relevant to the discussion at hand) in case a non-Tolkien-nerd picks up the book and doesn't know who Turgon or Beren or Luthien are.

2) At the start of every chapter or change in point-of-view (POV), I put a graphic (along with text) to signify who the POV is. (My book is represented as a translation of an ancient history, which itself was compiled from stories, tales, letters, official documents, etc.) It's totally unnecessary but it makes the book pretty.
 
Finished first draft of the personages appendix. Now have 4 columns of info. Name, Race, a placeholder for the graphical key about the character, and a very brief description.

Here's the coding for the race entries (so far).

Race: A = Atan (Human), E = Edhel (Elf), G = Gaur (Werewolf), H = Hobbit, L = Lhûg (Dragon), N = Naugrim (Dwarf), M = Maia, R = Roch (Horse).
I'll work on the graphical keys, font sizing, and layout later this week.

Now I'm working on the appendix that lists the Items of Note. This one is easy; the item descriptions are already written. I just need to copy it from Volume IV (Lorien in the War of the Ring), remove the items that haven't been acquired, and redact anything that reveals later parts of the story.
 
Laid out a couple of exploratory versions of the Appendix that lists personages in the text. Not completely happy with either, but not completely happy with either. I'll keep noodling on it. Still need to write up the micro-essay on the impact of continually vibrant memories over thousands of years.

Just made an excerpt of the household inventory of "special" items that appeared in Vol 4, Lorien in the War of the Ring. Special as in "enchanted". The excerpt lists those items known to be in the possession of our heroine during the timeframe of Vol 1, A Tale of Two Tales. Each item has a name in Sindarin or Quenya, depending on its origin.

So, now I have to update the appendix that lists foreign words to include those names. In the process of jotting the names down, I've realized that some of the items now need names in Sindarin instead of Quenya. (Partly due to a few changes made to back-stories in Vol 1, partly due to being smarter about the matter.) I'll have to do some research to come up with Sindarin equivalents. www.ElfDict.com is a good place for this. So is RealElvish.net.

I'm making good progress!
 
Finished:
Appendix B: List of Foreign Words
Appendix E: List of Items of Note
Appendix F: Persons of Note

I'm particularly pleased with the layout of Appendix F. I used some stock images for the graphical keys, I'll have to do some real ones when I lay it out for printing.

Other progress:
Appendix A: Miscellaneous Tales and Notes:
I may add a few more poems to the selection of poems and songs, if inspiration strikes. I'm also adding in the rules for the Dwarven game of Rock. The latter will be short.
Appendix C: Timeline:
I did most of the work over the last few years, but it needs to be double-checked for accuracy. Plus I need to interleave the events from the bad guy's side, which are much newer than that.
Appendix D: Translation Notes:
These are largely written already for Volume IV, they just have to be adjusted for this work. I have an idea for an extra entry that would be amusing, I'll include it if inspiration strikes, otherwise I'll drop it.
Appendix G: List of Illustrations:
I won't know this until I lay out the book for printing.

I'm getting excited!
 
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