I must organize the cast of the storyworld. Yes, I have already decided on the main characters:
Arthur
Mordred
Lancelot
Bors
Gawaine
Galahad
Kay
But there will also be dozens of secondary characters showing up in the encounters, and I realize that it’s important to keep them straight, so I’ll build a spreadsheet for them presenting their names, occupations, ages, appearances, and the encounters in which they appear.
However, in organizing the Encounters like this, I am led to wonder about my naming conventions for Encounters. Currently my naming convention is a condensation of the content of the story:
GawaineGiftHorse
KaterfakTraining
NarinaDies
RepairingTheRoof
This is certainly handy, but do I need a more formal system? Should the title specify the characters it mentions? Should I simply use a numbering system? How about a coding system? Capital letters could indicate which characters are used; other indicators could be lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters. But how would such a coding system work?
No, using title codes is not necessary; the computer is fully capable of examining the data associated with each encounter in order to make its determinations. I will, however, have to add a variety of such “cover information” to help the algorithms choose appropriate encounters. This will be the subject of another design diary.