The stylesheet is a writing tool that helps an author achieve consistency throughout a novel. I like to use an Excel workbook with different tabs for each subject, which might be characters, locations, references, and plot development. I discovered the stylesheet quite by accident. When I started work on The War Wolf, I realised very quickly that there was an enormous amount of research to be done. Fortunately, I know how to do research and how to organise my findings, and that is how my first stylesheet began. Everything else developed as a logical consequence from there, characters’ names, locations, significant events, cultures, history, etc., it all became part of the reference material that I was using to recreate the world of 1066. I am very proud of the fact that historians have commended the quality of my research. One of the benefits of the stylesheet was that when it came to writing For Rapture of Ravens and The Blade’s Fell Blow a lot of the work had already been done.

Each stylesheet is unique to each book. The one I developed for Eugenica was almost as large as that for the Sorrow Song Trilogy as there was almost as much research required so that I could demonstrate an understanding of the origins and development of eugenics in the early 20th century. However, The Devil Within Us was not such a complicated book and the stylesheet used reflected this. It might seem that a stylesheet requires a lot of a writer’s time, which it does, but the assistance that it provides is, I believe, worth every minute of it. I have read books in which character’s features, colour of eyes or hair for example, have seemingly changed for no logical reason. I know that readers find this annoying, and I can understand why; it demonstrates a lack of attention to detail on the writer’s part.

Normally, I do not begin a stylesheet until I start work on the second draft, but with my most recent project, Pomerania, I found that I needed to open one while I was still working on what was supposed to be the first draft. The idea really is to record important information as you go. When you decide a character’s name, appearance, particular idiosyncrasies, then enter them in the stylesheet, which should be open along with the manuscript. Does this slow the writing process down? Yes, it can, which is one reason why I do not usually use a stylesheet until I start the second draft, which is in essence a total rewrite of the first draft. I find it useful during this phase to help me add detail and depth to the story, as well as a means of ensuring consistency. Readers may never see a stylesheet, but they will appreciate its use when they read the book it helped create.