To keep track of the stories there are a few important keys you need to take note of:

1) Character relationships

2) The storyline and time-skips

3) Details you added (including my views on explicit scenes)

Let's begin.

1) Character relationships.

This one is self-explanatory. Your character cannot jump from being strangers to being lovers in a single chapter, nor can one character be another's mother in one chapter but then you get confused by the names and end up writing that the character is another's sister instead of their mother. More than once have I seen errors like this, but it usually comes with names that are almost the same, or have the same nickname especially:

Sophia and Sofie

Jake and Jack

Alexander and Alexandra (Alex: which are different genders)

Samuel and Samantha (Sam: also different genders)

And so, you need to stay on top of your characters. Also, if you have a lot of characters, you eventually forget them. Guaranteed. If you give your character a butler and call him Sebastian, then after a few chapters where he is unimportant and you don't write about him, you will forget that you ever bought a butler in. So, in order to keep track of them all, I make a small list with little details to help me remember who everyone is. Here is the one I used for Mondo Patello:

  I always keep my powerpoint by my side when I write my story so that I never get anyone confused. Also, if you have such an extensive family as the one I created for that story, a family tree is always important. 

2) The storyline.

Your. Characters. Cannot. Get. Together. After. Only. One. Day.

I can't stress this enough. You need to plan your story accordingly. Rather put time-skips in then let your story progress too fast. There is no such thing as love at first sight. Sure, you can maybe feel attracted to someone or like their appearance, but this is the love we're talking about.

There are, in my opinion, two types of time-skips:

• Outside chapter time-skips (such as weeks, months, years)

• Inside chapter time-skips (such as hours or a few days)

Let's start with 'outside chapter time-skips':

These are the time-skips that one would typically place at the beginning of a chapter and the actual passing of time doesn't partake at all in your story.

When you put time-skips in, it is important to tell the readers that you put a time-skip in, otherwise say your character just became pregnant and the next chapter the baby is delivered, readers will wonder what happened in that unknown timeslot so it is also best to give a brief explanation of what happened. If you don't believe me, here is a quick abstract that I just made up:

"I can't believe your father so was terrifying!" Jimmy was shaking, his eyes trained on my lower abdomen. "We're going to have a baby. A live baby, and I wouldn't have ever been involved with you had I not failed my college entrance exam!" but I was not amused. After the one-night stand, I had never wanted to see him again. Yet, here he was.

"I want to get to know you before this baby arrives," I addressed him. He nodded firmly and smiled with a sort of admiration.

"This is going to be so much fun,"

*Nine months later*

"Jimmy, I'm to kill you!" but he was calm and collected, as he had trained himself well for this moment over the last nine months.

"Don't worry, Mellisa. Just like we practiced," I still wanted to bite his head off, nonetheless.

And we, the readers, are sitting there going... huh?  But, but, what happened? Where're the dates, the love, the bonding?! WHEN DID MY SKIP START TO SAIL?!  WHAT HAPPENED IN THOSE NINE MONTHS?!

So, yeah, you get my point.

You can start with the normal 'one year later' and then a small paragraph to explain what had happened, or, as I prefer, to give time-skips in other ways. 

For example, in the sequel to Mondo Pastello where there is now a baby involved, I let the readers know that there is a time-skip present by referring to the baby's age. This chapter he'll be six weeks old, and in the next, he's eleven weeks old.

You can use the moon phases, if you want, or even exam dates from the school curriculum (such as mid-year or finals, for example) and you can even use the Holidays! There are so many ways to present a time skip than just starting the chapter with *two weeks later*!

Be creative and think outside of the box!

Now then, the 'inside chapter time-skips'.

Have you ever heard of line-breaks? Yeah, this is where they come in. Line-breaks shows the reader that a short amount of time has passed. In normal books, writers might use a block of white page to show a time-skip but Wattpad formatting doesn't really work like that, so on this site at least, line-breaks are your safest bet.

Line-breaks are used for a short amount of time. Do no, and I stress this very much as you can tell, do not put a huge time-skip in the middle of a chapter!!!  If you plan to have a huge time skip, but need to add a short scene before that in, rather work it into the previous chapter and start your new chapter in the new time slot!!!

As you can see, I am very passionate about my time-skips.

Think you've never seen a line-break before? That is a lie. Here are a few examples of line-breaks:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

********************************************************

LINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAK

♕♥ ♕♥ ♕ (Mondo Pastello)

♙♢♙♢♙ (Mondo Profondo)

♞♛♞♛♞ (Mondo Pallido)

Usually line-breaks are in the middle of the page, but did you know if you copy and paste from Word into Wattpad that when you publis theh chapter, all of the tabs and words aligned in the middle, jump to the left side of tha page? Yeah, I'm to lazy to fix it.

 • Yes, I do not write in Wattpad. I write everything in Word and then paste it into Wattpadd. Why do I do that? A few reasons:

1. Word has a better autocorrect

2. Wattpad keeps saving automatically and then my typing is lagged

3. If a chapter ever gets deleted, or vice versa, I lose my Word file, then there's a backup

4. You can continue your story if the internet is down (or you sued your data up)

5. It feels more authentic

I realize not everyone has Word, but you've managed with Wattpad this far, so don't listen to me. I'm just someone who's sharing the way I do it.  

Such as the fact that I use the website and not the app. I have a PC and in any case, I can't figure how to use the app that well. Main reason is that I prefer this

over this

So, how I keep track of my story, is with a timeline. Observe:

Here is the timeline for my first ten chapters of Mondo Pastello (don't read if you plan to read the book). Let me talk you through it:

Each block is a chapter, and you follow the lines to see how it progresses (so down, right, up, right, down) and in the block you'll see words like (wed-1). What this means is that the chapter is set on a Wednesday, and it is the first week in which the story takes place. So, in the last block, you can see it is (mon-6). So there has already been five weeks that have passed, and you can noticeably see the timeskip is between the fifth and sixth chapter with three weeks.

In the block you will see letters like 'S' and 'M' and even 'Mol'. These are my characters' names, since you don't need to be too detailed about this. S is Sarina, M is Melanie, Mol is Molly, and so on and so forth. I go back to my timeline if I am in need of a past detail.

You can plan your storyline in other ways, but I found this is really effective. That, or by making a calendar. I also did this, but on a piece of paper that had somehow been lost. Eh.

3) Details you added.

I will in a later chapter, all on its own, stress the fact of being accurate. This is not that. This is something else:

If I said in my first chapter that my main character's favorite food is strawberry smoothies, then she can't have another type of favourite food by the end of the book (excluding special cases, of course) and this is especially important why you have to keep a character's likes and dislikes in check.

If your character is shorter than Sally in the first chapter then, unless your character went through puberty, then they can't be taller than Sally in the last chapter. 

You might think to yourself 'But Galaxy-sensei! Isn't that the same as being accurate?' then I answer with 'Asdfghjkl' because these are details that you put in your story. YOU. You have to keep your details in check.

Do you want to know where I especially see these kinds of mistakes?

• A character who goes by they/them pronouns. Oh, my bloody hell, this is difficult.

"They were confronted by them because, in fact, they was the one who had stolen the last syrup waffles and sold it on the black market to the... Conjoined Limbs Club,"

Look at that sentence. LOOK AT IT. What's the most important detail here? THE CHARACTER'S BLOODY NAME.

Why, you wonder, do I put this one right at the top of the list? It's because, recently, I have been writing a book in my own time (I have many books that I don't publish) and this one is a fanfiction of Houseki no Kuni. It's a new anime, and I discovered the true horror of writing a fanfiction for this anime/manga. Why, you ask, is that such a problem?

Because in this story, containing ± 30 characters, are all of them a species named 'Gems'. Each and every bloody one of them is genderless. Try it. In an entire fanfiction, not a single 'he' or 'she' present. It's such a pain because I doze off and don't realize I've appointed a gender to them. Like... aghhhhhhh. So, in that case, I usually use their names each time to avoid confusion. (although, using names each time instead of pronouns is unprofessional, I see no other way out) And I use them/they pronouns for the main character. Problem solved.

And then the plural them/they for groups.

Please, if you plan to have a character like that, try to find a way around confusion like that. Like, instead of referring to a group as 'they', how about being a little more creative and calling them something like 'Sally's group' or  'the dreamers' or just something else.   

• A character who 'becomes' gay. This one is self-explanatory.

• A character's Nationality. I, the author, is not British but my characters are and therefore, I need to think like them.  'Bloody hell' and 'Football, not soccer' and 'Realise, not realize' but I still mess this up from time-to-time.

• A CHARACTER WHO IS 12 SHOULD NOT BE HAVING SEX OR EVEN BE THINKING ABOUT IT.

• A CHARACTER WHO IS 12 DOES NOT HAVE THE INTELLIGENCE NOR THE SKILL TO BE A SPY.

• A CHARACTER WHO IS 12 SHOULD NOT BE WANDERING AROUND THE STREETS ALONE.

• A CHARACTER WHO IS 12 SHOULD NOT BE DRINKING OT EVEN BE THINKING ABOUT IT.

I'm not necessarily meaning only twelve-year-olds, but please, be age-appropriate to the person's actual age. From time and time again I have seen underaged characters been credited to do things they simply cannot and should not be doing.

Yes, I am guilty of this, such as I made Bartholomew (13) vandalize a jet. I accept my flaws and now I'm pointing it out. And to be fair, I'm pretty sure if Bartholomew was a real person, he would've been able to pull it off. And not that they did ever pull it off, since they were caught on camera and eventually punished, but the actual journey was what bothered me (how they broke in, I mean).

Now I don't know about other countries, but I certainly learned that at airports, buses, trains and so on: they question children if they are unsupervised. How will your fifteen-year-old character get to Egypt without a) a passport, b) money, and c) a parent? How?

(Cornelius managed to get into Belgium with all three of that, so don't eat me alive. It will be explained in his special chapter, don't worry)

So... yeah. There are exceptions, of course (Naruto) but not with stories that imitate reality. No way. Don't even consider it.

(Typed in 'act your own age' and this was what first came up lol:)

Basically.

There are other flaws as well, but those are the ones bothering me the most.

If we want to go into deeper things, then it would be things like sex scenes where the writer is totally of the bat about how things really work or that protection doesn't even come up in that type of scene. I mean, is a ten-year-old writing it?

On this site, one can get a bit disappointed.

Please take into consideration your own age.

Also, don't write things like that if you're not passionate at it like E. L. James (lol) because, on this site, one almost gets the image that if you don't write smut, then your book will never get publicity or be considered a good book.

What a load of BS.

For those of you from Mondo Pastello and Mondo Profodno, you will know that I don't write that sorts of things, but that doesn't mean it's not there. It's basic human actions, after all. I'm just not that passionate about writing them, so I won't. That way, I can also keep my book open to more viewers who are looking for a love story but not smut and you have no idea how many comments I got about that!

'A book that is actually good without smut' is what they told me. You are not obliged nor forced to write things if you are not comfortable or passionate about it.

Sex is an art, point closed. Not everyone is that type of artist, and those who are, create amazing scenery. Some of you are amazingly talented, I'm jealous.

(Did you see how many times I used the word 'passionate'? Take note of it, because that's the correct word to use for this)

You can feel different, and that's fine. It's just my opinion. You are not obliged or forced to do what I say.

Unless you promote rape. You can go fuck off then.

And so, that ends this chapter! I rambled a bit but eh, these are my feelings. In the next chapter, I'll be talking about how I make covers and decide on titles!