I am so very glad I did!
This was the first attempt at character mapping and let me tell you, it's great being able to see your lovelies all at the same time while pinpointing just who exactly they are and what/who they are to each other. I've had to yank apart family members, throw in some brand new ones and kill off some others. If you remember one of my past posts about shrinking your manuscript to get the "Big" picture, this had the same effect for me.
I honestly don't know why I waited until I wrote the book to do this! Would have saved me quite a few headaches for sure (and characters). The map helped me see which relationships I need to work on building as well as who needs more development throughout the story.
If you haven't done a character map yet, I highly recommend doing one. You can scribble it out with pen and paper or create your own from scratch like I did with the one above. There are tons of free character mapping templates on the internet if you prefer to have one semi-mapped out for you.
My next step, plot mapping... (maybe I should have done this too before the whole manuscript was written. :)
So tell me, do you have a character map?
