I've been reading a bit recently, to try and prepare myself for my coming studies. One of the things I've been reading is McGraw-Hill's Proofreading Handbook. It's a reference manual, and so not the easiest or smoothest thing to read. I would recommend it, however, if you're serious about improving your writing. I've already found it to have an impact on my own. Or, at least, it's given me the ability to more easily define what it is I'm already doing.
When writing fiction pieces, particularly long ones, it's impossible to keep everything straight in one's own head. That is, in fact, many times why I write in the first place. I remember things easier if I write them down. Long stories with involved plots, sub-plots, twists and turns; these things can easily get convoluted and confused when you're writing a book at the end of a series you started many years before. Suddenly a character is taller than they are supposed to be, or has the wrong hair or eye color. Or perhaps someone is referenced to by the wrong name or title. These things are typically caught by an editor and corrected.
For me, I find for each major piece of writing I also have what I've taken to calling a story bible. It's a notebook, always hand-written, that contains everything I think is important to the story. Characters. Settings. Timelines. Backstory. Technology or magic unique to the story. Literally anything I can think of I might need to reference later, or explain in greater detail at some point. Concepts, ideas, random thoughts about an origin story for a main character... Everything ends up in one, or sometimes two if the story is long enough. Some of it never even ends up in the novel. It's a reference for me, the story creator, to use in case I forget someone's hair color or what the name of the spaceship was I had them blow up in the last book. Without it, I'd forget the very things that make the story.
The Proofreading Handbook has an entire section on what is called a style sheet. A style sheet creates a reference tool an editor can use to look for errors in format, abbreviations, trademarks, references and more. Your style sheet is the standard by which your writing is set. In the world of academia, that standard is the Chicago Manual of Style. More often than not, this is the reference text used to determine if your writing meets the standards set by whatever publication you're applying to. I would not recommend sitting down in a coffee shop with a copy to read while you have your morning coffee. For one thing, it weighs about four pounds. I would strongly recommend, however, that you have a copy you can readily access to use as a reference, particularly if you're writing academically.
You would think, with fiction writing, none of this is important. From my own experience, that couldn't be less true. I will certainly agree that novels and short fiction aren't necessarily going to conform to the standards set by the Chicago Manual of Style. It is very important to note, however, that something like a style sheet is necessary when editing a piece of fiction in which non-standardized names are used. A quick glance at some of the names in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign is enough to convince most that at the very least a pronunciation guide would be welcome. How else would anyone know how to pronounce Drizzt?
Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, understanding style sheets should be on any serious writer's to-do list.