Organising Everything.

[Purdy Bear]

Hi folks, not been here for a long time, but Iv decided to get back to writing. Im not quite up to the emotional side of getting a critique but hopefully I'll be posting prose soon.

One thing I know I fall down on is being organised so Id love to know how you do it.

Do you use folders, files, post it notes, coloured highlighters?

Do you keep your timelines, synopsis, precis, character stuff all together, or seperate from the actual story?

Id love any advice you can give. I really need to get my head round it all.

PS: I hope to have a learning disability test in the next 6 months to see if Im mildly dyslexic etc., that may explain why I find writing and spelling and even memorising hard.

 

[GreenKidx]

Hello. I personally have all of my story/worldbuilding things in my smartphone. The reason being, I usually work out the issues with the world or plot during my commute to work (public transit, so no typing and driving!) . The app is call 'Note Everything'. I also have some hand drawn diagrams and notes in an old notebook from when the idea first occurred to me. My actual WIP is on my Laptop.

My notes are organized into several efolders: overview/synopsis, plot outline , character's descriptions, magic system, races/life forms and their origins. I also have paper diagrams, primarily in the form "chakra" maps.

It should be further noted that I have tons of details still in my head that I haven't gotten around to getting more reliable preserved. When I do note or world build or plot I just bullet point. I don't bother with full sentences of lengthy descriptions(character profiles being the exception).

One thing I haven't been able to work out is a decent way to construct a family tree that spans many generations. Or rather several familiy trees that do so and that may or may not overlap.

PS- Have you had a look back through some of the older threads. I'm pretty sure this has come up before and you might find a ton of great info.

PPS- Good luck with your test! How it all works out for you.

 

[Dozmonic]

I tend to write on folded sheets of paper when I'm at work, to get down basic ideas as they come to me. Then develop them a little more and write them in a book or shove the sheet in a book. I've no set pattern of how I develop it all. I'll write scenes or whole chapters, separated only by a couple of lines from my notes... then annotate around it. The idea is a first draft is on paper and then I compile and construct a second draft typing it up.

 

[The Judge]

Welcome back, Purdy! I hope the test proves helpful to you.

In the meantime, GreenKidx is right. The topic of organisation comes up fairly regularly, so have look through GWD and you're sure to find some good ideas. atkogirl posted this recently, which may be of interest http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/foru...-writing-forums-or-resources.html#post1522083

GreenKidx, there are family tree makers around which might be of help. I haven't used them myself, and I don't know how expensive they are, but they might be worth a look. For my own family tree-ing I found it easier to prepare a number of different trees. The main one is a lineage tree only, so the individual on the far right, to his left his parents, then their respective parents etc. That means that on one piece of printed A4 I can get up to the individual's great x 4 grandparents, or a list of 32 names on the left -- but someone more techno-literate could probably make that more. The disadvantage is I don't show anybody's siblings and their families. To compensate I then have individual surname trees with the relevant individual at the bottom and his siblings alongside, their parents above them etc, but each one might dealing with at most 3 or 4 generations -- but if the desire ever arose I could place them on the floor and link them together with long lines!

 

[GreenKidx]

Thanks TheJudge. I'm gonna give Google another shot. But I think I may have have to steal your method and make serveral family trees and maybe use little symbols to direct/link to other relevant family trees. Problem is I have one woman who has mothered a new race. (Think of the biblical Israel and his twelve sons, and their children and theirs and so on.) Now obviously many of these characters are irrelevant to the story being told. But seeing as a person's ability to trace their blood line back to this common ancestor is very important and also that almost all members of my fictitious race are descended from the same immortal woman it helps to make sure that my romantic pairs are sufficiently distant cousins...

 

[RJM Corbet]

...Do you keep your timelines, synopsis, precis, character stuff all together, or seperate from the actual story? ...

Don't throw anything away. To me that's important. I keep everything, for years back. Obviously everyone has their own system of files, etc.

I'm so insecure about losing work (because I have) that I work directly on a hard copy, and I e mail it to myself every so often in case, you know, the house burns down, then it's saved on g mail ...

 

[Hex]

I must be the worst-organised writer ever (which corresponds with the rest of my life). I have numerous drafts, which start off as a vague summary of the plot and end up (in theory) as the final document (although the final document doesn't tend to bear much resemblance to what I originally thought I was going to write). I lost a lot of stuff at the beginning by saving over my versions, but now I save separately each time I do a major edit, so I have all the junk available if I ever need it.

Timelines get developed every so often to make sure things make sense, but as long as everything's consistent I don't worry about keeping old timelines (which are normally generated on the back of envelopes), but will do them over again if something looks like it needs to be rationalised. Ditto character summaries -- if I need to get back in touch with a character I'll normally write something new from their point of view. I know how tall they are/ their backgrounds etc and because this is my first WiP and I've been writing it for 3-4 years, there's no danger of me getting them confused.

I make lots of notes in notebooks but mostly they're just for thinking things through and I only type them up if I really care (if they're a new plot development, for example, that I'm going to need to know about later). If I don't type things up, I lose them.

I need to be careful, because if I let myself, I can spend weeks getting organised -- I know this from study and work -- if I get started with the coloured pens and the timetabling it's entirely possible that I will never stop and therefore I will never get anything done. So what works for me is to get on with stuff and then make notes/ develop my characters as I go along.

 

[slack]

I keep hard copies of my drafts in a filing cabinet, the word file duplicated as a .txt file, and as for ideas, I have a small notebook where I jot everything down, dated appropriately.

I don't tend to write sprawling, complex stories, though, so I don't find it necessary to draw maps, fill out notecards, or make bios.

 

[alchemist]

I'm so insecure about losing work (because I have) that I work directly on a hard copy, and I e mail it to myself every so often in case, you know, the house burns down, then it's saved on g mail ...

Snap!

I have a folder containing the copybook I wrote my first outline, character bios etc. on. It also has a few articles from science magazines. My PC has the separate chapters, the combined story, pages of things to be changed in the rewrite, chapter-by-chapter synopses, maps, spaceship designs and much more.

I have a spreadsheet for the story outline on my phone and PC. It has headings for Setting, whose Point of View, Scene title, what happens, purpose of the scene (e.g. "shows Jim's growing paranoia"), extra notes. This is to keep me on track when writing away from the PC. Despite all this, if I have a knotty plot issue to work out, such as two plot threads converging, I need to do it on paper so the copybook comes out again.

So, in answer to your question, I use everything available.

 

[Tillane]

Something like this may be useful if you're worldbuilding, Purdy. It's open-source, free, and dead easy to use: I've been trying it out recently, and for someone like me who is naturally disorganised it's been a real help.

 

[Malloriel]

I do a little of everything. I have hard copies, notebooks filled with years of scribblings all organized according to my own memory of what was written where, and with what pen, and I have digital copies organized through such things as yWriter and Keynotes NF. The benefit to something like Keynotes is, not only is it easy to access and transport, but everything is centrally located, meaning disparate Word files and spread sheets can be linked within the program so that you don't have to search your hard drive (or thumb drive, depending on where you're keeping it all) manually in order to find a bit of information.

 

[Purdy Bear]

Thanks for everyones advice and suggestions. I thought about organising it like I would a course at college etc., so a master lever arch with sections on;

1. Why, where, who, what, when, how
2. Chapter Synopsis.
3. Timeline
4. Character Synopsis.
5. Character drawings - I like to draw their faces.
6. Mountain of excitement
7. Research
8 Publisher/Agent information etc


Then a sub file with the actual story divided into chapter sections.

On top of this to have a calendar showing finishing dates, a monthly todo, a dairy schedule, to do list and a question and answer sheet.

It might take a little while to set up but it should work. Iv also thought of doing some sort of colour coding per novel or series (one of my ideas has 20 odd novels).

I dont like putting to much on disc as Iv lost a whole book when one decided it suddenly wouldnt work. I think I will email drafts to myself.

 

[Jake Reynolds]

I use a word document with each ehading brought up to a clickable table of contents on the firts page. That way I simply open it, click on the section I want and go straight to it. In terms of family trees, I just use word's Insert/ Diagram/ Organsation chart. That way you can add subordinates (children) and so on.

My concern about the folder/ dividers idea is that you may be putting time into the prep that would be better used for actual writing...

 

[RJM Corbet]

I lost all my paper, along with clothing, tools, in another country. it's gone forever. It can happen. But I had a hard copy, which also included quite a lot of scanned copies of paper notes, diagrams, etc. I wish I'd taken the trouble to scan and save ALL the paper because I could use some of that background stuff now ...

 

[Anne Lyle]

Do you use folders, files, post it notes, coloured highlighters?

All of the above - stationery is fun!

Do you keep your timelines, synopsis, precis, character stuff all together, or seperate from the actual story?

* Manuscript and synopsis in Scrivener - a great program for Mac (Windows version is still in beta) which you can actually use to organise most of your project

* Timelines I do in Aeon Timeline (Mac only)

* Character stuff is mostly in my head

* Plot notes in a spiral-bound notebook - I prefer the old-fashioned method for plot brainstorming

Good luck with the test! There's so much can be done now with computers to support dyslexia (I used to webmaster for a small company that sold assistive software) - text-to-speech and dictation, specialised spellcheckers that focus on homophones, etc.

 

[Malloriel]

I lost all my paper, along with clothing, tools, in another country. it's gone forever. It can happen. But I had a hard copy, which also included quite a lot of scanned copies of paper notes, diagrams, etc. I wish I'd taken the trouble to scan and save ALL the paper because I could use some of that background stuff now ...

I know that pain. T^T

Recently, I was doing work on one of the races in Eleasia, and I went

"GASP! The naming system! I have notes on that somewhere . . . where . . . ?"

"What did they look like?" Internal Monologue asked me.

"I color coded each section of the names."

"Okay, so it was done digitally. What was the program?"

"Not a spread sheet. Was it Keynotes?"

"Yes."

"But I already looked there!"

"Did you do all this before the Great Hard Drive Gouge of 2010?"

" . . . #%$&."

I lost the bits where I'd detailed out what certain names meant, but I managed to remember just about everything else, pulling together bits and pieces conveniently strewn throughout my notes. Still. I was so proud of what I'd already done. I'm just glad that when I destroyed my hard drive, I was emotionally able to let go of the work that was destroyed along with it. Most of it was already saved and transferred elsewhere, but some of the stuff done in the days before I dropped the lappy (QQ for me) was gone.

Now, I back everything up on two thumb drives, from which I actively work.

 

[mithril]

for genealogy trees you might give MyHeritage a try. It has a free version as well and might be suitable for you... It also has a downloadable program if you prefer keeping your notes offline.

For keeping track of generic research I use evernote.

Haven't found any free (or cheap ) map making software that I like yet, so as of now am drawing out and tracing my maps on paper...

Hope that was helpful..