I'm working on a couple of projects which involve researching various countries, animals or historical eras. Does anyone have any tips or formats for organising research notes please? I'm really organised and love to have everything easily accessible. For example, I do character profiles, I have fact files on countries or worlds I create, etc. I'm basically after a kind of "sheet-to-fill-in" method of sticking all these notes down. Any ideas or links would be much appreciated. Thanks!
I am practically the exact opposite of a "sheet-to-fill-in" type of researcher, but when I write research papers and such, I personally really like using note cards.
I'll have different boxes of note cards for different things. One box will be the citations for my references, another will be potential quotes, yet another will be paraphrases, another for sources referenced by my sources that I think are worth hunting down and looking at, etc. until I basically wind up with a whole card catalog of information.
The nice thing about note cards is that you can then take the cards and physically lay them out in different orders/positions. You can even stick them up on a cork board and pin different colors of string, each color corresponding to a particular relationship, between related cards so that you can more easily see connections between all the tidbits of information better.
Another thing I like to do on top of the note cards is write notes in different colors, with each color representing a particular type of information. Direct quotes in black, for instance, with citations in red, page numbers in purple, technical terms in orange, definitions in blue...
I find it makes researching a bit more fun, in addition to making my notes that much easier to understand at a glance.
Research! My strongest subject at school! Be ready milady! We'll go in the world of organizing your stuff!
"Sheet to fill in" is a very good method for it will give you time to jot down all that you need and keep it conveniently in one place when you research in the library and the like. There are times, though, that all those cards might mix-up or get lost unless you have a cataloging system, so the best thing to do with those is to group them. I myself put them under the following labels:
Characters: Apart from the profiles, you might have some notes about them so store them here.
Settings: This will prove more useful, because when you're writing a story taking place in a real place in real time, you need to put a lot of research on them.
Culture: Notes about how people, not only the main characters, act, move and do stuff. Lifestyle in other words.
Time: When writing in real time, for instance, the 1900's, you need to research events that happened during those days, then store those notes here.
Plots: Not actually the main plot, but subplots. There are just times when you're drinking coffee, then you'll instantly recover a subplot in your head. That's when you need to jot it down and put it here.
Themes: Same as plots, additional themes have a possibility to be a sudden thought, so sort them here.
With this categories, I think organizing your notes will be much easier. Another thing, if you're really up to organizing everything, try using different colored index cards. This way, you'll be able to sort out MORE. For example, green index cards pertain to a particular setting only, while a yellow indicates a minor character. Just be sure to keep all the categories noted down so there'd be no problems about it.
Are you considering going digital? Well, if you are, there are also a lot of organizing software and sites out there. Here are some. Note: I'm not exactly advertising them, okay! I dunno if you'll like them, but some of my pals used to use them!
litlift.comis not exactly a research organizing module, but a novel organizing one instead. If you think that you need to travel or have no time to bring your notes, you can copy some here so you can check them anywhere where there's internet.
yWriter5 is the software equivalent of litlift. Although you're not introduced to research organizing, you might consider the ways that you can sort out everything in your novel/story.
Writers' Cafe is one of the best digital tools for organizing everything. This can be research oriented, too, because you can jot down everything! There's a space for regular research, there'a separate one for photos, then another for character development notes. There's a little of everything!
Anyways, that's all for now. Hope I helped
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Oh-mi-gosh you guys are awesome! I was NOT expecting that level of detail in response to my post!!!! *hugs you all madly* That all really helps a lot, so thank you!!!
I love the idea of having index cards in different colours and/or linked together with coloured thread or something.
Those links look awesome. Writer's Cafe looks really, really good.
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