Plotting with Excel

Plotting with Excel

Plotting is often considered a hard, boring and perilous task to complete by writers both young and old. Many writers find themselves buried in maps, character sheets and plot outlines and its easy to get disorganised, and more to the point – it is easy to lose track of a story!

However has anyone really thought digital? Computers save time and are great for organising things, it is fascinating when writing combines with computing. Then it hit me: Microsoft Excel. This is a program that 90% of people have lurking around and apart from math homework it is rarely ever used.

Microsoft Excel can simply be explained as a big, never ending table, great for plotting. This means that characters can go at the top, each can have a column and the scene numbers can go down the sides. Then, quite simply you can start to fill out what happens, chronologically to your characters throughout the story.

One handy tip is paragraphing in Excel: Enter doesn’t work, you have to use Alt + Enter when typing to get onto another paragraph.

Another useful tip is to format the spreadsheet so when typing words start at the top of the cell. To do this highlight all cells (or click in the corner to select all) and right click. Then click format cells, click the alignment tab. Underneath “Text Alignment” is “Vertical” click the drop down box and select “Top”. Enter and there you have it.

Plotting in Excel keeps things organised for me and I enjoy it because its so much more clear than handwriting. I have included part of Scall’s Magic plot below.

I really like this, Adam. I've attempted to set-up plots in Excel before, but never had the idea of putting the characters in the columns. Good idea. I might just use this for the idea I have at the moment

Many writers find themselves buried in maps, character sheets and plot outlines

Sounds like fantasy!

When I "plot" (If I do) I go for the usual outline form. Of course, I don't write fantasy, and I don't tend to have several plot lines going at once that exist in different areas, so its pretty easy just to follow chronological order, and not die in the confusion.

Either way, nice tip I've seen several methods of outlining. Outlining by scene and character has always confused me, though I'm sure someone else will take advantage of it.

I'll have to try this. I kinda need to organize my papers *has papers scattered in room*. I would have never have thought of using excel to organize my stuff.

After quoting Kitkat I have nothing to add, lol.

-elein

I did this, and it works very well. I set it up by having scene in the first column, characters involved in the second, events in the third and other notes in the fourth. Maybe I'll try your way, if I ever decide to write something with a great enough number of characters.

Anyway, thanks for the tip.

I have never used Excel before, until recently, and this is a whole lot better to plot than what I do on Word. Thank you VERY much, Adam!