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Discussion: Formatting Ideas/Notes



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Wed Jan 10, 2018 12:51 am
Vervain says...



Everyone learns and organizes their thoughts differently.

Personally, I tend to be pretty visual. I attach ideas to different pictures, and use pictures to string along possible plot points in the early stages of a story. Usually I'll spend an hour or more on Pinterest looking at nothing but pictures related to whatever story is in my head. Most recently, I put together a kind of story page using OneNote to keep all the relevant images in one place -- a bonus, because it's easy to add and remove stuff.

I know some people are super-indepth and use story bibles as a way to keep things together. Others might wing it entirely all the way through the story.

What's your method?
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Wed Jan 10, 2018 8:12 pm
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Rosendorn says...



Timelines. Lots of timelines.

For me, the things that slip away the easiest are the hard and fast facts. So I'll clump together headings (timeline, main characters, side characters, magic) and write all the little hard details I need to reference again next to the name/source. I usually don't write broad things about the character (like their hair/eye colour) but instead I'll write the exact year they graduated from college or when they received the magic trinket that starts the plot.

I'll also make a dictionary and the translations of any terms, especially if I'm working in a world where I won't be pulling from commonly-cited Western things that I'm more familiar with and might not be easily googled.

I don't like going into a ton of details with story bibles, though, in part because I tend to remember the broad strokes details and in part because they feel like a distraction. I have seen far too many writers who spend all their time on their bible instead of on their story, and who build everything separate of the people. You need to build with the plot, otherwise neither feels organic (and you might waste tons and tons of time on things that are hardly important).
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Wed Jan 10, 2018 8:35 pm
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Mea says...



I use Scrivener, and so my ideas and plans all wind up jumbled together in paragraphs of text on various documents inside Scrivener. Like, in my current project I have separate pages for all the main characters, a page each for the different organizations and their plans, and like 3 pages for various plot outlines. When I say they get all jumbled together, that's because I'm not great at updating/deleting the parts that have become obsolete as my thoughts and plans change. Yes, this winds up getting confusing and I'm trying to be more organized about it.

For me the big things I have to work to remember are little details about the world - the way something looks or how it works - and the timeline of what happened before the novel. So I've written out a timeline with in-universe dates of what happened.

In general, I find that I don't actually have as many or as detailed notes as I think I do when it. I noticed that a lot with Mixing Magic when I went back to edit it - I hadn't written down a lot of those small details and I had to read through the actual book to remember them. Since my current project is going to be a lot longer than that was, I'm trying to keep more notes so I won't have to search through the actual text to find something later on.
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Wed Jan 10, 2018 9:06 pm
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ChieTheWriter says...



Like @Rosendorn I end up doing the timelines. Just a simple list in MS word that starts at 1. and keeps going. I color code background things that are happening at that time or specific subplot ideas that are important. It's super easy to edit because I know in my head when things happen and it's easy to find with the color code. I'm not finished yet and will probably hit 300+ so this will be a looooong story.

I also make the character profiles and then write little snippets of things that happen in the story if I have sudden inspiration. I've drawn maps and saved pictures from online (mostly pintrest) that look like something in my story or my characters so there's inspiration there. I've also done a lot of research for weapons/lifestyle ect.

Here's an unreadable example of a project I'm putting together. You can sorta see it's numbered, as of now it's from about 1 to 230 and color coded.
Image
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Wed Jan 10, 2018 11:47 pm
Vervain says...



@Rosendorn @ChieRynn -- my boyfriend does the timeline thing, too. He doesn't really "write" independently of our roleplaying games, but in the game he DMs, his plot and timeline are written out impeccably in chronological order. I'm kind of jealous of it, but I don't know if it's something that would work for me. He uses Microsoft Excel to keep everything organized, even keeping his random notes in the same file as his timeline. It's pretty cool actually.

Color coding is another thing I want to try out! I know I showed y'all that picture of the OneNote story page, but there's a highlighter mechanism in Scrivener that I want to try using, highlighting text in different colors.

@Mea -- I use Scrivener, too, but my brain gets cluttered sofast that it's hard to keep everything in one place. I've gone through four completely different organizations in the space of one hour for one project before. I've found that OneNote is actually really useful because I can drag text around to where it's most important, and add images in between or under the text so I can constantly reference that.

I usually add images to my Scrivener project, too -- I'll write the story itself on one side of the page, and have an image of the setting, or an important character, or an important story piece, on the other. Usually pulled from Pinterest, of course.

This is really exciting! I love hearing how other people put things together, and I've been looking to expand my organizational skills, which is why I made this thread in the first place.
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Thu Jan 11, 2018 3:13 am
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Steggy says...



Usually, when I am writing, I tend to either a) plan it out with a template I find online or b) just go into it and write. The first one is when I want the novel to actually be an idea that I could possibly use later on or if I'm feeling up to, write it then and now (though, since I have so many ideas in my head, it is kind of hard to plan them). This can also go for characters in my story since I like to have a sort of reference that I can later on use in my writings.

With the second option, I end up having these moments where I think to myself how unsure I am with my writing and just go with it. I then go back and think to myself 'what can I change about this' or 'how can I make this better'.

Overall, I prefer the second option to the first because I don't like a plan. I just like to write. But, in most cases, it is important to have a plan to follow in case you forget a detail in something that happened earlier and you can't really change it unless you change that certain something.
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Thu Jan 11, 2018 4:12 am
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Mea says...



@Lareine, I was looking at your story page and I think I'm going to have to start using images more in my planning because they just convey a tone so well! Tone is so hard to pin down when you're just writing notes to yourself about your story.

One thing I wish I had was a thing where I could essentially create sticky notes, note cards, etc., and move them around and rearrange them visually on a whiteboard or something. I feel like when I have my own house I'll probably have a real corkboard I'll do it with because I brainstorm *way* better when I'm not staring at my computer screen, but for now I might have to try OneNote and see how that goes.
We're all stories in the end.

I think of you as a fairy with a green dress and a flower crown and stuff.
-EternalRain

I think you, @Deanie and I are like the Three Book Nerd Musketeers of YWS.
-bluewaterlily
  





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Fri Jan 12, 2018 2:34 am
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Carlito says...



For new projects, ideas come to me very slowly and I'm a first draft pantser :)
I spend lots and lots and lots of time in my head thinking about my characters and conceptualizing them and the story, but I don't write much down (maybe character names and a few major points I'm afraid I'll forget). Character charts always feel forced to me and any kind of organized method of putting a plot together in the very early stages dampens my creativity. I just need to freely think about everything for a few months and let ideas naturally come to me.

Once I learned how to write a proper synopsis, I learned that I actually love writing synopses and they're super helpful to me. On more recent projects I've written a rough synopsis (favorite resource for how is this one) before I started writing to make sure I knew what the major plot points would be and to make sure I actually have a story. (This comes after I feel satisfied with all of that free thinking and I feel ready to actually write a story). And then that's it and I go for the gold! :)

I also write in Scrivenger and I have extra pages in the document where I keep track of character details, timeline things, and other little plot things so I can be consistent throughout. (Before I used Scrivenger, I wrote on MS Word and always had a million extra Word files to keep track of everything). But these notes are pretty few and far between. In the first draft I care more about just getting it all out, and then for subsequent drafts I'm more meticulous about consistency things. I write contemporary, so don't have as many world details to sort out and remember which is also helpful.

For subsequent drafts I'm all about creating detailed outlines and color coordinating so I can see how everything goes together and then figure out how things need to be changed around!


ps - that story page image is so cool!
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Sun Jan 14, 2018 12:59 pm
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Lightsong says...



Hmm, reading other posts, I'm quite embarassed with my methods, which is...

I just write it! :D

Well, not exactly like that. Usually, when I have an interesting world building and characters concepts, I tend to pour them down on the paper, but now I think of the general plot and write it! Not much difference with the previous one, but I'm more of a person who thinks a lot of what's going to happen next and use whatever I come up when I write.

It's certainly flawed, but as I'm currently writing novel, my main aim is to finish it. My thoughts about the characters and worldbuilding and themes and plots are enough for me to love them and despair should I have to part with them.

So that's it! I think more of what's going to happen next chapter and write it down when I have the time and slowly reach the end of my novel. About the quality, I'm assured with the fact that I can revise my novel for future drafts to level it up. :D
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