Depending on if you have tons of writing ideas for your current story and future stories. Anyway, how do you organize your writing idea?
Do you use an app, website, or notebook to organize your writing ideas?
Are your writing ideas organized in your mind?
Tell me, what do you think?
It honestly depends. I’ve written them down in notebooks when that was all I had or I was already writing in them. I’ve written them in google docs, scrivener, and the notes app as those are very easy to access. And I’ve also been playing around with ideas in my head that take me me forever to actually write them down. I only let four stories play out in my head at a time. But, I prefer to only have two or three so after a while I write them down to keep the numbers low.
So, you have options, I see.
Which one do you lean on more, if you don’t mind me asking?
Well, I’ve been playing around with one idea in my head for like two years nonstop. And the other two have been on and off for a while… so my mind and apps. I just switched to Scrivener though so that’ll most likely be where most of them end up.
Cool beans!
I need a place where I can list my ideas down, personally.
I am currently working on three and there are going to some more coming soon.
I have a thick journal I call Thought Boy. Whenever I have an idea, or want to research something relevant to said idea, I write it down. I leave a blank page between each idea, always label the header with the idea name, and oftentimes use color coded sticky tabs to distinguish/link ideas together. Like, if I have multiple ideas for a novel I’m working on, then they’d all be labled blue. But if it’s a new unrelated idea it might be labled yellow.
Edit: Also commonly use google docs/word to record broader more fleshed out ideas. Like rough drafts of scene ideas, or recording dialogue. These are usually singular documents but I always label them according to project title and significant descrption of the scene.
allow me to show you
… in an hour or so when i’m not in class
Alright then. I shall wait.
Thought Boy, huh? LOL!
What prompted you to come up with that?!
Not insulting, just curious.
For a while I called it Phat Boy because it’s thick, but since I put ideas into it “phat” changed to “thought”, ahaha. And no offense taken, it’s mainly just for my own amusement. Personifying things sometimes helps with my creativity
Oh wow. LOL!
That’s good.
alright alright alright, so, i use both notebooks and digital files. The notebooks are more organic and I prefer them for regular use over digital files, when I make writing idea files on the computer they’re much more organized and often take a lot more effort than the garbage i put on notebook paper.
My main notebooks are a “scrap” one where I pile on any sort of writing notes. Character ideas, character details for pre-existing characters, cool words, plot ideas, worldbuilding. It all gets shoved into one notebook and I go hunting for it when i need it. I have some notes in my notes app that serve a similar purpose but I like the notebook best.
The other notebook(s) is for plots. I used to try and write out entire plots for books if I knew I wasn’t going to get to them in a while, but that lead to me putting them off even longer because I had no motivation or inspiration left to actually write them. Now I stick to only writing an arc or two ahead on projects I’m actively working on. Everything else stays in brainland limbo, with some jot notes in the scrap notebook for memory purposes if I really want to hang on to a detail.
I also have a character notebooks. It has all the basic information on all my characters. Or at least, it’s supposed to. It’s been a few years since i updated it and a lot has changed.
As far as computer files go, like I said they’re significantly more organized. I used these files for reference and management so I try to make them as accurate, up-to-date, and informative as possible.
The “Project Masterlist” is what I use to list all my projects, active or inactive. it contains their titles, genres, subgenres, target audiences, stage of writing, and whatever blurb or summary I can scrap together. It helps me keep track of where everything is and what plans I have for it. Here’s what the current one consists of (minus the actual files)
The other big file is the Character Masterlist. It’s an alphabetized list of all characters from all projects, with all the basics except physical descriptors. This is also badly in need of an update but I do reference it quite a bit. I had 300+ characters when I first made it and I probably have more now so its super helpful to have a quick, searchable list on hand.
So, you rather use a notebook to take notes instead of digital notes. or am I misunderstanding something?
My apologies if I do.
Most are still in my noggin.
I do use my Personal Thread on here for some of them though.
Are the ones you want to keep private the ones you keep in your noggin?
No. I don’t have any private ones, really.
The ones in my head are those that are not solid enough even to jot down in notes online or offline. It’s not ready to take any shape. Not even words. It’s just really vague still. Sometimes I might contemplate on a story for years before thinking that yes, it is ready to be a fully-fledged idea that I can write down.
My current NaNo lion girl story was like that for years. This year I thought, huh, you know what? I think I have a solid idea.
Oh cool.
Yes i prefer pen and paper to take notes.
I wish I could be like that sometimes. I physically hate the thought of and action of handwriting notes. I still do it, but I try not to do so much of it. I just can’t stand it.
I envy you in that regard. LOL!
Sometimes I write them down. Sometimes I forget. Sometimes they stay in my head 