Writing medium and organizing

I'd write on the sidewalk in my own blood and defend my words from pigeons if I had to. So... I don't care. I've written entire novels on the small 8"x5" notebooks, and on 3D rendering workstations worth as much as new cars.

If you need to organize your thoughts, then do so. Many people write without doing so, other do it meticulously. But by the end of the day, if you're not writing, the story will never be on the page.

If "trying to write a novel" means that you're just starting out, I suggest you just throw out planning and pre-planning and just get to it. Adjust yourself in the field, because a lot of newbie writers get stuck in the preparation stage before they decide to quit.

I started my first novel when I was fourteen, and hoo boy is it a load of crap. It took me three years and 52,000 words to abandon it. Granted, I didn't plan, like, anything for it. I can't say I learned much from that experience, other than the fact that I was highly influenced by video games and didn't know how to add conflict to stories.

Anyway, I've tried using notebooks, and it doesn't usually work out for me. I always end up transferring things over to the computer anyway. I also can't write longhand because my hand cramps up and it's much slower anyway, so I stick to the keyboard for writing actual prose.

I've also found that I have issues with pacing when I write longhand. As time passes around me when I write, I can usually judge the pacing of a story. I've noticed that the pacing of my longhand stories seems way faster than my typed stories because I type faster than I hand-write. Just something to keep in mind, because I wouldn't think I'm alone in this. Unless I'm just weird.

I do, however, try to keep a small notebook with me to jot down ideas. Luckily, though, I often have my laptop with me as well, so it's not often that I use the notebook now. I know of one writer who keeps a notebook and scribbles stuff down. She's shown her notebooks on YouTube (OpenEllbey on there, if you wanted to look her up) and they're filled with gibberish that probably only she can decipher. Probably a good idea to have a bunch of random ideas in a book so that you can just open it up when you get stuck and see if something you wrote down for something else but didn't use ends up working for your current piece.

I get what you mean about being confined to one computer. I use Google Docs now (helps that I have a Chromebook) so I can write on my desktop, laptop, or anyone else's computer if I'm out of town without my laptop and feel the itch to write.

Of course, I've also heard that you can store things to the cloud with Word, but I'm too cheap to buy Word. I stick to OpenOffice and Docs because they're both free.

If this is your first novel (which your profile seems to say it is) I strongly recommend sticking around here and reading and researching as much as you can. It will be highly enlightening, I promise. This is the first time I've actually put a big effort into researching story development, and I'm not new at all to writing. I definitely regret not doing this sooner.

Then again, because this is your first novel, you may want to follow Osulagh's advice and just go for it and learn in the field. The advice you find here will make a lot more sense once you have a sense of what writing a novel is like.

Just bear in mind that there might be some discouraging threads/information on here. Try not to let that get to you. Just keep writing for the love of writing.

Zenith667 said:

Also, do you think this "organizing" stuff is more like "if you're an organized person or not" or you think there are methods to improve it?

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I think worrying about how to organize things is a way to avoid writing. But what do I know?

All my stuff is on my PC, in plain text. Ideas get their own folder, as does every novel and short story. That's it. BIC (Butt In Chair) takes care of the rest.

My way:

I use scrivener.

I carry around a notebook with me all day & night. Everything I think about gets scribbled into there. (Ideas).

The notebook scribbles then get put into scrivener. I have three sections for ideas/pieces. Unplaced Dialogue, Unplaced Scenes & sections (Beginning, Middle, End).

I also input everything else. (Character Bios, pictures, etc), and everything gets printed and put into my divided/tabbed filofax (my story bible/notebook). I make sure I have a page with just the main characters picture and a page with pictures of the rest of the cast. I use these when I'm writing scenes.

Next I have my outlines. One for each chapter. I outline every scene in the chapter and what I want to happen in them. These also get printed and added to filofax.

I use the printed outlines to create each chapter/scene.

I have a desktop and laptop, both with scrivener on them. I also have an Ipad with Manuscript on it and an Iphone. I don't take my notebook out with me (I have to carry too many other things (medical stuff for my kids, etc) to make it easy to carry & use a notebook & pen). So I use notes on my iphone. I realized I was getting too distracted & attached to the desktop PC, so I just recently purchased an Alphasmart Neo, this means I can happily go into the yard with the kids and bash out some words. Or have something to take out with me that can bish bash bosh about in the car (the thought of taking my ipad or laptop into the yard or out in public. I have paranoia about them getting broken or stolen. The neo also looks more balanced for lap typing.

So after I get back home/inside, I input all the data into Scrivener.

As long as I try to keep my scribbling to the one notepad I take around the house (I am known to wake up in the middle of the night and start scribbling stuff down) I do fine. If I had multiple notepads, I am likely to lose them in this household.

I also recently got a treadmill and plan to get/make a desk for it, thus stopping my forgetting to exercise and sitting too still to often. I can type/socialize/homeschool the kids and be exercising...but thats a whole other story.

Atalanta said:

I think worrying about how to organize things is a way to avoid writing. But what do I know?

All my stuff is on my PC, in plain text. Ideas get their own folder, as does every novel and short story. That's it. BIC (Butt In Chair) takes care of the rest.

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Me too but to each their own

The thing is you need to figure out what sort of person you are - do you need any of this? Are you doing it because you need to or someone told you to? Are you just the sort of perso who needs all their ducks lined up?


If you need it, then only you can figure out what works for you -- trying other people#s methods may help, but still you need to figure out what works for YOU for THIS book ( it may well change for each book) So (you may need to google) snowflake method. reading Save the Cat, corkboards, post its, just going with it and writing, scrivener. file cards. Maybe you need to just write.
try everything. Find what works for you. (I use word and that is it) Oh and I backup using sugar sync. But I barely even notice it;s happening. It just ..does

Worry less about medium

more about what medium helps you write actual words of the actual story.

I don't organize anything, and I don't keep notes. I just sit down and start writing. I keep doing this day after day until I finish the novel.

Obviously from the previous posts, it's very much a matter of personal preference. Find out what works for you and do it. The only piece of advice I'd give, and this isn't limited to just this subject, is: Don't keep changing your process. If you switch your system every 5 minutes, you'll just end up more confused. Once you have something basic worked out, then stick to it unless you come up with something that you are sure is an improvement. Then take the time to completely switch over before continuing. In other words, commit.

I'm a child of the electronic age, and I'm not sure I even remember how to use a pencil (they have that weird pink thing at the other end, right?). My smartphone works as an immediate note-taker, and my laptop serves for the rest. I have stepsheets, subplots in their own WORD docs, character lists, and misc notes. I'm organized because otherwise I'm a useless scatterbrained git with about as much sense of focus as an over-caffinated chihuahua.

Zenith667 said:

Hello,

I am trying to write a novel, but I'm badly organized and I can't decide for a good writing medium.

For my novel I have two kinds of text: ideas and story. I have tried different kinds of mediums, hoping I would get what I need, but ended up having ideas and stories spread everywhere:

• Notebooks - pros: I sometimes feel I have more inspiration to write with a pen; cons: I have ugly hand writing and find it easier to read typed text, need to cut text with mistakes or where I changed my mind, re-order phrases, I feel more chaotic.
• Online text editor - I tried fastpencil.com. Pros: wherever I am, if I have internet connection, I can continue updating / writing the story. Cons: It is not fully featured text editor, and if you have random ideas or interesting dialogue that you think where you'd put, you don't have a special place for such things, as I see.
• MS Word / OpenOffice Writer - pros: I can better organize stories and ideas. Cons: I always need the laptop I use for writing that novel, in order to continue writing; A notebook is less likely to be destroyed than a file on disk (and you don't want to deal with file versions if you backup the files on USB stick).

I don't know. Perhaps I should setup, say, a dropbox account, and use Word documents. This way I could use Word documents and I wold solve file updating problem.

What do you guys use as mediums for writing stories? What do you feel more comfortable with?

Also, do you think this "organizing" stuff is more like "if you're an organized person or not" or you think there are methods to improve it? I'm feeling I'm not an organized person at all.

Thanks!

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You totally need to try hiveword.com
You can start and organize a novel from start to finish. You can add characters and there's a whole thing to fill out there. Scenes, and you can also change the order of the scenes as well to see how things can go if they're different. It's a cool place and I have an account where I've started to organize a few ideas.

The problem with me though is that if it's too organized I can't write. I get stuck. So I basically make the list of characters and places and stuff and then I just write the premise.

Zenith667 said:

Hello,

I am trying to write a novel, but I'm badly organized and I can't decide for a good writing medium.

For my novel I have two kinds of text: ideas and story. I have tried different kinds of mediums, hoping I would get what I need, but ended up having ideas and stories spread everywhere:

• Notebooks - pros: I sometimes feel I have more inspiration to write with a pen; cons: I have ugly hand writing and find it easier to read typed text, need to cut text with mistakes or where I changed my mind, re-order phrases, I feel more chaotic.
• Online text editor - I tried fastpencil.com. Pros: wherever I am, if I have internet connection, I can continue updating / writing the story. Cons: It is not fully featured text editor, and if you have random ideas or interesting dialogue that you think where you'd put, you don't have a special place for such things, as I see.
• MS Word / OpenOffice Writer - pros: I can better organize stories and ideas. Cons: I always need the laptop I use for writing that novel, in order to continue writing; A notebook is less likely to be destroyed than a file on disk (and you don't want to deal with file versions if you backup the files on USB stick).

I don't know. Perhaps I should setup, say, a dropbox account, and use Word documents. This way I could use Word documents and I wold solve file updating problem.

What do you guys use as mediums for writing stories? What do you feel more comfortable with?

Also, do you think this "organizing" stuff is more like "if you're an organized person or not" or you think there are methods to improve it? I'm feeling I'm not an organized person at all.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

You might want to try Yarny. It's a blend of all of what you seem to be looking for (except handwriting). There's a section for writing, which you can drag the scenes to move them around. There's also another section where you can keep notes. It also automatically saves to the cloud, and you can also refer back to older versions. Plus, you can download Word and epub versions of your stories. It also has a word count tracker.

I write in Word for shorter stories, meaning anything under about 50K. I usually write linear for shorter works, so one straight-through run in Word is most efficient.

Over 50K, I use Scrivener and use a break at every scene. I use a description of what happens in that scene as a scene title, which allows me to skip around without hunting for the right spot and even move scenes if needed without losing anything.

Everything is in Dropbox. While my main reason for that is to make sure I don't lose everything to a computer crash, Dropbox made transitioning to a new computer relatively painless. Or as painless as it could be when Win8 was involved. I don't work from multiple machines, but it would be an asset if I did.

In Dropbox, every book has its own file. That file contains everything for that book from concept through publication. Digital copies of contracts, revisions and edits, author copies, cover art... All in one place so I can find it as I need it. Again, it's also helped as I've changed computers. I didn't have to go hunting through my hard copies or dig out my old laptop to check a contract clause when I had a question about something. Taking the time on the front-end to set up an organizational system has saved me a lot of later time and frustration .

My handwriting is horrible, especially when I'm on a roll, so I don't do longhand. I don't print anything. All writing, edits and submissions have been digital. I also recently began using Dragon to dictate the first draft, which has sped up my writing substantially.

That's how I work. As always, my way is tailored to me and might not fit you.

Organizing can be helpful -- or a disaster -- depending on 'how' you write. For some it's best to set a firm foundation before framing and filling in the gaps with a story. For others, they sit down with a basic idea and sees where it leads them. The first group know what's going to happen next and have a good idea of everything that will be in their tale as they write/type/speak that first line, while the second is on a voyage of discovery where entering/deleting a minor point on a whim can change their tale's path.

While I 'sorta' set up a very basic frame for my first toe-dip at this writing thing, I'm more in the second group as the planned six 'little' chapters has grown to seventeen -- and I'm not done (and as a friend pointed out, 20K plus words in some of those chapters are not considered 'small' ...)

In my own case I found longhand to be too frustrating, both because I'm slow at it as well as because trying to add or reword makes a mess of it. Currently on an old netbook which gets plugged into a large monitor and wireless keyboard/mouse when at home. Short stories each get their own file, while loner ones get a file for each chapter.

Whichever way you attack the problem, I wish you luck. ;-)


[FONT=&quot]There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein. -- Red Smith
[/FONT]
Far too many parents are too busy trying to childproof the world rather than working on world-proofing their child ...

[FONT=&quot]Never tell people how to do things. Tell them WHAT to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. -- Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.[/FONT]

There's a gazillion organizational tools out there, and each one works the best for somebody. Around here, there are a lot of fans of Scrivener, but there are a lot of fans of other things too. Word is a dandy tool. So are other word processors. Text editors are fine too. It really doesn't matter what tool you choose, as long as it's something you're comfortable working with.

For that matter, if you prefer writing longhand on paper, or keeping your notes in a binder or a stack of index cards, that's fine too -- if it works for you, it's ok. (If you're not very organized but like to work on paper, you might consider something like a looseleaf binder that makes it easier to move bits around and add things in the middle than a notebook does.)

For myself, I gave up on paper because I found myself sitting next to twenty balled-up sheets of discard for every page of text I finished, and I'd recompose a lot of it anyway when I typed it into the computer (which is required at the end, no matter how you write). And I like the organizational tools in Scrivener because they let me keep my notes and fragments handy while I'm writing, and it's easy for me to rearrange things and keep track of scenes & ideas that may not be in the right place yet. But that's just me.

But it's more important to write than to think about how to write.

I found Techniques of the Selling Writer a helpful book but read it after having written my first novel. It would probably help you more if you read it after having written something but no matter what you do the only way to write is to write.

In all honesty I can't see what there is to organize. Open file, write, save file. Re-open file, write, save file...

Seems to me you're creating rods for your own back by dwelling upon 'organising'.

Method madness. Have at it. Me, I like to write.

I use a notebook or pad for ideas. I transfer the ideas that stick to a Word document. I type in word - I used to hand write everything, but the novel has to be typed eventually. Now I start that way to save tedium and confusion. I always wanted to revise the draft I was typing, but then I wouldn't have had that draft saved in the computer.

I keep each revision in it's own file with a folder for each title (even if the title changes).

I hope this helps.

I brainstorm and outline on paper, but when it comes to BIC writing, I have to type. My handwriting is terrible, and my hands get tired way too fast.

I start with plain text for the first draft. For now, I've been using Word for everything, but I've been considering a writer's software like Scrivner to help keep me organized.

I have been known to jot story ideas down on napkins, envelopes, notepads, or any available surface. But for my main writing, I use LibreOffice. (It's a variation of OpenOffice, but OO is no longer being updated and LO is.) It's a good word processor and allows me to do everything I need to, including add images (such as for articles and blog posts). For my novels, it has a bookmark feature, so I can mark each chapter and easily jump back and forth between them. That is a LIFESAVER! No more endless scrolling, trying to find a particular scene. I just click straight to it.

I also use LibreOffice to write my synopsis, outline, character bios, geographical info, and anything else that relates to the story. I create a separate file for each one, and group them together in the same folder, with different folders for different stories, novels, articles, etc.

I use multiple methods of backing my files up. First, I email everything to myself, so it's stored on my email server. Second, I use Dropbox and Amazon's Cloud server. Third, I save everything to an external hard drive. Between all these different methods, I shouldn't lose any data, even if my laptop is damaged or lost.

I try to keep my methods as simple as possible. I use Word and dump everything into a single file, notes at the beginning and story below it.

At least that's my current method. My current WIP began on Google Drive so I could work on it at my day job.

I wrote two other stories by hand and transcribed them onto the computer, which was a lot of work (and I type over 100wpm)! But I did like how handwriting forced me to slow down and think.

Previously I kept notes on the story in a separate file, but I would neglect to update those files.

Now my ideas get jotted down on note cards which I can manipulate. I have a white board to catch any brain waves/idea vomit as I'm writing.

But everything important goes into one document, which is easy to email to myself and update on the home server.

Zenith667 said:

I sometimes have the impression it's a load of crap. I think I'm having plenty of imagination, but it's possible I don't see the boundary between fiction and crap. It may also influence the fact that, maybe it was not only me, anyway, when I grew up as a child, I had access to video games and fictional animated cartoons, while all this fiction was regarded by adults as crap. When I write fictional stuff, I sometimes feel about it that's its either childish or just crap.

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I think that everyone else has pretty much covered the "methods" question, but on the "crap note" I feel the need the need to quote Stephen King: "Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position."

I just reread the beginning of the post, this is about organization.

You don't organize a rough draft--you organize a first draft (very often after you get it read by someone). Rough drafts are all over the place.

You write them on whatever pleases you, you'll find your own favorite.

I agree with Atalanta, this is a diversion from writing.

I write my first ideas in moleskines. I also take notes in Evernote but the majority of my work gets written in Word and then saved in the appropriate folders.

Just write and stop worrying about the medium.

I tend to write longhand, in a notebook, with a fountain pen.

Then I type everything into Word, which allows me a chance to rewrite as I'm transcribing because between the two tasks, my mind has had a chance to let the story perculate and come up with new or alternative scenes.

But sometimes I type straight into Word. What's nice about Word is, I can save the story to the cloud and access it from my laptop, my tablet, or my smartphone, so its always available to work on.

I thought nothing could ever be better than Google Docs, but I recently became a Scrivener convert. I don't really need much in terms of organization, but the compiling features make the software invaluable.

When it comes to jotting down ideas that aren't for any specific project yet, I recently started putting them on notecards and storing them in a box. This works so much better for me than playing the endless guessing game of figuring out which composition notebook I scribbled that one line in.