Organizing story ideas and your writing

[Book-obsessed]

So I've been doing a good deal of writing these past few years and at first I really struggled with the chaos of all the words in my head. So I figured out a way to get it all organized and I thought I'd share it with you guys.



STEPS FOR GETTING ORGANIZED

First thing you want to do is get everything down on paper

Get a few notebooks and designate one for story ideas, and the others for individual stories.

In the first note book write down all the ideas for stories that you have. Then select the story that you think about the most and designate a note book for it.

In the notebook that you have just designated write down what you want the story to be about

Then write down the characters

Have a page or two bait each character; their looks, their past, their personality

Then outline the book; the big things you want to happen in the story, how it should end, and possibilities for sequels or just a solid ending

Next you want to outline some chapters; get the first five chapters outlined at least that way you don't get stuck while writing.

When you outline the chapters it's the same as outlining the book; you point out the big things you want to happen in the chapter but you also give more focus to the little things. The small things that make connections throughout the chapters to contribute to the plot.

Finally you start writing; I think the first chapter is always the hardest so maybe you might want to skip over to and write it later. It doesn't really matter what order the book is in. Or you could start the book from the middle of the story and fill in the rest of the story throughout the books.

I hope this helps!

[sora-mclain]

Cool, I'm going to try out NaNoWriMo and this will be useful. Thanks to this I realized I was focusing too much on story and not enough on character history and visual. Thanks!

[moderntimes]

These are some good pointers. I like that they aren't too detailed or specific, as each writer has a particular method and trying to adhere to a strict set of rules may often hamper creativity.

I follow much the same technique as described except everything is on my laptop. I have a folder "ideas" and any time I have an idea for a story, I create a new document and jot down these story ideas and save it. I must have 50 at least of these.

Then as a story evolves past the raw "thinking about it" stage and I'm ready to write that story, I create a new folder for that story, such as some recent stories I've written, "cat food" or "the stump" (horror) or whatever. I first copy the "ideas" doc into the new folder and then open a new doc and start writing. I save everything in separate docs under specific folders.

Right now I'm writing my 3rd novel, "Blood Vengeance" -- a mystery thriller. I've got 2 active folders on my desktop. One folder titled "Veng chapters" and the other "Veng ideas". In the "chapters" folder are chapters 1-through whatever (right now I'm on chapter 33). In the "ideas" folder are all sorts of other related docs, such as "characters" and "weapons" and "plot ideas".

So I generally use the same technique you describe, except that everything is saved and carefully stored in various folder on my trusty HP laptop. No handwritten stuff at all. And of course, all files regularly backed up!