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One Note

Creed

Sage
I just got a new laptop for school, and I'm happy to say that it came with Microsoft Office.
I've started playing around with One Note, an app I'd had on my iPod but had never been able to use. Until now...
So these are some of the cool things you can do with it:
I can make a notebook called Book 1, and underneath it I can have a whole bunch of sections. I might call one Plot. In that section I can have a whole bunch of pages like Act 1 and Act 2 and so on and so forth. In each of those I can write whatever; a summary at the top, then a box for one character and a box for another character and list of where they go, who they meet, what significance they have, etc.
I can put images in it that inspire me, or ones that I've drawn myself that map out the world, capture a plot point, or maybe it's a character sketch for an in-depth analysis of Gro Grum Skullsmasher which I put in the section called Characters, along with the other major cast members.

I've literally *just* started with it, but for someone who's been looking for an organization medium that suits him for a while, I think I'll be making some more progress. So booyah!

What about you? How do you like One Note? Any cool and useful features you've discovered? I haven't tried Scrivener which seems fairly popular, so if you've had experience with them both, what are some pros and cons?
 

A. E. Lowan

Forum Mom
Leadership
We (my writing partner and I) keep our very large and complicated book series (close to 400 named series characters and about 20 books) organized in OneNote, and I've been singing its praises for quite a while, now. You can also keep track of your research with it by copying and pasting the information you want from the internet, and it will automatically generate a link to the page. You can insert pictures and links. It's very customizable. You can network OneNote to other computers and compatible devices to work in real time. And, as you've discovered, if you own a newer copy of Office you already own it! There really aren't enough good things I can say about this program.
 

Bansidhe

Minstrel
One thing I love about One Note is you can "dock" it to the side of your monitor, so if you're writing in Word (or researching, or whatever), you can make (or follow) notes easily between the two.
 

Creed

Sage
I discovered recently the "Section Groups" which makes my Worldbuilding Notebook that much more organised! Now I can have a Group for History, and a Section for each of my realms + one for ancient history, and then relevant notes inside of those.
Previously I uploaded my notes to a Tumblr account though it had many limitations. It did, however, have a nice tags system OneNote seems to be missing...
 
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