Frustrated... Too many notes

[Damian]

Hi

Does anyone have any advice on how to keep organised...

I have loads of books full of notes, hundreds of files full of notes short and long, my Scrivener has just outgrown itself and that has become a myriad of random notes...

I am still developing my story whilst trying to write it - some days I am creating new concepts, some days writing story - always making notes, sometimes like lists, sometimes like a poem, or a description just loads of notes full of everything to the point where I do not know what I am doing...

Today I thought I would make a start sorting through them - come up with a numbering system where I number my story - like sub-chapters and then put any relevant notes into the right places - sounds simple... so I open this one document and it just goes on and on and on - I do not remember writing it... I open another - pages upon pages of 'world building' and random scenes... writings that I could not just put in a 'chapter'

It's not the 'writing' of it that's the issue it's what to do when you have written 15 variations for practically everything... How to contextualise it... I'm still developing so there is lot's that I want to keep but I cannot keep track and I can't remember most of the stuff I write...

How do others approach writing a big story? How do you organise your ideas?
Any help would be useful...
I am sure I will find my way it's just been a long day looking through a lot of random writing...

 

[Butterfly]

You might get some ideas on these threads

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/wri...eeping-track-all.html?highlight=keeping+track

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-questions/2695-keeping-track.html?highlight=keeping+track

 

[Androxine Vortex]

Hi

Does anyone have any advice on how to keep organised...

I have loads of books full of notes, hundreds of files full of notes short and long, my Scrivener has just outgrown itself and that has become a myriad of random notes...

I am still developing my story whilst trying to write it - some days I am creating new concepts, some days writing story - always making notes, sometimes like lists, sometimes like a poem, or a description just loads of notes full of everything to the point where I do not know what I am doing...

Today I thought I would make a start sorting through them - come up with a numbering system where I number my story - like sub-chapters and then put any relevant notes into the right places - sounds simple... so I open this one document and it just goes on and on and on - I do not remember writing it... I open another - pages upon pages of 'world building' and random scenes... writings that I could not just put in a 'chapter'

It's not the 'writing' of it that's the issue it's what to do when you have written 15 variations for practically everything... How to contextualise it... I'm still developing so there is lot's that I want to keep but I cannot keep track and I can't remember most of the stuff I write...

How do others approach writing a big story? How do you organise your ideas?
Any help would be useful...
I am sure I will find my way it's just been a long day looking through a lot of random writing...

I was the same way. I kept all my notes in a big binder but then realized that I was just throwing a bunch of papers in there and it was very unorganized. One day I sat down and looked through all my notes and I honestly threw most of it out.

What I do now is I still keep all my stuff in one place (the binder) so that way I don't have stuff scattered around everywhere. My first section is where I keep my main plot outlines and ideas. In the later sections I divided everythign up into smaller pieces for easier use. Like the next section is called PLACES. I This is where I go into detail about all of the regions and places in my novel. Pretty sef explanatory.

Next section is CHARACTERS. This section tends to get pretty big for me. I try to keep it as organized as I can. I go into detail about appearance, personality, what their origin is (like where they are from) and more into their involvment with the plot.

By nature I am a very unorganized person so I try my best to keep things under control. If I am out and don't have my binder with me, I always, always, always carry a piece of paper and a pen with me at all times. If i get a random idea then I jot it down and then when I get home later I edit it into my binder. I find myself revising my plot ideas and i change it a lot so make sure if you have edited your plot and stuff into different versions, get rid of the older ones that you don't plan on using, otherwise you will have a bunch of useless papers taking up a lot of space and it then forces you to flip threw pages and pages of junk and makes things a little unorganized.

Good luck!!

 

[Penpilot]

Generally speaking, if you can't remember some little world building/scene tidbit even exists, it probably isn't all that important. I mean, it's great to have the history of X when you need to know something about X, but if you don't even remember you even wrote that history and it's multiple versions, it's all useless to your story. Plop it into an random unused ideas folder and get back to actually writing the story instead of organizing stuff you won't remember to use or remember to refer back to.