| Nabbed from my livejournal... aeriedraconia asks: How do you keep track of all your notes, timelines, world building and other data for you work in progress? I'm writing a fantasy novel and I'm now at a point where I'm having to remember a lot of details, plus keep track of three different timelines in the story. How do you keep track? I'm a skeletal writer at first... working off of an Excel spreadsheet, I start out with about 40 lines of what each scene is roughly about. I then take those over to word and expound out bullet points of details I know I have to get down for each scene and slowly the skeleton starts to fill in a bit. It's kind of like a reverse invisible man, slowly growing back to visibility until you have whole being. Anytime I write something that seems pertinent to lasting details for the series as a whole, I flip over to my Dead To Me Bible (thanks, Alt+Tab!) and add it in... fun stuff like the fact that Connor is ten years older than Simon or that the Inspectre's mustache in somewhat walrus-like.... but it's the Excel document that really is the visual cue as to a timeline for how the story is progressing in the narrative. I add and delete from it as certain scenes become obsolete and new scenes arise. Usually I add date stamps to certain events in the story to get a quick visual as to how the story is flowing. A lot of people use Post-Its to jockey scenes around, sticking them to the wall and rearranging them, but I'm a computer nerd, so I go with Excel. Now with all that said, I'd love to go back and drop about 20 pages from the front of Dead To Me. I guess those who can't do, teach! |
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I plot better with pen to paper. I use the sticky note method on a story board. I also keep a digital version in Celtx (screen writing software) so I have a backup and can easily print it out for my series bible.
Anton- I know you have a short story out already before Dead to Me... how did you get that published?
Melli-Mel,
I went to conventions, went to writing seminars and got to know some of the people running them. Eventually they asked me to send something in when a slot opened up in one of their anthologies and voila!
Now, a crafty writer might go look up all those DAW anthologies by Martin Greenberg, then see who all co authors are, then start Googling them to find email addresses... that's called business research, which is only slightly better than stalking cuz (hopefully) no one has to die!
Oh, don't worry, Anton... I only stalk you. And you look so cute there in... oh, um... yeah, thanks!! Really. I appreciate the information.
But if I get arrested, I'm blaming you.
Anyone know a good lawyer?
(BTW- I am NOT Mel. PLEASE do not call me Mel. Ew.)
I know many good lawyers. Unfortunately, I don't think they'd associate with this crowd. They usually run when they see me coming.
A good lawyer... as if there IS one!