Hey people,
Crossing the halfway point in my book, I am reaching a magnitude of writing that is now time consuming if I have to search for where I have certain events. I may be writing a part that I know is connected to other parts, making it necessary to see what I wrote in other parts.
What do you do to keep track of the details of your story? An outline, a summary? So far what I use is the titles of the chapters to tell me what I want in each. As I said, that chapter has connections to other parts that I may be just getting to writing, so even going looking through a whole chapter for the lines that make i connect takes time.
Do you use highlights for connections, special symbols?
These connections are also the reason that I have been writing the book in one huge file. I am writing the main subplot separate from the large story, then will insert sections into multiple chapters for timing.
I will ask my timing question separately, but I am driving myself nuts with what day of the week am I talking about and how can that happen before the Friday events occur.
Hey Dave! That’s a really good question.
Here are a couple of things that may help:
1. Scrivener is an awesome tool. It will help you to keep the documents organized. You can even open two parts of your book at the same time if you want to compare details. You can add notes for your own reference that won’t appear in the manuscript itself. There are also a ton of other features that might solve some of what you’re facing. (There are a couple of other tools that do something similar, but Scrivener is my favorite.)
2. I’m a proponent of Plantsing–you make a loose plan for your book ahead of time, including major events, subplots, and characters. The Company’s “Arche Year” course will guide you through the process of planning a novel manuscript. The first 4 weeks of classes are all about putting the pieces together so that you hit all of your marks when you start writing. I think it would be extremely valuable for you. You can access it on the “Courses” section of this website. All you need is the “Agent” membership which is just a few dollars per month.
I’ll also be releasing a book called The Novel Matrix this spring which will share a lot of the same information! I think the course and the book will really compliment each other to bring it all together in a way that’s helpful.
3. Lastly, I always teach people to insert notes into their manuscript preceded by three slashes: /// I use this to make notes on the manuscript that I’ll later remove. For instance, if I know there’s a part I want to tie into something else, but I don’t want to take the time to develop it right now, I might drop in something like, “///TIE IN JAKE’S ROMANTIC INTEREST HERE” Then later, when I have time I can search the manuscript for “///” and address the notes to bring everything together. Using three slashes ensures that you’re only going to jump to your notes, as nothing else in the manuscript typically uses those symbols (hyperlinks, for instance, would only use two slashes).
I hope at least one of these strategies here is helpful for you!
