How do I keep my ideas, the characters, the plots, and the scenes organized when starting a story? Some authors use cork boards and pushpins to make a map of ideas. Some use index cards to organize their thoughts. Still others use software to do the organization for them. I use a mixture of several different approaches. Let me explain my process.
To begin with, I use my phone to hold ideas, notes, and story pieces as I am trying to make initial sense of the overall story. Later I use a journal, but eventually return back to the phone. Since I use my phone to craft the beginning elements of my story, I can literally write anywhere. I don’t need to worry at this point of carrying around my pen and journal. Whether I am at the library, waiting in line at the grocery store, or have some downtime at home, I can always jot down a quick note on my phone.
How exactly do I use my phone to stay organized? I use a paid-for app called Scrivener. I use it both on my phone and on my Mac Book Pro. I craft the general outline of my story there before using my journal. Because I take my phone everywhere with me, it is the perfect tool to carve out the large chunks for a story. I use it to hash out bigger picture ideas, concepts that I need to explore further, quotations and bedside ideas that come in the middle of the night.
Remember when I said that I take notes and write ideas on my phone before I write in my journal? It is these raw nuggets of story elements that I polish into a novel which I hope will resonate with my readers. I start with writing down the basic premise of the book. Is it a mystery, is it suspense, or maybe a fantasy piece? What is the idea for the book—the general plot concept? I notate any plot ideas, characters, motive, and anything else that comes to mind regardless of exactly where in the storyline it takes place. I just make sure I have it written down.
Then I build on those ideas by adding to it piece by piece. It doesn’t look pretty at first, it’s not supposed to. The point of this exercise is to get information on the page. It ends up being random fragments of the story scattered on the page which fit somewhere between the beginning and the end. But these are the nuggets I start with and eventually polish them into gold.
I take everything I’ve written on my phone, which at this point is usually chicken scratch and random concepts, and rewrite them into lengthy scenes in my journal. I have a new journal for each book. So, not only do I have a writing journal, but I also have my favorite pen. It’s a special pen that I reserve for writing my books. It might sound silly, but it’s a piece of the overall magic that I use to get my juices flowing.
I use my journal to write out what-if scenarios as I move through major points in the story which were outlined on my phone. This journal becomes the backbone to my stories and holds many of the major, albeit not final elements, for the story I am crafting. But it doesn’t stay there.
I then dictate my semi-completed story from the journal back into my phone using speech-to-text translation. Once the dictation is done, I go back and clean it up. I don’t polish it at this point. Editing is a later step. I simply correct obvious errors. Polishing is done once I copy the drafted chapters into Scrivener on my Mac Book Pro.
This brings me to the third tool I use which is my computer. I import the story from Scrivener on my phone into Scrivener on my laptop. This is when the first major round of editing takes place, but understand that my final editing is performed in Microsoft Word. Every writer has their own set of instruments in their toolbox—their own way of doing things. Don’t take my methodology as gospel. Just know that this is what works for me.
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