Keeping Your Notes

At some point in the writing process—be that before you even start the first draft, or when you start polishing it—you’re going to create notes. What exactly those notes include changes based on your style, the genre and where you are in the process. Regardless of what’s in them, you’ll need a way to keep them organized, of which there are plenty of ways to choose from.

Story Bibles are one way. These are hard copy notes, often kept in binders and organized into different sections. Often they can be great for keeping track of series as well as for any notes you make while in the different stages of writing, revising and editing.

Notekeeping software is becoming more and more common. Things like OneNote, Evernote, Google Keep and many others are widely available across a range of prices from the free to the pricey. These can allow you to organize your notes all under one story, setting, time period or whatever else works for you. This can be invaluable for large amounts of research and for expansive world building.

Speaking of software, writing programs such as Scrivener and the Novel Factory can be used to keep some notes right from the start. This can help keep making forward progress as well as make managing notes on plot, setting and even characters much easier.

There’s also no reason you can’t use multiple ways of keeping notes. For the actual editing notes such as my outlines and character arcs, I use binders to contain those, but when it comes to world building and setting notes, I keep it in OneNote for quick reference. What do you use to organize your notes?