Now that summer vacation has started, (It began a bit late for me due to unfortunate weather circumstances during the winter) I am beginning to formulate some ideas as to what I want to accomplish. One I came up with a few months prior to now, however, I am now adding more specific details to this plan.
The book that I started during NaNoWriMo this year I have continued, though at a slower rate compared to that of November. Yet, I am nearing the end, and have come up with a few ideas concerning my rewrite. Although, the first aspect of my writing I need to correct is the organization of my research. Or, rather, I need to conduct research. I have a small amount of information I have compiled, and also several unfinished outlines. Wondering when the wall of sticky notes comes in? Well, I believe now would be a good time to explain my title.
I have been researching various ideas on how I may organize the notes and outline for my novel, and one of the ideas I found was to find an empty wall and plaster it with sticky notes, filled with the information for my book. One of my first thoughts after reading this was that I could never find a wall empty or large enough within my living quarters to cover with all the notes I would need. Another was that it sounded impossibly confusing, not to mention the picture in my mind of some small child arriving and ripping them all down before I was aware. Of course, such a hypothetical situation was unlikely to happen anytime soon, yet the idea was still quite unappealing to my specific style of organization.
Since then I have looked into a few online sources which I may be able to use to store my information, many of which require a disconcerting amount of compensation. While I am willing to expend a bit of my savings on this project, I feel that there are better solutions. One website I took a glance at was celtx, which is free provided you do not mind using only its most basic components. I attempted to try this, however I could not pass even the sign up, as it consistently insisted something about “undefined is not a function”. If anyone reading has advice as to how I may fix this, I would be very interested.
I occurred to me, since I am starting to look at these programs for the first time seriously, it may be beneficial to both myself and those reading to create a post open to suggestion on organizing information for one’s novel. So, please give suggestions in the comment section below. For example, what do you personally do to organize for your novel? Do you use the sticky note method? Or perhaps there is an online program that you think everyone ought to use? Please share these in the comment section below. Your advice would be greatly appreciated. Have a fabulous day.
DFTBA,
Rambling Writer 😉
Rambling Writer 
I stay (relatively) old-school when planning things. I use an outline in a word document and for characters and such I use a spreadsheet with columns like “first name, last name, appearance, who are they (in relation to the story), etc.” If you don’t have Microsoft office, you can always download libre office for free for the spreadsheet function.
Honestly, over-organizing might do more harm than good. If it’s something science-y or historical that needed a lot of research, put each individual section of research (dress for that time, language of the time, basic rules of gravity in a space ship… and so on) in different word documents that are well-labeled and save them in the same folder.If it’s just about your story, maybe write three to five sentences about what happens in each chapter and save that in a different document so you know the basics of where everything is in your novel.
Unless you have something on par with Game of Thrones with the complicated religion, history, and 50 billion characters and storylines, then you probably shouldn’t deconstruct your novel to organize every little detail.
Thanks for your comment! Since my story isn’t as complicated as Game of Thrones, thank goodness, I did think briefly of doing something along those lines. Thank you for the suggestion. I might end up doing just that.