Writing management

How does everyone manage their works in progress and the chapters they've written?

My first 100 chapters are in a Word document and backed up in Google Docs, plus wherever they're posted. I started a new doc for part 2 of the story, mainly because grammerly lags terribly with big docs.

I also have a characters/plot points doc so I don't screw up continuity - but it feels a bit inefficient. Is there tech I'm missing? Open to suggestions, and ty in advance.

Writing management?
This is a very broad question, like asking about economic management. It might take a semester to answer comprehensively. (Shakes head) Or it could take more three years to earn a bachelor's degree in creative writing. Lol

Eldoria said:

Writing management?
This is a very broad question, like asking about economic management. It might take a semester to answer comprehensively. (Shakes head) Or it could take more three years to earn a bachelor's degree in creative writing. Lol

Click to expand...

Especially when YOU ARE writing for one semester about economic management to earn bachelor degree within one year! MUAHAHAHAHA!




On serious notes: love yah eldoria senpai

I don't think you're missing tech. Sure, there are options - just recently, World Anvil was mentioned in a thread. I was like "Cool, I could try that" - only to realize that I had an account already and it was apparently 3 years old. It's AI based and there's options where you can input manuscript chapters and ask "How many times has Johnny talked to Lena" or something and it will tell you. That's at least, what they said, but I really don't do well with big, convoluted applications, so I immediately bugged out.
I have several folders for several versions of my manuscripts and for some stories, a so called "Trivia Doc", which is an Excel sheet with all the necessary information I need to keep in mind, so I don't fuck up continuation.

My personal go to, in terms of proper organization, is:
Alpha Manuscript
Beta Manuscript
Omega Manuscript
The first is a folder for each story, holding each chapter as a separate Word Doc. Beta Manuscript is a Word Doc, in which all of the individual chapters are collected as a single manuscript; revisions will only be done there, except for the editing I'm doing while writing or immediately after, because that's still the initial draft. That way, I retain the initial draft. Once all revisions are done, I set the document for printing purposes, if it's one that I publish - das would be the Omega folder. It holds InDesign Documents.
I also regularly copy my entire hard drive onto an external hard drive.

Any more than that would mostly be stuff that isn't necessary. If you feel the need for it, try World Anvil, Storybook or Papyrus (don't know if that's still a thing, but it used to be a big thing).

Ever expanding Google Doc files mostly.

I just use a combination of Gdocs and obsidian. Sometimes notebookglm to see if I named any characters once and completely forgot about them. Or foreshadowed something and completely forgot about it.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Scrivener. I have a file for every story, and each file has a built in binder which is quite handy.

I have a character arc/plot points document done in Excel, with coloured text boxes that I can shift around between chapters. This helped me fill out each chapter from beginning to end with what goes where.

how did some author in the late 50's, ever manage to write such an infulential crime noir, that it both spawned a career doing it for him up thru the early 70s, as well as inspired the whole next GENERATION of writers. He had NOTHING. pencil, pem, paper, clipboard/chalhboard... and a humble typewriter when he thought he had his rough draft nailed. Why could he do it better than most do it today, in many people's observation. don't even say "speed" because he was one of those prolific fux. no ghost writers, ever.

I am not without modern sympathy for tech. But what more do you need than a humble text editor, like notepad. If I gave you NOTEPAD back in the late 50s? You would have been the envy of every other writer. Okay, you might need an office suite to copy into PDFs and MOBIs and all that jazz, and add tables and illustrations and... all that.

i'll grant you all that much...
but... "management" apps? Seriously now.
See, I give an inch, you want ten miles.

Come to your senses, I beg of you.

But if you gave Notepad to your 195

TinaMigarlo said:

how did some author in the late 50's, ever manage to write such an infulential crime noir, that it both spawned a career doing it for him up thru the early 70s, as well as inspired the whole next GENERATION of writers. He had NOTHING. pencil, pem, paper, clipboard/chalhboard... and a humble typewriter when he thought he had his rough draft nailed. Why could he do it better than most do it today, in many people's observation. don't even say "speed" because he was one of those prolific fux. no ghost writers, ever.

I am not without modern sympathy for tech. But what more do you need than a humble text editor, like notepad. If I gave you NOTEPAD back in the late 50s? You would have been the envy of every other writer. Okay, you might need an office suite to copy into PDFs and MOBIs and all that jazz, and add tables and illustrations and... all that.

i'll grant you all that much...
but... "management" apps? Seriously now.
See, I give an inch, you want ten miles.

Come to your senses, I beg of you.

Click to expand...

But if you’d given Notepad to your 1950s writer, would they have used it? If not, why not? Why not use a story/plot management application if it’s available and you think it’ll help you?

TinaMigarlo said:

how did some author in the late 50's, ever manage to write such an infulential crime noir, that it both spawned a career doing it for him up thru the early 70s, as well as inspired the whole next GENERATION of writers. He had NOTHING. pencil, pem, paper, clipboard/chalhboard... and a humble typewriter when he thought he had his rough draft nailed. Why could he do it better than most do it today, in many people's observation. don't even say "speed" because he was one of those prolific fux. no ghost writers, ever.

I am not without modern sympathy for tech. But what more do you need than a humble text editor, like notepad. If I gave you NOTEPAD back in the late 50s? You would have been the envy of every other writer. Okay, you might need an office suite to copy into PDFs and MOBIs and all that jazz, and add tables and illustrations and... all that.

i'll grant you all that much...
but... "management" apps? Seriously now.
See, I give an inch, you want ten miles.

Come to your senses, I beg of you.

Click to expand...

Why would you not want to make your life easier?

I'm writing a story, a chapter at a time. I have a chapter titled "Desc" and maybe a "Notes" chapter. Story title is the folder name, and I preserve the rough draft by copying the folder, and "copy 1" becomes the one I work on, thus providing ultimate backup point should the bad thing happen.
If I cut a chapter or a big chunk of text, it goes into a "cuts" folder. In case I want to rummage around later.
I already have a "artwork" folder. I make a "formats" folder if I'm making PDF or MOBI or whatnot.

what am I missing out on.
I click on "Books" folder? Every one of my stories has its own folder.
I backup onto some external storage devices, I don't trust the cloud shit.

I'm not being obstinate, I'm just wondering what is the big "time saver" here.
misspelled words already get a "squiggly red line" for my attention as it is.
I right click on "squiggly red lines" I get spellings of the weird vocabulary word I grabbed for.
Medieval is my favorite pain in the ass, by the by.

educate me, beyond "its productivity defined"
when I finally bought a GPS way back when, I instantly fell in love with the "floating map"
what do I need here.

Because the process of writing is so solitary (for the most part no one is leaning over your shoulder making sure you're doing it 'properly') and so optional (no one made you do this, and it's not necessary for a job that supports you in all but the most fortunate cases), your habits will always defeat your tools. Always. If you're disorganized, incurious, and slapdash in the non-negotiable parts of your life, tools won't make you any different when you're writing. If you ruminate and procrastinate, tools cannot fix that.

If what you're doing is working, then keep at it. It should be working just fine, considering Word is perfectly useable. I would recommend backing up to a physical drive that you own in case you ever lose access to your Google account, however.

As for continuity and such, programs like Notion and Obsidian allow you to basically make little series wikis that may or may not be more navigable than a simple doc. However, there are learning curves involved and they can turn into time sinks and procrastination traps.

The kind of optimization you're after tends to happen gradually, and it happens through a process of being ruled by and aware of your individual foibles. I'm prone to 'live editing' wherein I obsessively ruminate on and re-work passages even as I write them in my first draft. I backspace constantly. I cannot commit to even a moderately shitty first draft no one will see.

So I write my first drafts on a typewriter. Which I admit is literally insane. I write about ten pages, I photograph or scan them for archival purposes. When I have more, usually a few chapters, I annontate them and transcribe them in Scrivener, which is where the initial 'edit' happens. The first digital-only draft of my work is actually a second draft, with errors corrected and wording tightened up and detail added and so on. I get around my fear of first drafts by making it impossible to write a first draft without commiting to the first thing I write down and just bulldozing through the session.

Also, writing on my typewritten work in red pen is quite satisfying. It makes me feel like a professor in the 1960s, without the lead poisoning.

Thanks, everyone. I'll look at some of the software ideas provided.

My writing time is less than 10% of what it was a few weeks ago, so every bit of efficiency I can pick up is helpful.

TinaMigarlo said:

I'm writing a story, a chapter at a time. I have a chapter titled "Desc" and maybe a "Notes" chapter. Story title is the folder name, and I preserve the rough draft by copying the folder, and "copy 1" becomes the one I work on, thus providing ultimate backup point should the bad thing happen.
If I cut a chapter or a big chunk of text, it goes into a "cuts" folder. In case I want to rummage around later.
I already have a "artwork" folder. I make a "formats" folder if I'm making PDF or MOBI or whatnot.

what am I missing out on.
I click on "Books" folder? Every one of my stories has its own folder.
I backup onto some external storage devices, I don't trust the cloud shit.

I'm not being obstinate, I'm just wondering what is the big "time saver" here.
misspelled words already get a "squiggly red line" for my attention as it is.
I right click on "squiggly red lines" I get spellings of the weird vocabulary word I grabbed for.
Medieval is my favorite pain in the ass, by the by.

educate me, beyond "its productivity defined"
when I finally bought a GPS way back when, I instantly fell in love with the "floating map"
what do I need here.

Click to expand...

How would you manage a story going past 300 chapters with tens of important characters and dozens of arcs. Sure your one chapter of notes can cover it but eventually it's going to be overwhelmed and you're going to create another chapter, then another. Eventually you're going to end up with a management app.

Needless to say not everyone is going to make such complex and long running series but webnovels generally lean towards that and having a structured app to efficiently navigate your myriad of notes is a welcoming idea. Or you'll end up with lots of plotholes and inconsistency

YukieSama said:

How would you manage a story going past 300 chapters with tens of important characters and dozens of arcs. Sure your one chapter of notes can cover it but eventually it's going to be overwhelmed and you're going to create another chapter, then another. Eventually you're going to end up with a management app.

Needless to say not everyone is going to make such complex and long running series but webnovels generally lean towards that and having a structured app to efficiently navigate your myriad of notes is a welcoming idea. Or you'll end up with lots of plotholes and inconsistency

Click to expand...

I'll be getting there with one of mine eventually... Just added a group of Army Rangers and a bunch of religious types to the core group of six... And those six will be replaced with five others fairly soon... But four of those five haven't been born yet... so it gets complicated.

YukieSama said:

How would you manage a story going past 300 chapters with tens of important characters and dozens of arcs. Sure your one chapter of notes can cover it but eventually it's going to be overwhelmed and you're going to create another chapter, then another. Eventually you're going to end up with a management app.

Needless to say not everyone is going to make such complex and long running series but webnovels generally lean towards that and having a structured app to efficiently navigate your myriad of notes is a welcoming idea. Or you'll end up with lots of plotholes and inconsistency

Click to expand...

I originally just banged away to get as close to stream of consciousness speed, from the movie in my head to just banging out the story as quick as possible. But it took so much time editing it was ridiculous. Over time I started doing more on the rough draft as I go. The last one I worked on, I did most of the editing after each chapter. Unless I was really in the zone and wanted a two chapter day. But editing as much as you can as you go seems to be the best for overall speed. For me anyways.

the latest I was experimenting with, I did 10 chapters for part one, then 10 chapters for part two. I plan on going like that with it. part 1 is 1-10, part 2 is 11-20, etc. Its easy to manage with folders that way. I went weeby with names and name of things, so I saved a number of web pages getting weeb words for stuff. All the names "mean something" that way. I realized now that all those years ago when I read the sunset warrior trilogy, he became the Dai-San, which means "the big change". so taking that much as an influence, I wanted the weeby names to mean things.

YukieSama said:

How would you manage a story going past 300 chapters with tens of important characters and dozens of arcs. Sure your one chapter of notes can cover it but eventually it's going to be overwhelmed and you're going to create another chapter, then another. Eventually you're going to end up with a management app.

Needless to say not everyone is going to make such complex and long running series but webnovels generally lean towards that and having a structured app to efficiently navigate your myriad of notes is a welcoming idea. Or you'll end up with lots of plotholes and inconsistency

Click to expand...

I honestly dont think I would do that many chapters, but never say never. I know I have one "really sprawled out story" that I now know I have to chop up big chapters into bite sized chapters, and... I have no idea how many chapters that sucker might end up at.

I'll find out eventually.
----------------------------------------
I'm not ruling out anything though. Maybe one day I'll look into something, but not as long as everything is manageable like now.
but I did develop my own system that works for me. SOmeone else could find it chaotic or unworkable, but... I always one of those people that had a chaotic desk at work, a disaster looking workbench. But I know where everything is, and know where to look for anything a year later.

my joke? A clean work area is the sign of a truly sick mind, lol. If you're working hard enough? you shuoldn't have free time to stop and organize and clean stuff all the time, lol. When I'm in teh zone, I can write over eight hours if I'm hot on the trail of something. If I have the next day off, why not stay up late and follow through and see what you can get into, you know. Strike while the iron is hot and all that. When i take a break, I really don;t. Its down time to be reading and editing again as I go, I have stuff i'm still getting ready to release more of. Always something because I've been writing for years and just now putting stuff up here.

JessicaDrew said:

I have a character arc/plot points document done in Excel, with coloured text boxes that I can shift around between chapters. This helped me fill out each chapter from beginning to end with what goes where.

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That's exactly what I did too!