Hi all, Completely new here, I've done a good amount of writing in the past and I'm starting work now on my first full novel. I'm just wondering if anybody is aware of any software which is useful for building character profiles, settings and other elements then linking these things together in maybe some visual way? I know about software such as Scrivener etc. but what I'm looking for is less of a writing platform (I'm perfectly happy with Word) and more of a planning software to keep all my characters etc in one place which is easy to manipulate and play around with. For example I found a good Android app called "Writers Companion" does anyone know if a similar but more fleshed out thing exist for PC as that is my preferred platform.
You also might like the free Wavemaker Cards. In my opinion, it is "perfecter" than Bibisco primarily because it will literally work with any computer platform that can use a Chromium based browser (Chrome, Edge, etc) but you might not agree. But in any case, I think it's worth a look.
Looks like @Xoic and @Glen Barrington have you covered for software. I'm not being a smart-arse, I promise, but I highly recommend 5"x8" record cards. Plus a ring binder or two if you're really organised. I don't use that stuff much for fiction, because I've seldom started anything long enough to need it, but for work non-fiction writing its been great. There's something about neat, well designed software packages that inhibits me from laying out sprawling half-formed ideas and watching them slowly congeal. I think its because however you dress them up the underlying technologies for all word processing and databases are designed for linear, discrete, precise and clearly nodal data. Creation isn't any of those things until later down the line. P.S. Apropos of not much, some old animator said CGI felt to him like, "animating with a microwave".
On using 3x5 cards, it's an old trick and a good one. I discovered a technique called a Step Outline: Step Outlines He emphasizes though that it isn't a technique to use right from the beginning, it's for organizing your ideas once you've generated them, which is best done in a more freeform writing approach. Then you make a step outline, which was traditionally done using 3x5 index cards and then written out with each paragraph being one step or beat. After messing with the technique for a while I've come to agree—it works best for me to write loose ideas first in a very rough outline form and then distill out the story beats to check the plot. But rather than using the index cards I found a way to use Evernote and a simple table. You could doubtless use any writing software, it doesn't need to be Evernote, but I don't know if you could link the more detailed notes to the step outline the way I do it in Evernote. Here are a couple of links explaining things: Seven Crowns' post @ I'm Afraid to Keep Writing My post @ Looking for Free Story Organizing Software on Mac Evernote no longer allows you to create a table directly in the software, so I make one with just a single column in some word processing software like Word or whatever and copy/paste it in, then Evernote allows me to work with it quite nicely. EDIT—it still works. I just whipped up a single-column table in Libre Office and copy/pasted it into Evernote. You can do it with the cells empty and do all the writing in Evernote.
Regarding paper organization, and even though digital tools populate my natural habitat, I recently discovered why Neil Gaiman sometimes writes in longhand with a fountain pen. For organization on paper, disc binders such as the (overpriced) Levenger Circa work nicely. I'd like an Indiana Jones approved Traveler's Notebook to go with my bottle-ink pens. Fortunately, the utility of disc binders has saved me from leather notebook hipness. Curio, Mac-only app, is also nice for brainstorming. When I'm trying to pound math into my silly head, it's my go-to tool for notes and equations.
