Hi all, I've had an idea for a story for a while now. My plot has several story lines and I fear I'm going to lose track of them all. I've got about 10 pages down, but my mind keeps going to another story line/character. Does anyone have a method/software/technique to keep $hit organized? Many thx,
Is this your first novel? It sounds like you might be doing what I've done at times and trying to cram several stories into one. What I've settled on doing is picking one character as the MC and everything else has to tie into their arc/plotline. If you can't see this character/plot connecting to it-- yank 'em out of the story. I've got a doc where I noted down all my characters and plots that don't fit into any current WIP. It's around 4k words. But it means I'm free to focus on this one particular story at a time. And hey! This also means sometimes I get two or three story ideas for the price of one when I have to split up my main cast. Also Cave Troll has a good thought-- outlining might also help. EDIT: As for a software-- Scrivener. Scrivener is a word processor designed for writers. There is a ton of functionalities but one of the most handy is how easy it is to re-organize your stories. It's like $30 but you get coupons for participating in a Nano event-- and a bigger one if you win-- and totally worth it.
This is a firm advice here. If you have multiple POVs you can go through them one-by-one with this technique.
I also have several story ideas and characters in my mind and I also had problems with organizing them (I tried to use a so called mind map software but it did not help - you may try one, can improve something) What helped me to put all of these into a more organized structure was separating them into four "virtual projects" based on genre and subgenre. Some of these already have a (working) title, some just a description like "the hard sci-fi" or "the fantasy with gods". Doing this has several advantages: - being a sci-fi and fantasy fan almost all of my ideas fit into one of these and I don't need to force anything - I have four projects and when I get bored working on one I can switch to another - four different areas seem to be enough for my mind (or at least keeps it busy enough) and most of the time my imagination stays within these set boundaries (with a few exceptions that I write into my notebook for future use)
