What best helps you visualize?

@halisme

Thanks for the insight mate

 

Personal development guru, Napoleon Hill once said, "Ideas are like fish. If you don't catch them on the end of a pencil, they'll swim up stream, never to be seen again.".

Hill was right. Writing shit down and committing it paper is the best way to hold it in your mind. When I was writing professionally full time I took to the habit of filling sturdy, solid notebooks with whatever damn idea entered my head.

When I needed an idea for a feature pitch, I'd flip through the notebook. Most of the features, or as they were at the time, scribbles, made it to print.

You might have a great memory, but a note pad can't forget.

 

@Partridge

Thats brilliant. Thank you

 

I didn't read the entire thread so I'm answering the original post.

I keep a Word Document/Google Document where I write out ideas and information that I come up with. Each work-in-progress has their own document that I go through and edit. It helps me keep track of ideas, but it also helps me flesh out different aspects of the story and to keep track of things that I've created such as culture, race, etc. I can build on the initial ideas this way and keep track of changes.

 

You got it, Tomb, glad to help

The idea of keeping a separate document for a WIP is helpful, too. It's helpful if you can keep it in the same folder as your WIP - I had a bad habit of just dumping everything on my desktop at one time. Bad move.

What machine do you write on? I use a Mac, and Pages (Apple's answer to Word) allows you to make notes on the margin without disturbing the layout of the your actual document, as a totally separate sideline. You can make note of anything that comes to your mind as you go along, with minimal disruption that way.
I don't know if Word lets you do the same, but I can recommend using it if you can.