How do you organise your stories?

[Writer61]

How do you organise your stories on your computer/cloud?

Under my main Stories folder, I have a subfolder for each primary character (I have two published, but more planned). Within these are additional folders for each series. This is where I keep the manuscripts themselves and any supporting files, such as the PowerPoint "mood boards" I sometimes create. I find this structure especially helpful when I need to check for continuity.

I also have a reference for each story, e.g. A2.4, which is the fourth story in the second series about Adam. This is useful for keeping track of things like which story a character first appears in and any crossovers between series.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I use an Excel spreadsheet with different sheets for each new story as a story board. It also has sheets for different reference items, such as character names used in all the stories, and new ones that I might want to consider at some point, timelines for related stories (each story has its own timeline on its respective sheet), genealogy of characters that appear in multiple stories, and anything else that I think is beneficial to maintaining continuity in a story and related stories.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

They're emailed to me, so by date in my main I box. Ones I edit are on the PC in My Documents. Ones on Lit are orderable by date or A to Z by title.

My drafts tend to have some notes at the bottom of plot points to cover, details, and and bits I've cut out will be left there for future use.

Why yes, I notice various discrepancies most times I re-read, but no-one else has yet...

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

Nothing fancy. Usually a folder for each story and a Libre Office Writer document for each chapter. Anything that's just notes (character profiles, unfinished chapters, etc.) goes in a plain text Notepad file. For a series, I usually have a cover image and a blurb that I keep in the folder. Most of the time I also upload PDF copies to my website.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Draft notes and photos and such are kept, in different fonts and colours to make things clearer, at the very bottom of each story. I had just one instance of more than that, a very long series for which I produced a separate file to log details about each character in hopes of continuity.

 

[Dearelliot]

Not well.

 

[AllenWoody]

Good try, AI searchbot! You'll never take me, or my stories, alive!

 

[Writer61]

Good try, AI searchbot! You'll never take me, or my stories, alive!

Um, OK.

 

[crookedletter]

What is this word you're using... organ...is...e...? I don't think that's a real thing.

 

[Voboy]

I just number them sequentially. A story gets a number once the idea has gone far enough to be written down. Then I start assembling a cast of characters, which is most of what I type on that document. I then open a separate doc for the text itself, which I write out in sequence. The "notes" doc maintains the continuity of the characters, both within and between my stories, and it's also where I put any incidental research matter I'll need.

Once it's gone far enough that I feel the story is "working," I go to a separate doc I have that attempts to contextualize all my stories in order, by "star system" within my universe (though they're all related and there is MUCH crossover). I insert the story's number in the spot(s) where it belongs, and highlight it. Then, when the story is finished and gets a title, I go through and replace the number with the title.

Stories often do not "work," meaning I've got a number of "stumps" of stories in my folder that will never get finished and never get a title... but they "exist" in my universe anyway, and the stuff I've written for them actually "happened" in the sense that it can affect other stories. VERY occasionally (only twice so far), I'll revive a stump and give it a new, updated number.

I'm currently writing one of those updated stories, Story 154, in case anyone is keeping score. Lol. It used to be Story 141, and it seems I began writing it on 09 December 2024. I made it about 2k words before I decided it wasn't working, but it was always a good idea and it's certainly working now!

 

[TheLobster]

Each story is either a single .txt file, or a folder with the text and additional reference materials (e.g., the original idea synopsis if I jotted it down separately; character spreadsheets; outtakes that I think might still be useful; etc.).

Series or larger universes (of which I have like, uh, maybe two?) get their own folder. Inside, each chapter or standalone episode is a separate .txt file.

Since I'm mostly pantsing, I usually come up with rudimentary outlines only after having written a good chunk of the story. I keep those within the story itself, as bullet point lists surrounded with [ square brackets ], and treat them as placeholders, gradually replacing them with actual text of the story. If it's a longer one, I'd preemptively organize those bullet points into chapters and scenes when the structure of the story becomes clearer. Eventually, though, the outline disappears completely; I don't see the need of keeping it when the story is already written.

 

[THBGato]

Not well.

I hear you. Mine are just in Google Drive.

 

[StillStunned]

My WIP folder has started to develop an intelligence of its own, and now it's taking matters into its own hands.

 

[iwatchus]

My WIP folder has started to develop an intelligence of its own, and now it's taking matters into its own hands.

Blink if you're okay SS.

OMG, look at those eyes. I think his WIP reached sentience and has taken possession.

 

[CalBishForNow]

I've got a spreadsheet for story ideas. In the same folder as it, a bunch of subfolders, one for each series or major group/category. (E.g. contest stories are standalone, so I've got one folder for all of them, but sometimes I've chosen to follow up on them and those turned into series, which would be moved to their own folders.)

Each series/category folder would usually only have two Word files in it at a time: the file for the current chapter/part/installment, and a "plans" file. It would also have an Archive subfolder, where the Word file for previous installments goes.

Entries in the "plans" file would kind of resemble a journal, with dated entries, mostly in the form of stream-of-consciousness plans for the plot and characters, but also any relevant links, tables to keep track of complicated details, etc.

I prefer to do most of my writing in Microsoft Word, but I may do a little here and there on my phone in Google Docs, and I'd have parallel folders set up with similar but simpler structure.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

At first I didn't have an order, and honestly I could use to order my very old stuff that is just all over the place. Still, now I order everything following a YYYY-MM-DD format, which if I get to it with my very old stuff, I can actually see my evolution as a writer throughout the years.

I keep everything in an Obsidian Vault, a Manuskript File, and as separated Markdown, Doc, DocX, RTF, or WordPerfect 5.1 files in different directories, and have them all backed up in different places.

For the handwritten stuff it all goes to a labeled folder. I also label notebooks. The 297 stories done for the 365 are all saved on an envelope, waiting for them to be digitized once the story 365 is done.

 

[VallesMarineris]

How do you organise your stories on your computer/cloud?

I'm sold on Scrivener.

When you start a Scrivener project you select from several different default templates which can be easily modified and extended: short story, novel, novel in parts, nonfiction, research proposal, MLA or APA paper, script (BBC, comic, screenplay, etc.), all sorts. There's a full-featured word processor built in, and the text files go in a hierarchical file system they call the Binder. You can add anything you want: manuscript text, notes, research (it will accept almost anything, images, URLs, links, etc.), whatever. You can order all of that any way you want.

It has more ways to visualize, connect, and organize all of that than you'll ever need: outlines, a virtual corkboard with cards, labels, bookmarks, tags, metadata, comments, keywords, the list goes on. There's a spreadsheet built in that you can insert into any text file. The find feature is very powerful and you can save the resulting file list to a collection, so you can have a whole custom sub-binder if you need that.

Every file in the project is saved automatically two seconds after you've stopped typing. You can back up individual files as "snapshots", automatically date-stamped. There's a compare feature that lets you do a diff between snapshots and your current file. Command-S makes a backup of the whole project wherever you want. (All the text is in .rtf, so it can be retrieved in case of data corruption.) You can keep as many individual backups as you want.

If MS Word is an old cargo ship that's had modern equipment bolted and welded all over it to keep it afloat, and Pages is a sleek new cabin cruiser to get you there in comfort, then Scrivener is an aircraft carrier (there are add-ins for special needs such as grammar checking) that's fully armed for battle and you're the Commodore of the fleet.

All that for sixty friggin' dollars. Best writing investment I ever made.

 

[OddLove]

All my stories are in the BDSM category. But I have them saved on desktop and backups on a thumb drive.

Also, I have a separate file for notes, info, and plot ideas for a series, as well as a file for unrelated ideas for new story ideas.

 

[Erozetta]

Like this:



From there my subfolders have subfolders.

 

[TheLobster]

I'm sold on Scrivener.

When you start a Scrivener project you select from several different default templates which can be easily modified and extended: short story, novel, novel in parts, nonfiction, research proposal, MLA or APA paper, script (BBC, comic, screenplay, etc.), all sorts. There's a full-featured word processor built in, and the text files go in a hierarchical file system they call the Binder. You can add anything you want: manuscript text, notes, research (it will accept almost anything, images, URLs, links, etc.), whatever. You can order all of that any way you want.

It has more ways to visualize, connect, and organize all of that than you'll ever need: outlines, a virtual corkboard with cards, labels, bookmarks, tags, metadata, comments, keywords, the list goes on. There's a spreadsheet built in that you can insert into any text file. The find feature is very powerful and you can save the resulting file list to a collection, so you can have a whole custom sub-binder if you need that.

Every file in the project is saved automatically two seconds after you've stopped typing. You can back up individual files as "snapshots", automatically date-stamped. There's a compare feature that lets you do a diff between snapshots and your current file. Command-S makes a backup of the whole project wherever you want. (All the text is in .rtf, so it can be retrieved in case of data corruption.) You can keep as many individual backups as you want.

If MS Word is an old cargo ship that's had modern equipment bolted and welded all over it to keep it afloat, and Pages is a sleek new cabin cruiser to get you there in comfort, then Scrivener is an aircraft carrier (there are add-ins for special needs such as grammar checking) that's fully armed for battle and you're the Commodore of the fleet.

All that for sixty friggin' dollars. Best writing investment I ever made.

I keep telling myself that it would be an imprudent indulgence to spend a hundred bucks (Windows + OSX) on a hobby that will never earn me any money.

Your glowing review is really not helping there, you know?

 

[Erozetta]

I keep telling myself that it would be an imprudent indulgence to spend a hundred bucks (Windows + OSX) on a hobby that will never earn me any money.

Your glowing review is really not helping there, you know?

Another voice in favor of Scrivener.

It really is a great program for organizing writing. Particularly anthologies of stories or novels.

 

[dirk2024]

Another voice in favor of Scrivener.

It really is a great program for organizing writing. Particularly anthologies of stories or novels.

How is it for collaborating? Or letting other people review your writing and making notes, answering questions?

 

[Erozetta]

How is it for collaborating? Or letting other people review your writing and making notes, answering questions?

For collaborating it's not great. You both have to have Scrivener and then you have be to actually make sure you package the whole project up and not just the top folder (Yes, I did have this happen with a friend I was reading for recently, lol). You're better off copy and pasting each chapter into word or Libre Office and sending a docx to each other.

For solo writing of long works, it's great to keep things tidy and organized. But if you want to collect your stories into an anthology, it's amazing for that.

 

[IWroteThis]

First, I have separate folders for mainstream versus stuff I won't publish under my real name as long as my mom still walks this Earth. Under each of those, I have three separate folders. They are Stories, Poems, and Song Parodies. Under each of those, I have one yWriter project that is simply an idea vault where each category/genre is a chapter and each idea is a scene in the appropriate chapter. When I get to the point of actually starting to develop an idea, it gets moved to its own yWriter project. It doesn't matter if it's a standalone story or turns into a series, it's one project. In the case of standalone stories in a shared universe, they get their own project files, but the universe is the first part of the file name. Once a story has been finished and published, that project file is archived in another folder. When I have too many project files in the main folder, I go through and move ones that I haven't touched in a while into what I named the "STALLED" folder. I review it from time to time and move stories back when I get the urge to work on them again.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Organized. Hmm. There's an interesting idea.
I have a page or two in a notebook filled with scribbles and notes, descriptions and what not. Then a Word document that I hammer away at until it resembles a story.