How I Organize My Writing
On Fediverse, we have a few writing prompt tags. I often make long posts on it. However, today's prompt for WritersCoffeeClub is long enough that I'm making a blog post about it here instead.
The prompt for February 13 asks “How do you organize your writing projects?”
If you'd like to skip the details, go to Whoa! at the end.
Planning file
My organization is built around what I call the planning file. The planning file gets:
- Synopsis — ~3 sentence blurb about the project. This kick starts my brain about what the project is about and the kinds of interest points that I have with it. If I have a story idea I can't work on right now, I often just start a new folder using my “new project kit” and edit the planning file to include this synopsis.
- Plot — Plot is a numbered list with plot points. Complex plot points may have sub-points. I use this as something to have handy if I can't figure out / remember what's supposed to happen next and it's hampering the draft.
- Chapter index — Chapter index is just a table linking to each chapter file and providing a brief summary of what's in the file (and, depending on the story, which characters have focus). This makes it easier to find some kinds of references that may not be easy to do a text search for.
- Character sheets — Character sheets can be as simple as Character Name, Role in the story (e.g. connections to other characters mainly), and a physical description. I often have a model image I'll include here. If the character is alien or non-human, may include a color reference. I do have more complex sheets I use for major characters in stories with larger casts.
- (optional) Species — World-building stuff
- (optional) Magic systems / SciFi stuff — World-building stuff
- (optional) Locations — World-building stuff
Adjustments for a series
For a series, the character, species, etc. will get moved out of the individual story's planning file and into individual files (e.g. one big file for all the series's characters to live in, one big file for all the species to live in, etc.). The series planning file gets a story index instead of a chapter index. Each individual story still has a planning file with synopsis, plot, and chapter index.
Subfolders
I also have set sub folders. One of them is named after a short hand for cover. It's where cover files, promo graphics, and promotional text drafts go. The other is named after a shorthand for front/back matter. Right now, it's just where my CSS file lives. I had loftier goals for it but, since I'm only publishing through Draft2Digital right now, I don't need those other files.
Manuscripts
For the drafts themselves: Individual chapters get their own markdown file. I use the cat command put them into a combined manuscript. If I was using Windows for writing, I could use type but I have a version of cat compiled for Windows too. I switched to individual chapter files for technological reasons but I like this better now. Each chapter gets a heading block and a comment at the end tracking the ending word count of the day. I use that info for my word count spreadsheet. I usually only retain ~3 days final word counts in a given chapter. If I was still working on whole manuscripts, I would only track word count by day against the entire project rather than by chapters.
Other details
Not included. I have scripts and configuration files I use so I can generate a preview file, ePubs, etc. on a whim. If you're already doing some kind of Pandoc process for your stories, we could compare notes. It's not even potentially useful for anyone else to hear about it.
Whoa!
This is pretty easy for me to spin up at any moment because I have a folder called a new project kit that includes template files for all of the above. I just copy it to start a new project and fill in the bits I need.
That part is the part I think will probably be most useful to someone else. Make yourself a template with the things you need already there. Copy it when you start or plan a new story.
