How to Organize Your Writing
If you’re a beginning writer, you may be wondering how to organize your writing. Working on a novel means you’ll have lots of bits and pieces to keep track of: character and setting notes, plot outlines, reference photos, versions of your manuscript, notes to yourself, quotes and writing inspiration to keep you going when the going gets tough...yikes!
So how do you organize your writing to keep from drowning in details? Read on!
Devote some thought to how you’ll organize your writing. You’ll save time and frustration in the long run.
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Why Should You Organize Your Writing?
When there’s a story idea you’re excited about, you want to dive into the good stuff: creating memorable characters and settings, writing sparkling dialogue, and infusing your scenes with intrigue and emotion. And if you’ve read any writing advice, a common theme is “just write” -- don’t focus on tasks that take away from the act of sitting in a chair and typing away, even if those tasks are writing-related.
However, if you don’t invest the time in organizing your writing, your files and ideas will be a mess. You’ll end up with plot points and character notes tracked in Airtable, but also on random index cards. Your working draft is in a Word doc on your hard drive, but another working draft is in Google Docs. And pretty soon you don’t know where you recorded that crucial story note (which you’ve since forgotten), and you might as well make a bonfire for your computer and all your little scraps of paper because it’s just not working.
Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.
Tips on How to Organize Your Writing
1. Find a Platform that Works and Stick to It
Even though my journey to figuring out how to organize my writing has been messy, I recommend that all beginning writers do some experimenting of their own. Go into the process with the mindset that you’re just trying stuff out and that your success as a writer doesn’t hinge on making Scrivener/index cards/whatever work for you. Start with a daily journaling routine and see which platform or method helps you stick with the routine or makes it harder. Figuring out what doesn’t work is just as valuable as figuring out what does to organize your writing.
I think the trick is finding a system that can grow and adapt with your story and ability as a writer, and then -- here’s the kicker -- sticking with it. I use G Suite, but the tips I’m going to suggest could work if you have your writing on a hard drive, another cloud-based service, or even in a binder. I like G Suite because it allows me to edit my writing from any device, but I realize that not all writers have consistent access to a wi-fi connection or data plan.
2. Organize from Big to Small
Once you’ve landed on your format of choice, go through all your writing-related documents and organize them into broad categories. I use folders in Google Drive, but you could use folders on your hard drive, or even tabbed dividers in a binder. (Even though I do most of my writing electronically, I find it helpful to have a way to collect the things that I jot down with pen and paper. I use a loose-leaf binder so that I can jot notes on any old scrap of paper, and then I just hole-punch it and clip it in.)
Here are some of the broad categories that I use, but the possibilities are endless depending on what you’re writing and your personal organizational style:
Writing Advice -- when you see a great article, drop it into a Doc and then save it in your Writing Advice folder. Give the Doc a descriptive name (where you found it and subject matter) so it’s easy to pull up when you need it.
Writing Encouragement -- writing a novel is hard, and you’re going to need inspiration to keep going. Populate this folder with a Doc for collecting quotes, as well as anything else (photos, articles, blog posts) that’ll keep your writing battery charged.
Journaling -- Start this folder with a Doc filled with writing prompts. I’ve gotten a lot of use out of this list of prompts from the New York Times. Start a new Doc for each prompt (or for each session of daily journaling). This is a great way to keep your writing motor chugging along even if you’re stuck on your story. And who knows? You might end up with content you can use in your novel.
Outlines -- If you’re a plotter (and if you’re reading this blog post, I bet you are), it helps to have a place to collect your story outlines. Check out my advice below on naming files so that you can keep track of different versions.
And, of course, I have a series of folders for my WIP. Something that has worked for me is creating a folder for each act in my story. In my system, I added a keyword to each folder’s name as a reminder of what my protagonist should be going through in that act (Resisting, Learning, and Changing). I also added a general word count at the end of the folder name as a reminder of how many words I’m shooting for in that section of the story. Then, in the “big to small” mentality, I create a separate document for each chapter. This makes it much easier to add, cut, or change the order of scenes.
3. Develop a System for File Naming
It pays to be mindful of how you save and label your files. If you pick a convention and stick to it, it’ll be easier to find what you need, when you need it. Since I keep my chapters separate until the final merge at the end, here’s how I name each chapter file:
[CHAPTER NUMBER] // [CHAPTER KEYWORD] // [CHAPTER WORD COUNT]
Decimal points are your friends when it comes to maintaining order when you’re still figuring things out. So if you realize you need a scene in between chapters 5 and 6, you can label it 5.1. Once you’re satisfied with all your scenes and they’re roughly in the right order, you can clean up the numbers.
The chapter titles are functional -- they remind me of the main thing that happens, which makes it easier to navigate around if I need to change, add, or cut content. I add the word count at the end of the file name to ensure that each chapter is similar in length.
4. Don’t Trash It -- Organize It
If I’m going to make a major change to a chapter, I make sure to save a copy of the old version so it’s still accessible. As you’re figuring out your story, things change -- perhaps many, many times -- so you may end up going back to an older story idea. I keep the current version of each chapter in the main folder for its corresponding act, and I have a sub-folder within called HOLDING. Any old versions are dropped in there, and if I’m looking for a particular piece of writing that’s been cut, I can use the search function in Drive to find it easily.
5. Keep It Separated and Merge at the End
As I mentioned, I keep acts and chapters separate until the end. Once I have an act where I want it to be, I merge all chapters into one master document. This document is named [ACT NUMBER] // [TOTAL WORD COUNT]. I create a master document for each act, and once they’re all done, merge them into one glorious manuscript draft.
The main reason I started working like this is because writing a novel is a huge project, and if you try to hold the whole thing in your head at once, it becomes overwhelming very quickly. But if you approach it in bite-size chunks -- word by word, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter -- it becomes much more manageable.
Time to Organize Your Writing!
I hope you found something useful in this post that’ll help you get your writing life organized. Let us know in the comments if you put any of the tips to use, or if you have your own tips to share! And remember: the purpose of organizing your writing life is to create a peaceful, orderly environment so that you have the headspace to WRITE and finish that manuscript. I know you can do it! Happy organizing, and happy writing!
If you’re serious about taking your writing to the next level and want to get there fast, you need Story Mastermind. In just six months, you could have a complete, polished draft in hand, along with a plan to submit it and position it in the market.
