writers_loft | Are Your Notes Out Of Control? (Reply)

I'm working on a fantasy book that is part of a series of related books and I had no clue as to the sheer volume of notes I would be dealing with. The paper notes I keep in 3-ring binders so they're under control and some things are kept in files on the computer. Both methods keep things under control (mostly) but it makes finding specific things time consuming and really annoying if you have to keep digging for the same data over and over again.

Having hit about midway through the WIP the need to have quick and easy access to the notes was hitting critical. I found that the data I kept having to look up really needed to be in one place for one stop referencing. So, I made an Excel workbook and put things that naturally lent themselves to tables and charts in the workbook. Things like, how far does it take to ride from city A to city B and such.

The excel workbook was great but my text notes were still inconvenient and I had to open lots files to get to what I wanted. I was really wishing that Word had a workbook option too but it doesn't, alas.

So, I asked around and started paying attention to other people asking questions about how to manage their notes. What I heard was that there are several programs that will help but they're expensive and still require me to open another program and several files. That wasn't streamlined enough for me, I needed fast and convenient.

Then I read something about Word's Document Map feature. My ears perked up and I read through the thread. It sounded like it would do what I needed so I tried it out. It works like a charm.

After you've set it up (and that was pretty easy), it looks like you have a table of contents over on the left side of the word processor screen. the results is that I now have one note document with all my notes in one single document(except the stuff I prefer to use over in Excel) and I can click on the subject I need and go right to that section of the document.

Here's how you can set up the Document Map to organize your notes:

Open a new Word document or the doc you will make into your master note file and figure out what your main subject headings are going to be. You will end up building what looks like a directory tree or skeleton outline.
My main subjects are Characters, Places, Historical notes, Magic...
Those main topics are all going to be Heading 1 (from the style menu). I'll use Character for my example.
The next step is the secondary subject under, Character, which I decided was going to be the character himself.
Heading three will be the physical description of that character.

So, you get:
Heading 1 Character
Heading 2 Harry Potter
Heading 3 Description
Heading 3 Spells learned
Heading 3 His Friends

Heading 2 Ron Weasley
Etc...

Once you have this built, you can start moving in or filling out your data.

This is working so nicely for me and I only have two files open, the WIP and the master note file. Finding what I need and being able to jot down a new detail is a breeze and I can spend more time working instead of messing with my notes.

You can also turn the Document Map feature off when you aren't using it. The side effect of turning on the Doc Map is that all my chapters are listed in the Doc Map window so going right to the chapter I'm working on is really handy.

This is what ended up suiting me best. YMMV.

What are your note management methods?