Software for outlining

[Jaigon]

Hi all,

I was wondering if any of you use special software to outline a novel. I've heard of using flashcards, but I lose everything and have terrible writing, so I'd prefer to keep it digital. Ideally, something that allows me to re-arrange plots and shuffle through scenes.

I keep hearing the term Scrivener. Does this do the above? I've never actually looked into Scrivener.

 

[Sarunus]

I have experience using a couple things. I first used Story Mill when I was doing the first bits of work on my WIP many years ago. Story Mill did a few things pretty well, but if you're dealing with timelines that span many years, then you have to get creative with how you date things. In the end, I didn't find it to be very useful for me.

I've been using VoodooPad for a while. It functions as a Wiki for my WIP universe and I've found it to be infinitely more useful for keeping notes on various things, and for going back to reference a few things. I've developed quite a bit using the program, but I don't know that it works for outlining specifically.

For me, I have the wiki as an info storage and retrieval system, and just use Word for the actual work of outlining my books.

This may or may not be helpful for you, but good luck!

 

[Facing]

I'm using Scrivener for my writing. It can be used for outlining but I wasn't happy with how it did that so I used Excel. I have headings for the dates in my story, the point of view character, the location in my story and then the jot notes for the scene. This allowed me to sort by those headings so that I could make sure individual characters stories didn't get muddied. I'm currently copy and pasting my outline notes into the various scene pages in scrivener.

There's probably better ways to do this but this is what worked for me. If I had been more organised I could have done it straight into scrivener with the corkboard or outliner mode but I was still mucking about when I did the outline and scrivener only lets you look at one thing at a time. With excel I could see a whole page of notes and that helped keep me from getting distracted.

 

[JimF]

I like cards, but have poor hand writing as well. I use Power point. (Or what ever open office calls it)

 

[Jaigon]

I've been using VoodooPad for a while. It functions as a Wiki for my WIP universe and I've found it to be infinitely more useful for keeping notes on various things, and for going back to reference a few things. I've developed quite a bit using the program, but I don't know that it works for outlining specifically.

For me, I have the wiki as an info storage and retrieval system, and just use Word for the actual work of outlining my books.

This may or may not be helpful for you, but good luck!

Yea, I might check out voodoopad. I'll probably just stick to excel to arrange scenes.

Currently I have everything in word in bullet points, but it gets messy once you get more than a few pages.

 

[kmtolan]

MS Word in outline mode (shrug). Many roads to the same path I suppose. More interesting for me is that the time I spend outlining (and I do outline everything at the start) probably ends up as a very brief stage. Especially considering it's all throw-away once the story gets rolling. I suppose I'm suggesting that one shouldn't get too tied up in "outlining software" as your return on investment in cost/time might not be worth it.

Kerry