I'm always looking for new things to try when it comes to writing. New ways to keep track of things, new ways to think about a story, new software.
A few months ago, I was looking for a lost file (not story related). It was a template for logging word count, and while I had a copy that I was using, I didn't know where the original was. I ended up doing a search in File Explorer and it was in a weird folder that must have made sense to me at the time.
High Priority To Be Printed.
I don't know why I thought I wanted to print a spreadsheet, but I also found some other tools and templates that I'd purchased to try with writing. One of them had promise.
I've blogged about the Twelve Box Comic Panel that I use (when I remember) to keep track of scenes in my book. It's helpful to glance and know whose Point of View I was in, a sentence or two about what happened in the scene, and where it took place. I even laminated these sheets so that I could use them with wet erase markers. I don't need to keep these pages once the book is finished, only while I'm writing.
But one of the tools I bought had a four column list of things to keep track of. The items were: The chapter (I divided the circle in half to keep track of scene, too. Like Ch 1/Sc 2), external conflict, plot point, day/time, internal conflict, setting, and characters. (No pictures to share since I purchased this template and it wouldn't be fair to the creator.)
I liked this layout. It does the same thing as my Twelve Box Comic Panel, but things are separated out instead of lumped into one box.
Since it seemed like something that would work for me, I started to use it and I liked it. Mostly. I discovered that I don't want to keep track of the external and internal conflict chapter by chapter. I also discovered that it did not give me enough room to record my plot points and there were times the box for characters was too small, too.
I tried to create my own template based on this form, but gave up pretty quickly. Sadly, my graphic design skills are poor. Very poor. And while I probably could eventually come up with something I liked, it felt like a lot of time where I wouldn't be writing.
Then I had another idea. I have all these stencils I have to use in my planner. What if I used them in my series notebook to draw the boxes in the sizes I want/need?
I did a trial run last night after I was done working for the day and it seems it might work out.
When I talked about creating my own writing planner, I think I mentioned that I tried planners created by other authors that just didn't work for me. Some of it was because of how my brain works and some of it was because they wanted to keep track of things I didn't and there was a lot of wasted real estate. When I bought a dashboard planner and altered it to work the way I needed it to, it was a revelation.
This template/form is kind of the same thing. Once I get it to work for me, it will be fabulous. I just need to do some resizing and relabeling first.
