Monday, 16 July 2012

Important Little Notes

When writing a novel, there are many small details that one must remember. Once you have mentioned that your hero enjoys smoking cigars, you must remember to add scenes with him enjoying one. If you imply that your heroine’s favourite pastime is riding horses, you had better put her on a horse at some point. If you decide to put your characters in costume, you must remember what each is wearing.

This is why I have a large notebook full of odd notes. I am constantly scribbling, scratching out, and re-writing notes. I’ve got arrows indicating the sequence of events, lists that help me understand terms that I looked up, and translations for the characters that happen to be from a different country.
My notebook is an indispensable tool for me while I do my writing. It helps me keep my novels free of discrepancies or continuity errors, and it ensures that I remember important plot points.

I keep a notebook for my ‘real’ life, as well. It has my list of things ‘to do’ and the list of things I must remember.

So now I ask you: Do you have a special notebook? What do you use yours for?
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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous17 July 2012 at 09:31

    I'm constantly scribbling in one notebook or another. You should see the one I was writing in when my daughter got married! I had a list of guests invited, dates to meet to discuss stuff with the wedding party, list of things to prepare for the wedding. It was packed!

    I also have those types of notebooks when planning/plotting out my novels to keep track of character sketches, names, ideas for where the plot should go, etc. When I was using Word Perfect, it had a feature where I could input all that kind of information so I didn't have it all written out like that. The problem is, no one uses that format any more.

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  2. Unknown17 July 2012 at 18:04

    I can imagine! I transferred my notes from planning my wedding into a binder! Did you keep the notes?

    Did it really? I used Word Perfect a lot when I was in school, but I didn't know that it had that feature. Have you been able to find the same feature on Microsoft Word? No, no one uses Word Perfect. The technology got left in the dust, it seems.

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  3. Anonymous19 July 2012 at 03:04

    Re Word Perfect - I used that program extensively a long time ago. What I liked about it was that I could personalize the control bar. The features that I used the most would be up at the top, where I could access them with a single click. It was a really great program. It used to be available on Mac, but they had a falling out, now WP has gone the way of the Dodo Bird.

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    Replies
    1. Unknown19 July 2012 at 08:17

      I remember being able to do that. It was great! It's too bad that it's no longer in use. Microsoft Word should have the option to do that! It would make searching for functions much easier if you could add it to your special bar!

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