Writer tools for a New Story

[Brightlord M. Alhstrom]

Hey, so a couple of years ago I started developing a magic system for a couple series, collectively known as the artifice wars. I'm fairly sure I posted on here once or twice about it. Since then I have ditched the original plot for a much simpler more cohesive one, and fleshed out a bunch of the history and magic of the planet, and would now like to start actually pointing out the book and working on a first draft.

Just one problem. I now have a huge amount of information all over the place, from old scrivener notes I haven't touched in two years, to random notes in Google keep, to a nice stack of disorganised lined paper (emphasis on disorganised), to the deep recesses of my mind. These will range from notes on the magic system, items, history, locations, characters, scenes, plot twists, and other obscure information (like the mathematics behind the ranks and divisions of an order of knights). Part of the trouble is that at this point older notes won't agree with newer ones, and I'm already noticing holes in my memory.

Which brings me to my question. I figure that I should get those all compiled and organised together, then start typing in some of the things currently lovated in that garble of a place I call my mind, but I'm having a hard time deciding on a medium, and I don't want to commit to this amount of work only to have the headache of having to port everything over. So, what are your recommendations for good websites/software/apps to use as an author? Additionally, pointers in general are appreciated.

 

A couple of notes:

- I'm fine with different apps for different purposes (ie one for organising random didbits, another for plotting, a third for actual drafting, etc.)

- I'm a poor university student. Free (or at least single price, low cost software) is almost a necessity.

- The brunt of the writing will be in a computer, but it would be nice to be able to sync from device to device (using Github is an option though if it won't mess with the software)

- I'd love it if at least the note taking aspect could be done via either computer or mobile. Google Keep is great for that, though it lacks the organisation I would like, and Google Docs should work too, though I've never really used the mobile version.

- Colaboration is another big element. I'm anticipating at least 2 or 3 people who would be willing to brainstorm and review concepts and drafts, so the easier it is to have them edit/comment (ideally without giving them my personal login) the better. For this reason Imight just use Github for syncing files and/or using Google docs for the brunt of the writing.

Thanks for the help.

Lord M. Aelstrom

PS: If anyone is interested in hearing about the story, magic system, etc. I'm willing, though a couple of months might be required before I'd post anything more than a couple of paragraphs here, otherwise I'll just end up with more randomly distributed notes, and that's not what I want. This is another thing where colaborability comes in. I'd much rather just give read only access to people who are truly interested than type/copy huge amounts of text that is likely to be inaccurate/incomplete a couple of months later anyways.

Edited January 15, 2020 by Brightlord M. Aelstrom

[Xardan Ta'Caran]

I know that my co-author and I just use Word documents saved in Dropbox for all of the above. Different sub folders lead to the different things we need (like the rough drafts of books, short stories we've written, character details, lore details, etc).

I know it's not the best option for everyone, but if you have a bunch of Word documents broken into all of the sub categories, Dropbox is free and pretty easy to use. Plus it adds the benefit of being usable on almost every device (although depending on what device you're using, you may need to find a different word processing software).

Hopefully this helps at least a little bit, but I'm also abundantly aware that there are a great deal of different software out there that may work better. Just giving you one small option that works for the two of us.

Good luck!

[1st of Lunch]

Another option is that if you have Word, theres a good chance you are paying for Microsoft Office, which is only like $7 monthly. If so, or if you go that route then you'll have access to Microsoft Cloud Storage and when you open Word it will be right there and can autosave to the cloud - makes it really handy.