Organizing Your Story Ideas
Ever have a great story or scene idea Monday morning, but by Tuesday afternoon you’ve forgotten it? Yeah, me too. Only in my case, the elapsed time between idea and forgetting is about an hour.
To combat this effect, I found a free piece of software to capture, catalogue and save those ideas. Sort of a one spot repository for all your creative concepts.
PlotCraft is freeware written by Fahim Farook, a self-described, “geek for hire” and author of the intriguingly entitled book, Honest, the Martian Ate Your Dog. Gotta love the title; that alone makes me want to read it.
Not only is PlotCraft free, it also works well and is, of course, virus free. I’ve had it on my computer for about three months. Highlights are:
- One main screen that has areas for Idea Types (User Defined) Title (of your Idea Type), Genre, and Sub-Genre.
- After titling and categorizing your idea, there’s a window to type in the plot points or trust of the idea. This window also accepts cut and paste text. I use that feature to capture ideas I find when cruising news sites. You know, looking for grizzly murders, clever robberies, that kind of thing.
- Once created, the records (the software is database driven) can be sorted and grouped. Pretty cool…all for free.
In the screen shot below, (cropped to increase picture size) you can see the tabs for Ideas, Genre, etc.
The ideas you create appear in the vertical window at the left, grouped by Idea Type.
Clicking an idea– “Axe Murder,” “Lasik Murder,” etc– changes the windows on the right of the vertical tree to the corresponding information for that idea.
The Description box holds the plot idea.
Not shown is an area immediately below the Description box for notes and hyperlinks. You can also collapse the Idea and Notes boxes to maximize screen size.
If you’d like to try PlotCraft, use this link to download the software. No cost, obligation, registration, or spam emails. Just free software that actually works.
Themocracy
Now this looks like cool software…and I love the free aspect. You always find the coolest things, Galen.
I do have different ideas that come to me…and leave me quickly. Thanks for the idea on how to capture them!
Elizabeth
Mystery Writing is Murder
This is timely. This weekend I was trying to find an idea I remembered writing down, but couldn’t recall what notebook, scrap of paper or computer file it was on. Having all thoughts in one place – what a novel idea! Thanks for the tip.
If its free I’ll take two. I’ll check out the software. Currently I use a junkyard to store my spare parts. Its just that, a junkyard without much organization.
Stephen Tremp
Another marvelous find! Thanks, Galen!
Elspeth
Another fine and useful piece of free software – thanks again for sharing, Galen. Wiht friends like you, who needs Google search? LOL
The Old Silly
This might help me as I begin to brainstorm for my next project.
If the gender were different, that could be me pictured with the PostIts! I have a Mac, so I probably couldn’t download this software. Darn.
This is hyper-techno-super, especially for the Post-It lunatics.
If only there was an extra gizmo that rated the QUALITY of your ideas…
Thank you, Galen! And thank you for the online storage idea. My hard drive crashed recently and Galen jumped at the chance to help me out with an idea for saving my work in the future (http://www.sugarsync.com). What a nice guy!
Michele
SouthernCityMysteries
Yo continue to amaze me with your use of computer programs. Know what I use? A little notebook my mother sent me:) When I think of an idea– I write it down fast cause I forget quickly too. I think I will always be a hands-on kind of person with real paper!
New to your blog and posted about getting organized today. Good to hear there’s help.