4 Things I Learned Digitalizing My Notebooks

So last year, as I was preparing to go off to college 3,000 miles from home, I undertook an effort to digitalize my notebook collection so that, should I require my notes while at school, I wouldn't have to lug a metric fuckton of paper cross-country, or *sticks nose in the air, places steepled hand on chest* send for them.

This meant that I was exposed, in a four-month period, to aaaaaallllll the writing I had done (read: kept) since late middle school. Also pictures I drew, but I didn't learn all that much from that. Some things I did learn are as follows:

1. Write down your scene ideas wRITE THEM DOWN

In digitalizing my collected notebooks, I came to find that there were A LOT of places where I obviously knew where I was going with something, but because I knew where it was headed, I didn’t bother to write it down because why would I and let me tell you, should I have ever!  I have no idea now where SO many of my stories were headed, huge plot points, entire scenes, choice juicy dialogue, all disappeared from the earth forever because I thought I’d remember those ideas in perpetuity. Or at least until I got to that point in the story.

Make sure you take lots of copious, fully-detailed notes, kids, especially if you’re about to move onto the next WIP.  

2. Don’t just toss things--you'll need it as soon as you do

RELATED:  Don’t throw out old ideas or notes until you’ve at least procured (and backed up) a digital copy.  You never know what you might need later.  Even if you think it’s trash, keep those old notes and scene corpses and half-started stories; you might be able to revive, reuse, or repurpose those bits and pieces later, and the minute you toss something is the minute you’ll have an AMAZING IDEA that requires that you have those pieces.  It’s a pain in the ass.

3. Too many dialogue tags muck things up

Dialogue tags are those little things like “said” and “insisted” and “proclaimed,” the parts of language that let you know someone is talking and how they’re doing it.  Most young writers start out wanting to use TONS, because you always want the audience to know how your character is saying what they're saying--are they yelling this line?  Whispering this other one?  Growling hissing demanding commanding interrupting?
 

And dialogue tags are great!  …  In moderation.  But it doesn’t take long before dialogue tags reach a point of diminishing returns.  They get in the way, start gumming up the works, slowly leaching all the fun out of the work and reducing the novel’s pace to a snail’s crawl.  

Most of the time, guys, said will do.  Said and Asked are the meat and greens of the meal, and the rest of the dialogue tags are spices.  You can use as many saids and askeds as you want, and it’ll be fine. A few more diverse dialogue tags are nice to keep things interesting and variegated, but if you use too many you’ll over-spice the dish and it’ll become unpalatable.

A good rule of thumb:  If the audience can tell from context how a character is speaking, use “said” or “asked.”  If they can’t, stick a spicy spicy dialogue tag in there for some flavor.

4. Make sure things are HAPPENING

I came across MANY points in my re-reading where chapters go by and just NOTHING is happening--it’s all just DESCRIPTION, and not even that interesting.  It makes my soul die a little.  But it’s okay, because I learn from my mistakes usually probably maybe. This time at least. Hopefully.

Don’t go too long without letting something important occur--conversations, action sequences, a montage of family activities, make something happen sooner rather than later, or you’ll lose the audience.  The audience who may just be future you, quietly shaking her head at present you's sad, boring tomfoolery.  

*waves nervously at future me*

Writer's Resources; Family Echo (Digital Family Tree Maker)

     Family ties can be really important to a novel--and also really hard to keep track of.  For years I've been trying to find a digital family tree maker that didn't make me share my results with the rest of the world.  I needed a place to store my FICTIONAL families, not the real one, and just a couple days ago I discovered Family Echo, a, you guess it!  digital family tree maker!  *Insert generic powerpoint applause here*

     Now all software has its ups and downs, so before you rush out to go find this beautiful invention, here are some pros and cons.

PRO:

     You can make a multi-generational family that stretches in all directions.

     On-screen you can see my MC's parents, great-uncle, cousins (and second cousins) once removed, siblings, and grandparents, which is all super nifty, especially since it's a pain trying to find ways to squeeze indirect family members into the margins of family tree scaffolds.  On most family trees, if you're allowed siblings at all it's almost invariably ONLY on the final rung, and when you have complicated families like this one that just simply won't do.  

     You go Family Echo; Four for you, Family Echo.

CON:

     You see those little gray lines shooting off into space?  Those are actually continuations of the family line.  Unfortunately, Family Echo doesn't allow you to view the entire tree at once--instead, you can only see the direct blood relations to any selected individual, spouses included.  Here I've selected one of the unnamed great-grandparents at the time, and as such I can see all the way down to the Striders and Joneses--but not the Dexters or Abernathys.  I'm not sure if there's a program out there that lets you see everything at once, but if there was, it would be very very useful when you're trying to see the entire scope of a family.

PROS:

     There are a few more neat things you can do off to the side.

     Most noticeably (in this image and the last), you can add a picture that shows up over here and in the family tree, which can be super useful--who doesn't like visual aides?  It can be a symbol, a photograph, a drawing, anything you need it to be.    

     Under that, as in the first image, you can edit the character's personal details--name, gender, birth date, and (if applicable) death date; and in the second image you see before you a rough biography that you too can complete at your leisure.  Birth place, profession, company, interests, activities, and bio notes are all open to list, so this can serve not just as a family tree, but as a complete character compendium!  

     And if you have contact information for your character that you don't want to lose track of (an address you don't want to forget, a phone number you need to keep consistent, etc.) you can type it on down under the contacts section, as in the third image.

     AND, if there's anyone you want to show this to, be it a partner or friend or what have you, there's an option to share the tree with someone else (button pictured at the top of the image below).

CONS:

     This is a multi-image job right here.  Now, these are minor set-backs (as all the drawbacks of this site are), but they exist.  Firstly, step-relationships:

     I understand that genetics are, by and large, the law of the land as far as family trees go, but the brotherly relationship between the above characters, blood ties or no, is fairly important to their development, and it's inconvenient that when I click on one brother (like so)

I can't see the other.  It's not a big deal for this tree, since it's very small and self-contained, but it could be frustrating for larger trees where step-siblings are more rule than exception.  You could just pretend that they ARE biologically linked, for the sake of ease, but that doesn't quite work if your alternate parental units are characters you'd wish to include in the tree.  Like I said, it's minor, but it's still an inconvenience.  

     There's also the matter of, *ahem,* deviant families.

     This family, from a completely different work (since the other one doesn't have any families that could illustrate the point), seems fairly typical, but that's because Family Echoes (like many other family tree makers) doesn't allow for incestuous ties.  

     It's not a common thing to think about, so it makes sense, but incest is a real part of a lot of peoples' actual family trees (not that they'd like to talk about it, I'm sure), it happens in fiction, and it's the basic stuff of mythology--and this family happens to be a family of Gods, demons, angels, and hybrids.  Because of the whacked-out stuff that this family's gotten into over the course of their several-billion-year history, there should be a third generation consisting of one boy and one girl, belonging, respectively, to Darac & Bristallar and [insert unpronounceable name of madness] & Genesis.  

     Again, I don't hold these things AGAINST the makers, but they are a little inconvenient if your trees need to be unorthodox.  To get around this you can always make a second family tree consisting only of those characters and their children, but it's probably easier just to keep track on paper at that point.  

     Overall, I'd give Family Echoes four pens out of five (which is a rating system that I'm positive will catch on immediately because it is just so great and original).  It's simple, easy to use, fairly comprehensive, and has only a few minor inconveniences to side-step around.  

     Unless I find something that can manage a full five pens (and feel free to submit other programs for consideration or give me the low-down on your own findings with this one!), this is definitely the family tree maker I'll be writing with from now on.