Monday, January 14, 2013

World Building and Keeping It All Together

I think early on in the history of this blog I talked about authors who mention having boxes and boxes of notes for one book they wrote. Just for one! (Or 7 in the case of J.K. Rowling.) And being amazed at how they could have so much. I never used to have so much as I do now on Woven and its universe's other stories.

I've blogged about project binders and how I keep everything organized for my stories before. But I'm starting to realize that I may need to expand Woven's universe more. Which means I'll have to expand the project binder. Again.

Currently, for all 21 (possibly 22) (possibly 23) (more like 25) stories set in the same universe, I have a 3" 3-ring binder and a 1 1/2" 3-ring binder holding all the plot notes, character sheets, story synopses and outlines, magic spells, histories, et al.

Expanding the universe even further will require more binders, more notebooks. (Which I have in abundance in boxes in the storage room.)

I used to be amazed to think of authors sorting through boxes and boxes of notes to write one book. Now I'm starting to see how it can grow to fill so much space.

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4 comments:

  1. Wow, that's quite a lot of notes! I have a plastic folder for each of my book series and I just fill them with all my notes and ideas for world-building. It's the only way I can keep it all organised! (although I tend to have to shift through it all when trying to look something up!)

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    1. Some of my books definitely have fewer notes than others. Depends on the type of story, how much world-building I had to do, etc. Looking stuff up is a pain in the rear, though.

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  2. That's impressive! Do folders on my computer count? I used to keep hard copies of everything and then realized how much space it was all taking up. I like to throw stuff away, so out it went.

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    1. Of course! I've blogged about folders on the computer before. They're the electronic version of the binders I keep on my bookshelf. I'm OCD about my computer files and folders, too.

      I tend to hold on to things. Drives my mom nuts. Sigh.

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