A Writer's Toolkit

Organizational Tools

I've used many ways to organize my stories through the years. Here are a few of them and I'll try to explain how I use them. [All of them are FREE]

**Note: I'm not going to explain the website/app, what it does, or how to use it. I will explain how I use it specifically but not the technical side of things. If you would like more specific help or explanations on a specific one of these tools, message my MAIN ACCOUNT @writerbug44 and I'll be more than happy to help you out some more.

1- Trello
I use Trello to keep track of where my stories are. It's basically like a huge t-chart with many columns. You can name the columns whatever you want. I have mine "Planning", "Paused", "Writing", "Unpublished", "Publishing", and "Finished". So when I need to move a story (they call them 'cards') from one column to another, I just drag and drop. 

On a story (card), you can have a description, add a checklist, and make comments to the card (more helpful if more than one person is using your board). 

Here is what my board looks like (my ideas are redacted to avoid spoilers):

You can create as many or as little columns (lists) as you want. And then, when you click on one of those cards, you'll get more details about it. You can add a due date, attachments for inspiration, and you can copy it. Below, I posted an example of what this would look like but this obviously isn't a real story because I can't tell you what happens in my stories. With the checklist, I check them off once I write them:

2- RealTimeBoard
This one is really frikkin' great. It's so powerful, it's one of my favorites. You're given a blank canvas and all the tools that you need to make a great story outline. You can create character profiles and timelines, you can post inspirational media like images, videos, webpages, links, gifs and whatever else you want to post. You can also have a section of your board that's for research on your story.
You can zoom in and out as much as you want so the image below (my board for White Cloud) looks unreadable but I can zoom it in to where just one of those yellow boxes takes up the entire screen.

The negative on this one is that with a free account, you can only have three boards at a time and I use a board per story. 

Like I said, this one is pretty complicated to get used to so message me if you need help, it's a really powerful tool!

3- WordCradle

Unlike the first two on this list, WordCradle is actually made to help you plan stories. There's a brainstorming section where you can write down little parts of your plot and you can write on that site and give yourself deadlines. My favorite part of this tool is the characters section because it gives you a chance to really thoroughly get into your character's head. You can even give your characters a personality type (like INT-J).
Because I can't really capture this entire website in one image, I don't have a screenshot for it but you should definitely check it out!

4- Paper
This one isn't online, I'm talking about literal paper. Sometimes I like to get away from the computer and write with a pencil and paper. I'll use notebook paper and cut it into about 3-inch squares. On each square, I will write an event that I want to happen in the story. A specific event, like "First kiss", "First dance", "They go to the store and by a tomato". It helps me get my ideas down on paper before I forget them. And then once I have a few events down, I'll think about it and then arrange them in the order that I want them to happen. 
It's kind of ridiculous but it does help me sometimes.