Hi,
I just wanted to share a simple little way of organizing a detailed outline/chapter organization and keeping track of the things going on in them with everyone. I've tried a lot of methods and I find this one helps me the most. I can see everything I need to at a glance and I don't have to click through a bunch of information.
Below is an example of what I track in an episode, or chapter. This works for both written novels and comics.
The Table
Summary
IMAGE BREAKDOWN
- Time: to track what day it is from the time the story begins. It can be calendar days too, of course, like 08/10/'21, or whatever else fits the story and how you like to track time.
- Summary: self-explanatory
- Information: I use this to track the worldbuilding. If the worldbuilding gets too big, I need to know what information I'm putting in where and when, otherwise I forget if I've already covered it!
- Locations: Every spot / location visited in this episode or chapter.
- Characterization: Helps keep track of what I'm saying about a character each episode or chapter, so that I also know what I have left to say as I get farther into the story.
- Importance: This can coincide with the other columns, but can also be about the plot as opposed to a character, etc. Literally anything and everything that makes this chapter or episode important.
- Threads: To keep track of foreshadowing, hints, etc.
- Notes: Anything goes here! For both mediums, I'll put down notes on visuals, or mention to not forget something, like an injury.
To keep track of POVs, I put that in the same column as the Episode/Chapter number list. The POVs can be color-coded just like everything else, but I'd personally recommend keeping color-coding to the POVs since too many different colors on a screen can tire out eyes real fast.
You can also list all present characters for the chapter or episode in the same column and bold-font the POV character.
This table can also work the other way around if you like to scroll horizontally instead of vertically. You just need to put the chapters or episodes in the columns instead of the rows
Multiple sheets within spreadsheets can also be utilized below.
Summary
Google Excel spreadsheets, Apple's Numbers, and other spreadsheet apps let you create another sheet within the same file. For outlining, I'll make two additional sheets.
"Questions" is about where I want to go, and what possibilities can I explore? What are my options?
The other one, "Content" is about things I need or want to include in my Summary sheet but haven't yet gotten to in the outline, or content I'm not sure where to fit in.
If you have Scrivener there's a way to do this in-program without a spreadsheet if you don't like spreadsheets, or want to stay in one app, by going to the outliner and using meta data along with the "text box" option. I can run you through it if you would like. ^^