It's come up in the Discord chat a few times so I thought I could bring the conversation over here to add pictures, suggestions, and get a wider WriYe opinion.

How do you organize all of the worldbuilding for your novels? Do you have a website or digital option? Are you the type to have binders and notebooks? If you're comfortable, share some pictures here if you'd like. Also, any tips, tricks, or suggestions are always welcome!

Digital Options:

($ - paid)

WorldAnvil ($)

Notion

Campfire Write ($)

-- Campfire Pro ($) - Set to be discontinued "soon." This is a desktop version of Campfire Write, though with less bells and whistles.

Dabble Writer ($)

Wavemaker

I will add any linked in posts below to the list!

I like to do my worldbuilding by hand/printed paper and collect it in either a notebook or a binder. Especially when I'm just starting to feel out a novel idea. I think my creativity can be a lot more wild when I have a pen in hand. So usually, I start out with my "Idea Book", pictured below (from my 2020 NaNo Novel, The King of the Wicked). Having that physical ability to flip through pages makes me ridiculously happy.

Recently, I started exploring Campfire Write (formerly Blaze) and now that I've given some time to devote to it, I'm enjoying it. I probably won't transfer older things into it (who has that time?) but new things may go through there! Prior to Campfire Write, I used to use Liquid Story Binder (no longer supported) which really made me happy. I still have a bunch of older novels written in there with dossiers and timelines...

Old-Fashioned Pen and Paper:

My "Idea Book" where I print out pictures that inspire me and make layouts in a dot grid traveler's notebook insert. I then write my ideas around it (usually with color-coded fountain pens).

My "Binder of Maps" that I have for all of my epic fantasy stories. I have one in here from the lovely, talented Tracey but no picture of it at the moment!

Campfire Write:

I started with just the character builder/worksheets because of the 31 OC challenge. This is my layout so far and I'm digging it. It's for my RaTs Tal  The Stone Circle Quartet:

And, for old times' sake, a snapshot of one of my Liquid Story Binder storyboards (used for characters/places):

I have to be honest I have all my world building notes in gDocs, same as all my other writing files. For the 20+ years I've been writing that's how I've done it, just in Wordpad/Word/gDocs. I always start with a brainstorming document and just free write, asking myself questions until I come up with the answers. Once I have said answers - more documents. I pull out the correct details and try and format them into something more concise (usually bullet points). I'll have documents for world details, one for character, another for outline etc.

But yeah. I'm basic, just a regular text document.

Jan 3, 2022 17:35:34 GMT -5 galactic-pirates said:

I have to be honest I have all my world building notes in gDocs, same as all my other writing files. For the 20+ years I've been writing that's how I've done it, just in Wordpad/Word/gDocs. I always start with a brainstorming document and just free write, asking myself questions until I come up with the answers. Once I have said answers - more documents. I pull out the correct details and try and format them into something more concise (usually bullet points). I'll have documents for world details, one for character, another for outline etc.

But yeah. I'm basic, just a regular text document.

Basic is still awesome! How do organize it? Headers? Bullets? Color-coding?

Before, I used to do everything by hand but then it started taking up too much space and I started doing everything digitally. I still do some things by hand. I made myself worksheets I can print out whenever and put in one of my disc bound notebooks so I can take it with me. This is so I can have the important information I need with me at all times. I have a worksheet for characters where it gives a basic description of their physical appearance and their personality. Like, bullet points. Nothing too specific because I don't normally need too much when I'm writing away from home (usually at work).

At the moment, I'm kind of searching for a digital way of organizing my information. Since I can't use Liquid Story Binder on my computer anymore, I've had to look for another way of doing it. I've tried World Anvil, Wavemaker, Notion, Campfire, and Scrivener. All of them were fine. I definitely liked Campfire and World Anvil the most but I struggled with finding a workflow. Though, I'm going to try Campfire again but for a full year. With the changes, I think I can make it work. Those map features are...amazing. I loved using them.

So I guess I'm still all over the place with my worldbuilding organization because I haven't really found something that works for me just yet. I would prefer to keep most of my worldbuilding digital though.

Also, Keri , a map binder is a good idea. I usually just tape them to my wall when I'm writing the story (if I drew them by hand or printed them out). And your idea book looks really fun. 

I don't have a consistent system. Most of my worldbuilding notes are in Scrivener, but I got annoyed with having to duplicate it for every novel, and having multiple novels in one file was really quickly untenable, because of how long it took the files to load. Trying to write them all by hand was a system that I started trying last year, but that also quickly fell by the wayside.

I'm far too easily overwhelmed by too many options, which was why LSB never really worked for me, despite my having tried it multiple times. I don't understand why I don't have the same problem with Scrivener, but I never have. Storybox, which was the program I was using before Scrivener, was okay... but when they redesigned it, I never really took to the update.

I think I even had a private wiki for a while there, and then I stopped working on it, and was probably spending more time on the wiki than I was writing the series the wiki was for...

Even though I haven't used it much, I'm enjoying figuring out Campfire, because I need a timeline feature. That's always the problem I run into when I'm plotting the long arcs my brain seems to happily produce. So I'm going to try this one, or go back to trying to figure out Aeon Timeline.

Sigh. There's too much of a trend of me being overwhelmed by most of the software I try to use to make my life easier...

Jan 3, 2022 18:31:54 GMT -5 Keri said:

Basic is still awesome! How do organize it? Headers? Bullets? Color-coding?

Yeah headers and bullet points pretty much. Sometimes page breaks. I've sometimes considered doing something more fancy as it doesn't really pop but I suppose it's a bit like my lego collection.

It might not be all that pretty stored in those penny freezer bags from the grocery store but it's infinitely scalable/repairable like that. Whereas if I got different sized special boxes or something then not so much. Keeping it all in gDocs means I don't need to worry about software licences, or if my PC won't be able to run the program one day (I have some programs that are now 'too old' and won't run). I'm not going to lose anything keeping it simple - and thanks to the cloud it's accessible anywhere all the time.

On the other hand something shiny is always fun haha. I'm reading this thread with interest

I use a combo of hand writing (in various notebooks) and using Dabble Writer.

My planning is pretty sparse, using a lot of rambling words about the general plot/outline and a whole lot of rambling about the characters. I sometimes fill out character sheets, sometimes not.

One of the things I like about using Dabble Writer is that it is a pretty simple program, easy to use and keeps everything about one canon into one project and from there you can break it further down into different manuscripts, chapters, folders, etc. The parts you don't want to use, you don't have to and can just minimize. I personally don't use the plot function.

Some pictures...







Yes, it costs money but to me it's worth it. It's a cloud based service and now works well on mobile so I can access on my computer, phone or Kindle. You can go full screen, toggle the sidebar, and enter focus mode (which makes the sidebars go away) and set goals and it has stats on words written. To get to best deal, use the code for winning NaNo and you get 50% off and I've been using the codes for years.