Writing And Outliners

Posted by dan7000
Jun 28, 2008 at 04:11 PM

Outliners serve two functions in my writing process. (1) for an outline; and (2) to store and organize research. The second function is much more important to me - the outline of my piece can be done in Word or, more likely, is pretty firmly in my head.
The best outliner software for these two functions was ADM. Now I store research in OneNote, but it’s not ideal. I will probably try using SQLNotes for my next project.

Occasionally I have tried to merge these two functions - in other words, I try to create an outline of my research that matches the outline of my piece. I think that is a mistake, because my research needs to be organized in a way that is easy to find for me, and my writing needs to be organized differently.

Occasionally I have also tried to do some writing in the outliner. For instance, attempting to write snippets of material that I can move around and use in any part of my piece. That has also been a mistake, because inevitably the form of any snippet of work has to change to match its context when you move it to a different part of your piece. Note: I think that IdeaMason tries to force you to use this model, and it simply doesn’t work.