cosmicocean

In the main draft on Scrivener, you have the research tab. I go into the research tab and I create a little document called “thoughts” or “notes” (mostly thoughts at this point tbh)

you don’t have to do thoughts (used) for the purpose of this exercise, I just have a million thoughts on this and needed the ones I’d already fleshed out into the body of the narrative out of my way. I’m gonna show you one of what’s in the used folder and one that isn’t, though, because it will illustrate my point better.

they don’t need to be this hefty (although they can be: I have a chunk that’s probably 250 words in there somewhere), but this is a good example of what I’m talking about: I have bullet points of dialogue, a descriptive word for the dialogue, a physical reaction, and a thought. it’s not a whole scene, because I don’t have time to write it, but I’ll forget what I wanted to put in it, or even that the idea existed at all, so I put just enough in to either trigger the memory of what I was thinking about, or giving me just enough to rest the scene on while I flesh out what else I wanted to say when I forgot. a very quick list of what is most important about the scene to you that you would hate to lose.

this is on the leaner side of my notes. it’s only a few sentences, but I wrote this chapter out a couple days ago, and just from having those three bullet points, I got about 500 words from it, because those were enough for me to remember what was going on here in my head. when I’ve used the note and written the chapter or scene or whatever (if I’m not using a separate document to dump those bits in like I’m doing here), I just italicize it. the italicizing is easy to register when scrolling through the notes to see if there’s anything I want to build the next chapter on, so I don’t spend a bunch of time wading through stuff I’ve already done.

I will be the first to admit this isn’t a foolproof system: sometimes I’ll come across a note where it’s like, a single bullet point that’s extremely vague that I thought would be good enough and I’ll be like brother what are you fucking TALKING about. but most of the time the notes are enough to trigger my memory.

I will also be the first to admit that it can be a little tricky to get into the habit of doing. but once I started getting used to it, it absolutely changed the way I write. if I’m in the kitchen while my hot dog is cooking and I’m like “oh fuck I thought of this really devastating thing for my whump fic”, I can just pull out my phone, quickly type a few sentences, and put it away in time for my hot dog to finish. it’s genuinely the most effective ADHD management strategy I have in my life.

(and you don’t have to do it on Scrivener! do it on Google! do it on Word! do it in whatever word processor floats your boat! this is just what makes it easiest for me!)