#writing spreadsheets

hello, fellow writer. have YOU ever seen me post one of these rainbow-y letter-filled manifestations of neurodivergence and thought, "i NEED that, carnally"? friends, romans, countrymen, your long wait is over. brought to you by ADDERALL™, the thing is now an editable template for all future generations to behold and enjoy.

SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE:

gratuitous color-coding

ability to keep track of daily wordcount, predict completion wordcount and dates*, and let you know if your daily average is on-target to get the project done by a due date* (good for big bangs and the like)

checkboxes to keep track of various "literary elements" such as plot twists and slow burns, or to remind you check the scene for common errors such as grammar mistakes or "talking heads"

status markers and word counts for each fic scene to help track editing progress and see your entire fic at a glance

ability to create charts and graphs from data and then. COLOR-CODE. those charts and graphs!!!

S T O N K S

*with certain data provided

productive procrastination has never looked so eye-wateringly good. come get your juice.

🎉[SPREADSHEET TEMPLATE HERE]🎊

🎊[INSTRUCTION MANUAL HERE]🎉

my projected wordcount

how many scenes i will probably have

the average number of words i need to write/scenes i need to complete daily in order to make my due date

my current average of daily words, and whether or not this is high enough to meet my goal

what my completion date will be based on my current average wordcount, and whether or not this is before or after my hopeful completion date

etc etc etc

so the averages section looks like this:

i started it in 2020, but i only worked on it for a couple of weeks before picking it back up (and then falling out of working on it again lol) in 2022. each day, i enter the total wordcount, the total number of scenes completed, and the total number of chapters completed. the spreadsheet does the math for the rest of the numbers, like the number of words i've written on that day (there in the second column) and the other stats further over to the right, which i am showing in a second image so it's not too wide to read on smaller screens (i got this big ass gaming monitor lol)

picked a new completion goal - for now, it's september 2025, although that's extremely tentative - so the spreadsheet would unbreak itself. my average and my projected completion date are incredibly low/far away since i didn't work on it for nearly two years, and "scenes per chapter" can only be calculated with data from another sheet (you can see it here), but all these numbers in red are dynamic except the total number of chapters and they update as i work/as time passes. i usually keep them hidden by keeping the text the same color as the bg to keep it looking neat lol

i also have a couple of sheets for line graphs for my word count but they're broken after two years of inactivity lol so i have to fix them and actually work on it before they look like anything

today on productive procrastination, i learned how to make the writing spreadsheets (this one in particular) tell me whether or not, at my current pace, i will finish a fic by the desired date. VERY nerdy nerd explanation under the cut if anyone’s interested

I was looking back through your writing masterpost and especially your outline (bc I LOVE & ADORE a good chart) and I was wondering how you figured out what the main points you wanted to hit upon each chapter would be? (the “abuse arc,” “John’s ‘case’” etc) and how dedicated were you to hitting them in each POV? I love the idea to remind one’s self to be aware of talking heads etc but was making sure the abuse arc (for example) is in every scene something you knew from the onset? Or more of an editing thing?

P.S. if you just marked them off bc you finished edits and didn’t need them in the chapter you are free to call me a dummy lolll

this is writing outline chart anon - wanted to be clear it wasn’t about the content itself!!! I thought the abuse arc was done spectacularly and I loved BR. the idea of writing down what things need to appear for SURE each chapter just fascinates me :) you don’t have to post this part I just wanted to be sure you knew :) :)

(posts anon is talking about are here & here & here & here, sorta)

noooo dw i got it exactly <3 this is such a good question too bc the answer is actually complex! (ALSO THANK YOU 🥺🥺🥺 i can’t believe the fic still gets so much attention and love after almost a year!!!)

for starters it’s all really really really variable, dependent on the general situation and how on top of my shit i am - i made this chart for broken road WELL after i had started writing and was getting into the editing. (broken road was a weird case re: timing because when i started writing it i was NOT planning on finishing it, i was just writing it to be writing something, and then i did decide to finish it after all. so a lot of the stuff i would normally have done early in the process i wound up skipping and then had to SIGH go back and do later.) but i also made a different chart for my merlin fic where i had a bunch of columns picked out before i started working, and then i wound up going back to add more in later. so as for the “when” part of your question - whenever! before writing or during writing or during editing! it’s all happened. however i do find that i strongly prefer to do it as soon as possible bc this minimizes my least favorite part of the process (editing) BUT if you wind up needing to make it when your fic is 75% complete and you need to stop and do FIVE. WEEKS. of restructuring, you know, it happens :| that was NOT fun but i got there!!! 

deciding which main points go in the spreadsheet: two qualifications. first is, “will i forget to do this if i don’t write it down?” going back to the merlin spreadsheet (you don’t have to know anything about merlin to understand this), i realized partway through that side characters like uther, gwen, and morgana felt like they only existed when i needed them, like they just randomly appeared when the plot called for it and didn’t have any purpose otherwise. so i made columns for each one of them to remind me to have them or a mention of them in each scene so it reminded us that they were still out there doing their own shit. “talking heads” is a good example of something i will forget bc i am so bad about it. “background michael” was also something i was forgetting - he’d show up when convenient but it was easy to forget that he was there, listening, 24/7. of course, dean never forgets this even for a second, so i had to make sure that that came across in his pov. same issue with arthur’s out-of-control magic in the merlin fic. it’s an issue for them ALL the time, not just when i want to write about it. they quite literally cannot forget about it, so i can’t either, and neither should my audience!

second qualification is, “is this thing going to matter for the majority of the fic?” if yes, in it goes. so in broken road for example there was a mini-arc about jack realizing john is a bad person and part of the reason behind dean’s mistreatment of him in early s13. but since jack isn’t a major character in this fic, it only comes up twice, and i’d never be able to mention it in every scene. it doesn’t matter that much. same with john and mary’s relationship arc - it goes through a single turning point and then sort of stays stagnant in that no-man’s-land for the rest of the fic. their romantic relationship wasn’t the point, even though i enjoyed adding it in there, the point was their various failings and perhaps eventual successes at parenting and how that affected the family dynamic. on the other hand, john’s “case” matters very much - it’s something i needed to have him doing in each and every one of his scenes, because the guy is a bloodhound. the abuse arc, of course, is the entire point of the fic. and background michael wound up mattering here too - it increased with steady escalation until he was no longer in the background at all, because michael is sort of the living embodiment of stuff john was supposed to do and made dean carry for him instead, and also the entire reason john got brought back to life to begin with. essentially i only add it in if it’s FEASIBLE and/or REASONABLE to have it popping up in every scene/almost every scene/the majority of scenes, and if NOT, it doesn’t make the cut - otherwise you’d be left with a lot of empty checkboxes. very unsatisfying.

finally, how dedicated am i to having it in every scene? very very very VERY dedicated, but with a loophole: it counts as being in the scene even if there’s just the smallest, tiniest mention of it. going back to the merlin spreadsheet - there was no way i could include gwen, morgana, AND uther in every single scene. so it still counts if someone mentions them aloud, or thinks about them in the narrative. that still gives us the sense that they’re real people doing things even when our pov characters can’t see them, but without me feeling forced to shoehorn them in where they aren’t needed. similarly w/ “funny” for broken road - abuse, in general, isn’t funny at all. but i wanted there to be some relief from the heaviness of that subject in every scene, so even dark humor or slightly amusing wording or something might fulfill my obligations if the scene is otherwise too serious/important to ruin with a laugh. i find that varying the level of content devoted to whichever column in any given scene sort of helps keep the distribution of that content feel more organic. if you’re merlin and you’re obsessed with/in love with arthur, you’re not thinking about people like gwen and morgana and uther as often as you think about him. you’ll think about them more when they’re there and less when you’re busy or distracted. merlin was NOT thinking of uther as much during their very (b)romantic magic reveal moment as he was during the fight where uther tried to lop arthur’s head off. you know?

and finally, yes, sometimes i DO check them off when i’ve determined that there’s absolutely no way to work it in, but only as my very, very last resort. having good writing sense shouldn’t stop me from having a fully completed spreadsheet but it feels like cheating. so for example, in one of the chapters of the merlin fic there’s an onscreen suicide attempt - obviously there just weren’t going to be any jokes in that one, that’s very justified. and of course, john can’t work on his “case” in a scene he’s not included in - so for dean pov scenes without john, those got checked off by default. BUT even where he can’t be working on it when he’s not onscreen, i could still sometimes squeeze in another character mentioning his growing suspicion or voicing worry about him finding out, and that makes me feel better. but sometimes it just isn’t happening because it shouldn’t, so i try to accept that too 😞✊

ty very much for asking, i hope this response wasn’t TOO terribly longwinded. sorry you had to wait so long for a response too, december is kicking my ass like always 👎

the recycle bin doc. anything we cut goes in here in case we wanna use it later

the first draft, which we started and subsequently abandoned in september 2013 (deciding that we needed to revamp the entire verse before we could write it properly). you will note that that is more than A YEAR before claire reappeared in canon (december 2014)

the second draft, which we worked on from may 2015 to july 2015, and then abandoned again to work on a couple of prequel fics that felt too important not to write. half-heartedly poked this again in may of 2019 and decided it would be impossible to work in a four-year-old doc

huge and i mean HUGE spreadsheet detailing claire’s emotions, physical state, how she feels about various characters, etc, so we can keep the story consistent. there are eight large sections, divided into 2-4 smaller sections each, with seven columns, ALL filled in with excruciating detail

the actual outline of the fic, which really contains multiple outlines because some of them got scrapped and also notes of various brainstorming sessions we had over the phone

a little doc where i can pre-block scenes and write notes to self so i don’t forget them

the actual real third (and current) draft, started in july of 2019

who’s got two thumbs and just finished the final restructuring work on the epilogue? this lady. further edits pending if my producers have suggestions, obviously, but the major work is done. unfortunately: final word count: 107k :| and the epilogue is now...the longest chapter?? most of ym chapters wound up being in the 16k range, but this one is 17.3k, which is like. why does anybody read this. who has time to read all that?? i’m so fucking embarrassed. i should have divided it up more skdjfghldkjfg rip :((( side bar NO ONE is obligated to keep up with this fic week to week LET ALONE read entire chapters in an evening. @ people who liveblogged first of all i am so so so so so sorry but secondly how are you doing that. HOW are you doing that. i can’t even click on fics longer than 50k!!!!! absolutely despicable behavior from me honestly

anyway, finalish chapter wordcount totals are:

ch1 - 16.2k

ch2  -12.5k

ch3 - 16.3k

ch4 - 16.9k

ch5 - 16.8k

ch6 - 11.1k