Do you plot out your novels on notecards? I did too, until I stumbled across Google Notebook.

Some problems I ran into using paper notecards:

• Cards get scrambled out of order
• A pain to refer back to when I’m actually writing the book
• Don’t always have them on me in case inspiration strikes

So I decided to try out Google Notebook to plot out my current novel. It worked fantastically. Here are some tips and tricks you can use to not only plot out your own novel, but also to get the most out of Google Notebook.

Quickly Add Scenes

You can get the bare bones of your novel in place quickly by just clicking the blank space in your notebook. I rifled through all my ideas for scenes to get a rough idea for how the book would lay out.

Move Scenes Around

Once you get your first draft of an outline down, I always found it hard with notecards (and other electronic programs) to move scenes around without having to reread all the other scenes to make sure I knew where I was at.

With Google Notebook, you can drag and drop the individual notes you make. It ends up being very easy to scan your other scenes and play around with a different order.

Organize Your Chapters

You can add sections to your notebook and start grouping your scenes into chapters. The best part is you can still drag and drop individual scenes into whatever section you want.

Just click in the open space like you’re going to add a new note, then click “Add Section”. Drag any existing notes you want in there or start making new ones.

Use Google Notebook for Character Development Too

If you’re struggling to find a good way to keep all the notes on your characters in one place, Google Notebook has you covered there too. Just create a new notebook for all the different things you need to write a novel. Plot outline, character development, etc.

You can make each section a separate character. Now you can keep all your character notes and plot notes open while you’re writing your novel. Makes it pretty easy to keep track of everything if you can just tab back and forth through what you need.

Export an Outline to Google Docs

Once you have the outline done, it’s time to write the darn thing. Google Docs is a simple, web-based word processing tool that you can access from any computer with an internet connection.

Just click “Tools” in Google Notebook and you can export it to Google Docs. Then you’ve got everything laid out for you in a single sheet. You can use this as a guide as you write, or you can print it off as a handy outline to mark up.

Write or Get Critique From a Friend

Another great feature of Google Notebooks is that you can share your notebook as an editable document, or as a static HTML page.

So if you’ve got a writing partner and can’t sit together, you can collaborate online using the same notebook easily. You can even color code what you add so that you know who made what changes.

Or, you can send it to whoever you want as a HTML page and have them critique it for you.

Just click “Sharing Options” in the upper right corner.

Go to Google Notebook

Tags: google, notebook, novel, writing

Posted by Classic Jef on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 10:16 am.