Organizing Your Research Books

Writers often hear, “Write what you know.”  That sounds plausible.   I’ve lived in the Chicago area my entire life.  I know the seasons, the slang, the popular foods and the stops on the elevated train.  I know my characters can order a deep dish pizza with a locally brewed beer.  I know they wouldn’t be walking on the beach (yes, there is a large body of water along Chicago’s east side) in February unless they were dressed in snow boots and parkas instead of shorts and sandals. 

And yet, when I started writing, I chose London as my setting.  Not modern London, but rather, Victorian London.  What did I know about Victorian London?   Absolutely nothing!  Except what I’d read in history books and other historical romance novels. 

That didn’t deter me, though.  As it wouldn’t any writer who felt passionate about a character or setting.  It just meant that I would have to do some research.  Well, not some.  A lot of research.  That didn’t deter me, either.  And I’m not alone.  Many authors write about places they’ve never visited.  And like me, many authors love the research aspect to writing a novel. 

Research wasn’t as easy when I began writing as it is now.  The internet was in its infancy.  I did most of my research at the library – fingering through catalog card files, thumbing through books, and dropping dimes into the copy machine when I wanted a photo or large amount of text.   I also bought whatever books I could find on the topic, especially on sale through libraries or catalogs. 

With all this research came another problem – how to keep track of this information when I needed to access it again.  Back then, technology meant a spreadsheet.  I didn’t even know how to use one, so I kept track of my books and resources on plain sheets of paper, numbering the sources, and writing notes to myself on what the source was and where I’d found it.  It wasn’t the easiest to use, especially when I was looking for something specific.  It meant scanning all those pages until I came across the entry I wanted. 

Technology has made life so much easier.  I know how to use spreadsheets now.  And the internet and bookmarks have made tracking a breeze.  But I still have my extensive library of research books, as do other authors.  It’s the nature of the business.   If we aren’t collecting research books, we’re collecting novels or inspirational works. 

So what happens when you need one of those books?  Could you find it on your shelf?  Would you remember what you owned if you were at the store and saw it on the shelf?  That’s where today’s software comes in. 

With programs like Collectorz and All My Books, it’s all automated now.  Just scan or type in the bar code, and the book’s information automatically populates the fields.  You’ll even get a photo of the book’s cover.  You can then search files by genre, plot, publisher, etc. 

Some of these programs are free downloads, others have a nominal cost.  And you have to take the time to enter all your books.  But when you consider the convenience, it’s well worth it.  Start by scanning anything new that you bring home, then slowly add the rest of your titles.  Do a shelf a day, or maybe one a week, depending on your available time.  Eventually, your entire library will be catalogued. 

What is your favorite book cataloguing system?    

Blythe Gifford - Before the Word doc? An Excel spreadsheet!

In my past (pre-writer!) life, I was considered an organized person, but the process of writing a book taps deeply into the right (illogical) brain and that seems to have oozed throughout my whole life.  Still, I cling to some vestiges of organization that help me through the writing process.  My master spreadsheet is one of them.

For every book, I open an Excel workbook and give it some fanciful name.  This inevitably has nothing to do with the actual title of the book, which is generally one of the last things that’s decided.  For the Brunson Clan trilogy, I called it “Reiver Record.”  I’ll also select an interesting typeface and color for headers.  It’s all part of putting myself into the mindset of the story.  This document is opened every single day and offers me a central location to do the following:

Track hours and word count.  I track my hours, word count goal and progress, every day.  (Some people set it up by chapters, but this is what works for me.) I also make little notes on how I feel or what I did.  (Quick notes like “love scene – needs work” or “beginning to catch fire.”)  This is VERY helpful when I’m in the middle of the next book and everything is awful.  I can look back to where I was at the same point in the previous book and remember all looked dark then, too and it had a happy ending!  Here’s a sample of how it looked at the very beginning of a new project.  You can see the manic-depressive fluctuations I go through.

Create and remember the backstory.  On another tab, I list the years since my characters were born, with a column for their ages (hero/heroine), a column for real, historical events that occurred that year, and a column where I can record key life events for my characters.  It was particularly helpful when I had to juggle childhood recollections for three Brunson siblings!  That made it easy to check when Johnnie Brunson went to court or when Bessie Brunson was first kissed.  

This also is invaluable for creating character backstory when I need it.  I simply glance at the chart and I can see that the country was at war/peace/famine or whatever when my character was a certain age.  

Create the remember the timeline.  I do a similar chart for the chronology of the story itself so I have a record of when the various events happened, easy to forget halfway through the story.

Remember character names/appearance.  Another tab keeps track of my character names and titles, along with eye and hair color.  This can be sorted, to make it easy to catch if you have too many characters with names beginning with “J.”

Save tidbits of information.  Whenever I have something I want to capture, for example, the distance between two points and how long it would take the characters to travel there, I just add a tab and make a note.  

Some may prefer to do this in OneNote or another program.  For me, Excel is simple and flexible.  I back up every day by sending this spreadsheet, along with the work-in-progress, to my Yahoo email and stick it in a folder so I will never risk losing it.  I would mourn the loss of this master almost as much as if I lost my manuscript!

Blythe Gifford has been known for medieval romances featuring characters born on the wrong side of the royal blanket. Now, she’s written a trilogy set on the turbulent Scottish Borders of the early Tudor era, starting with RETURN OF THE BORDER WARRIOR, November 2012, Harlequin Historical.  CAPTIVE OF THE BORDER LORD will follow in January 2013, and TAKEN BY THE BORDER REBEL in March 2013.  The Chicago Tribune has called her work "the perfect balance between history and romance."  Visit her at www.blythegifford.com, www.facebook.com/BlytheGifford, or on Twitter @BlytheGifford. 

Author photo by Jennifer Girard.  Cover Art Copyright © 2013 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited.  Cover art used by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises Limited. All rights reserved. ® and ™ are trademarks owned by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its affiliated companies, used under license.

How to Write it When You Can't Be There

Guest post by Blythe Gifford

We’ve all heard the advice: You must visit the places you write about. Theoretically, I agree with that, but from a practical point of view, I’m not in the position to fly abroad every time I start a book. And since I write history, a trip to the place would still not be a trip to the time. I would still have to create a world I’ve never seen. How do you do that with an eye to authenticity? I have a few tips. First, choose your setting mindfully. A familiar location will make it easier to gather information. An obscure one may make it difficult to find enough detail to bring it to life. The flip side of using a well known location is that it’s tough to fudge facts. Any mistake will surely be found by an expert reader. Be aware of the connotation of the setting you select and decide whether to play to it or against it. Some locations, New Orleans, for example, are so strong that using them is almost like adding a character to your story. When I say “setting,” I mean time as well as place. For example, I have a manuscript set in Philadelphia. Originally, the date was 1872, but I changed it to 1876. Why? Because the Centennial Exposition was in Philadelphia in 1876. Even though my book did not revolve around the exposition, it meant I could find everything from train schedules to photographs to first person accounts of the city in that year. Next, ground yourself and your characters. Gather a detailed map, a calendar, and a guidebook or two. Even if you create an imaginary town, know which direction the sun rises and sets. Know the time and date and day of each scene. This will help keep you, and your characters, in a real world, one in which Sunday comes every week, the seasons follow their course, and you can trace how long it will take to walk from one end of town to the other. Again, as historical writers, this is harder than it sounds. A current map has roads and buildings that did not exist when your story is set. Even rivers have changed course over time. Search used book fairs for older guidebooks and travel books. Often, they include maps, detailed descriptions, photos, and first person narratives. Third, a picture is worth a thousand words. Along with my calendar, guidebook, and map, I always buy a good picture book or two. One will be of the physical landscape. That way, I am not dependent on another writer’s words. I can look at the picture as my hero or heroine would and let them describe the scene. Authentic images, photographs, engravings, or paintings, will give you detail no guidebook or official history will include. In THE KNAVE AND THE MAIDEN, I had a scene set in the Cathedral at Exeter. When the Cathedral’s official website gave me a virtual tour, I discovered that the Cathedral was under construction at the time of my story. With that fact, I created a vivid, unique setting that supported the emotional theme of the scene. The Internet is a gold mine for images. With a search engine, you can find everything from professional photography of historic buildings in all seasons to engravings of street scenes. In addition, many vacationers now post photos and travelogs. Not only are those a source of pictures, they can provide first person descriptions of how hot it can be on the Thames in August. Finally, the devil is in the details. Instead of descriptions of panoramic views, select one small sensory detail, preferably a sound or a scent. (There’s nothing wrong with a visual detail, but using the other senses brings it closer to the character.) Then, make sure it has emotional resonance for your character. No matter how good your research, it exists only to make your characters move easily in their world. It should be inserted only when the character recognizes and reacts to it for a reason directly related to the storyline. With these techniques, you can build a world that’s real to your characters and to your readers, even without getting on an airplane---or in a time machine. *** Blythe Gifford’s next release, RETURN OF THE BORDER WARRIOR, is a Harlequin Historicals November 2012 release.  This is the first book in her Brunson Clan Trilogy.

To learn more about Blythe and her upcoming releases, visit her web site at http://www.blythegifford.com

Guest Blogger - Laura Moore, author of Trouble Me

Hi Michelle!

Thanks so much for having me as a guest blog on The Organized Writer.

First, everyone, I have a confession to make. I’m not the world’s most organized writer. I tend to prefer scraps of papers with scribbled ‘notes to self’ to spreadsheets or electronic files with labeled with helpful headings. On my writing desk are stacks of books. Some of these I consult obsessively. They look as if they’ve sprouted yellow sticky notes. Others are just there. It’s as if I’ve placed the tomes beside me in the hope I’ll absorb their information by proximity. Next to the books are the pictures, tear sheets, and articles, thick folders full of them that I’ve collected about any number of subjects, from architecture to circus acts to sugar daddies, as well as my dog-eared notebook that has ideas, snatches of dialogue, and snippets of scenes from my work in progress jotted down whenever the mood has struck me.

When I wrote my first four novels these tools stood me in good stead. More than good stead in fact. I have a decent memory and an active imagination so remembering my characters’ names and their particulars wasn’t that difficult over the course of four hundred pages. But when I received a contract to write my Rosewood Trilogy, the first I’d ever attempted, and began thinking about its structure, one where subplots were woven through the three stories and where the cast of characters expanded with each successive book, I realized something new was needed. Otherwise my head would explode.

For a period I was at a complete loss as how best to proceed. I began to fear that I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Luckily I had a friend who was a professional writing coach in Chicago (Nancy Beckett, founder of the Lakeside Writing Studio) and she gently guided me to a solution. I realized that I didn’t need to jettison my old yet beloved ways of collecting information and storing ideas, I simply needed to adopt new ones to manage this bigger and more complex world. The trick was finding ones I’d actually use.

For me, the answer wasn’t to be found in spreadsheets, admirable though they are. My personality is better suited to blank spaces without boxes. So I simply began to make lists. I made lists of all the characters in each book and included all relevant information: age, occupation, where they lived, and their importance to the story. I made lists of places—stores, homes, restaurants, schools, to name just a few--and included rough descriptions of their location in Warburg, the fictitious town I created where much of my trilogy unfolded. And since the trilogy was centered on Rosewood, a large horse breeding and training farm, one of the most extensive lists I compiled was of the horses bred, raised, and sold.

This sounds ridiculously simple, but without this basic organization I would have been lost in the story. Moreover, I found these lists increasingly crucial as I moved from the first book, Remember Me, to Believe in Me, and then to the last book in the trilogy, Trouble Me for they helped me to recall crucial details I’d mentioned in the first four hundred pages.

Another challenge I faced was to devise a quick and easy way to remember the key events that took place in the trilogy. As my trilogy story was about three sisters, there was a great deal of history--of family lore and unexplained events—that needed to be included. The tool I found most useful to chart all the sequence of events was a timeline. Or rather, four timelines. I made one timeline for each novel and then because I wanted to see how the events spanned the entire trilogy I created a kind of super-timeline that incorporated the significant moments in the ‘history’ of this family.

The most important thing I learned about trying to organize my approach to writing was how idiosyncratic a process it is. What I found to be useful, you may not. Whether fancy and high tech, or barebones-simple, the only thing that matters is if it works for you.

Happy writing,

~Laura

Coming April 18 - A visit with Laura Moore

Laura Moore, Contemporary Romance Author

Come visit us Wednesday, April 18 when romance author Laura Moore will be our guest. She will share with us how she organized her characters, settings and timelines for her Rosewood Trilogy.

Comment and have a chance to win a copy of her latest release, Trouble Me, third book in the Rosewood Trilogy.

See you then!
Michelle

Organizing Research—Electronic Files

When I first began writing, all research I did was at the library. Now with the internet, I find myself turning there first. When I find a reliable site with valuable information, I save it.

Knowing that not all internet sites are reliable, I still use books, too. I like to keep paper to a minimum, though, so scanning articles or saving them to a file are great green options.

How do you save all this research and still be able to find it when you need it? First, there is the old standby—My Favorites on Internet Explorer. Create folders and sub-folders as you need them to separate by subject. Keep the folder structure parallel to the structure in your computer files. Export your Favorites file on a regular basis to back it up.

You can also save your bookmarks to online sites. There are social bookmark sites like Digg.com and Delicio.us, which share your bookmarks with others. Or there are sites like Mybookmarks.com, which saves your favorites on the internet so you can access them anywhere from any computer.

When you come across a site with information you'd like to save, just add it to your Favorites folder.

Knowing how the internet keeps changing, and sites disappear, I like to create a backup of my pages. I copy and paste the content into a word document and save the document on my computer using the same folder structure as my Favorites. Then when the page disappears, I still have the information.

If you are the type who likes to keep paper to a minimum, then I suggest scanning any articles or book content you want to save. Rather than keeping a hard copy of the article in a file, scan it and save it. You can always print it out later if necessary. If the source is not obvious on the page, be sure to note it somewhere in the document.

You can save your research by project, or by subject. Sometimes information is needed across projects, especially if you are writing a series. These articles should be saved to a general folder. Then articles specific to a project can be saved with that project.

What are some of your favorite research sites?