Idea Capture: What do you currently use? What have you tried and discarded?
What do you folks use for idea capture? And what have you tried in the past, and discarded?
(Sorry if this is a duplicate topic!)
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Here's what I use so far:
Baisc idea capture, that's just a note in the A5 note book I always carry around. Which is a challenge when it comes to finding it in time - just recently, I completely forgot about a good comic idea that I'd written down there and only found it days before the deadline. But that's okay. I write stuff down so I don't have to think of it myself.
Research, right now, mostly happens in Firefox bookmarks if it's online. I set a folder aside per project and try to keep it organized. This is the part that would be in Evernote if I had more than this one computer to do it on. For offline rersearch, I either make notes and annotations in Scrivener or CueCards or in an extra notebook I get for the project if it's big enough. (That's where I make scribbles, thumbnails and character sketches, too.)
Story structure - that's post-its on walls. At least for now. There's a chance I'll run out of walls soon. I've been toying with mind-mapping apps, but never really made that ork for me. Maybe later. I also synchronize the post-its with my Scrivener project, once I have one.
But that's all raw stuff, so far. Here's where Scrivener comes in. Or, depeding on the project, yWriter or CueCards. Sometimes all three. (Celtx used to be in the mix, but Scrivener pretty much made that obsolete for me.) I set up a project in one of the programs, but I don't collect everything into it. I rather use the project to digest and organize the original messy capturing loot. I like to keep the messy parts and the organized parts separated, even if it means switching apps all the time. Sometimes I'll even switch to another program or project if the first attempt at organizing turns out messy. When I wrote that book esssay last year, I think I started it in CueCards, continued in yWriter and wrapped it up in Open Office (although that was mainly for formatting reasons). It's part of why I bought Scrivener in the first plac, but the principle hold: With each incarnation, I try to get closer to a clean, well-structured version of the final thing.
For JAQrabbit Tales ideas, I transfer them from Notes into a spreadsheet that lists every planned/started/finished Tale and pin-up, with dates, characters, and other details for each one. I use that for planning and continuity control for the series as a whole.