The Story Tracker was an idea I liked from Book in a Month by Victoria Lynn Schmidt, Ph.D. I have adopted this simple idea to my own use, modifying it as I like. You are free to do the same or use as is.
The main idea behind the Story Tracker is to keep writing without stopping to rewrite a plot, character, setting, subplot, or revise and edit. What you do is keep notes of changes you want to make to the story, so that you can remember what you need to do later when you revise the finished manuscript. This is where you jot down new ideas and new directions as they come to mind and then keep writing as if you made those changes already.
I tried creating a worksheet in my word processor that consisted of a table with the headings: Page #, What to Fix, and Additional Comments—these can be: why you need the change, what the impact of this change will be on other characters,. This didn’t work for me—needed more room or less than I gave myself in a table—so I made it into columns. However, now I just use a notebook to jot down my notes.
My examples:
Loving the Goddess of Love (Title of work at the top of the page)
-page 1-3, change POV character in Prologue to Aphrodite
-page 6-8, change character talking to Zeus from Hera to Rhea, more impact on Zeus’ decision if it’s his mom rather than his soon-to-be-wife
This is a really great idea.
Thanks, I hope it helps those who want to use it, or gives them a good Idea of how to do something that is better suited to them.
I haven’t tried this idea out….
i do this by adding comments in my word document
I do that too. But then I find myself going back through the comments trying to find the one I wanted. LOL
I like this, but I’m mostly visual. I think I’m doing a version of this adding sticky notes (red) to my wall of storylines. I’ll have to think how to incorporate this.
Sounds like you have something that works for you already.
If it’s something that works for you, I’d suggest not changing it. Although, if you think modifying what you are doing could help you be more efficient than I’d go for it.