Writing.Com General Discussion

I'm a plotter and generally write sci-fi, and having a cohesive world where all the parts fit is crucial. I began with keeping structured notes, but that developed into a wiki, and now I write my novels using a wiki. I host a wiki farm, one wiki per novel. The structure of the 'Notes' section in each wiki is critical. For example, under the 'Notes' section there is the 'Characters' section, which itself is divided into the subsections Antagonists, Incidentals and Protagonists. For the World section, the subsections are Religion, Economy, Technology, Social Structure, Politics. Other sections can easily be added as required, and of course each of these sections can have sub-sections.

Being a wiki, it is very easy to cross-reference pages, and like Wikipedia, hovering over an internal link displays a hover-window with the opening paragraph from that page for quick reference. It is entirely possible to create cross-links to other wikis in the farm, or to external wikis such as Wikipedia or Wiktionary.

Once you get into world-building, you need to get organised. For me the solution is a full blown wiki using DokuWiki. Before this I used Zim-Wiki, which is a notepad type affair based on DokuWiki and easily helps you to organise notes. Others use notepad++ or just the hierarchy of their filesystem.

However you do it, once you get into world-building you'll find it can be addictive. You have to know when to stop. You also have to know when you haven't got enough.