The librarian at my local branch in Portland changed how I outline novels after she showed me her old card catalog system

I was struggling with a messy plot for my fantasy novel and she pulled out a drawer of index cards from a 1950s card catalog and explained how they organized books by subject and cross-referenced them, and I realized I could do the same with my scenes and characters on physical cards instead of a digital doc, so now I'm trying that method for the next chapter of my draft and has anyone else tried using non-digital tools like index cards or corkboards to map out a story?

3 comments

3 Comments

holly633d ago

Love the old school approach... works way better for me too.

mary6143d ago

The card catalog trick is genius, isn't it? I've been using a corkboard with colored pins for years and it just clicks in a way that digital tools never did for me. There's something about physically moving a card from one section to another that makes the plot holes jump right out at you. Your librarian sounds like a real treasure, those old school methods have so much wisdom in them. I tried using Scrivener for my last mystery novel and ended up back with my corkboard and sticky notes by chapter three. Don't you find that seeing all your scenes laid out in front of you makes the connections between them so much clearer?

harper2549h ago

Tbh, digital tools let you rearrange whole plot arcs in seconds without getting ink all over your fingers or losing sticky notes everywhere. All that physical busywork feels productive but you're just moving paper around instead of actually fixing the holes.