I read this thread => “George RR Martin: “Why I still use DOS” <= at the MobileRead Forums and someone made a comment about pen and paper being old school to the extreme. It made me feel a little weird, because a lot of times I write stories by hand, then I type them up when I have a fat stack of pages.
There’s something about words flowing straight out of my hand onto the paper that appeals to me. Plus it keeps me from being able to go back and edit myself while I’m writing — the only direction is forward. When I make a mistake, erasing it involves scribbling things out, so I try not to make mistakes in the first place. I am forced to keep the story moving because there’s no room to change things without making a mess.
How do you write?
[Me: pen and paper => Scrivener => OpenOffice]
Honestly? Pen and paper for initial brainstorming, worldbuilding, outlining plotpoints and so on.
I write the rough storyline (which is usually not that long since at that point I only write out and elaborate the planned plotpoints, add more sidestories and stuff) in excel (yes, I know I’m weird but you can shuffle stuff around without much effort that way) after that and when I’m happy I have that excel thing next to word and write the actual story.
Personally I usually start on one storyline and then write that one out, then the next and the next and so on even though they often happen at the same point in time so the excel stuff helps me write one storyline one thing beneath another, all of it easy to find and see at what point in time it’s supposed to happen while next to it is another storyline and the further down something is the further down the timeline it happens. That way I don’t lose any threads.