: How to build a train of thought across multiple paragraphs and pages? I am struggling to organize small to medium size chunks of writing into coherent trains of thought. I will first describe

Vote Up Vote Down

(I am answering my question in the hopes of sparking more answers.)

Often times people write books for particular audiences. So one way to improve your writing might be to look at the books written by existing authors in your area and mimic their style.

For example, a historian may be interested in a certain collection of history topics. So his or her book would focus primarily on those topics and be designed to teach them effectively. If it is a book respected by the field at large, you can assume then that most people prefer his way of organizing the material in the book. That is, they like it. It works. So this may give you a starting point for seeing how to organize your own book.

However, this principle won't work all the time. For example, if you are presenting a large amount of new research, there may be no example book for you to mimic since your is the first of its kind. Another example where this principle won't apply is when you are expanding to a more general audience or explaining ideas to people without knowledge of your discipline. In such cases, a writing structure suitable for one audience may not apply to a different one or more general one.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

I started writing various bits of fiction and non-fiction a while ago and really struggled to stick to some kind of planned structure. After doing some research on plotting etc, I couldn't find anything suitable for me so I decided to build a Word Add-In (in VBA) to provide background notes on the key structural sections such as chapters, zones and scenes. These sections are nested on the popup form so one can instantly see where you are in the plot; read and update the background notes on the arc; list who is mentioned in each scene and quickly navigate to all the places they appear (in colour). It does lots of other clever things that would otherwise seriously slow down my train of thought. All the data is hidden from view in the document's internal storage space.

The idea of finding where any particular index card or sticky note fits into the working document would give me nightmares. I have just started using the Add-In in earnest and I cannot envisage ever needing a manual system. Above all, in trying to answer your question, I can now create all the scaffolding without having to type anything into the blank document. I play around with Zones and insert and shuffle the Scenes, adding status flags and notes as I go. Then I simply navigate to a scene and start writing; much easier but less fun than programming the Add-In!

(0)