 |
| Photo credit: paloetic on Flickr |
So about a week ago, I came across this blog post on YA Stands about A Cool Way to Outline Your Novel. The post was a recommendation for a free online tool called WorkFlowy, and it sounded interesting so I decided to check it out.
The basic idea behind WorkFlowy is to imitate our thought process—you start off with one bullet point, then build off from it to create more points, and before you know it you have several sub-lists with their own sub-lists and so on and so forth. It's a clean, minimalistic layout and it allows you to open up and collapse your lists and sublists and create a nice, organized, outline-like list.
Here's a video that can explain it a lot better than I can:
You guys may or may not remember my post from forever ago about how I'm a list person, and that has not changed since writing that post. I still enjoy working with lists, and when I begin my initial brainstorming, I do so with (surprise!) long, bulleted lists. I usually start this brainstorming with a pencil and paper, but there was always the issue of my bullets starting to not line up (straight lines? Who can actually draw straight lines?) and not really being able to add to the previous part of the list, and it can get a little messy on paper.
You can imagine, then, that hearing about WorkFlowy made me a pretty happy writer. And trying it out made me even happier.
The great thing about WorkFlowy is that it makes brainstorming ridiculously easy. The bullets work off of each other beautifully, you can move things around and add and delete points effortlessly, and when you're done, you can export the list into whatever format or document you'd like and continue writing from there. The only downside is that while it is free, the free version only gives you 500 items a month, which seems like a lot, but if you fall in love with it as quickly as I did, you will use those items up faster than you'd think. Nevertheless, it's still a great tool for brainstorming.
So if you're a list person like me, or would like to try brainstorming with lists, I highly recommend WorkFlowy as a wonderful writing tool. It's easy to use, intuitive, and it makes what can be a very messy part of the writing process simple and organized.
Have you ever used WorkFlowy or something of the like? Do you brainstorm with lists, or use another method?
Twitter-sized bites:
How one writer uses the free tool WorkFlowy to make brainstorming easy. (Click to tweet)
Have you tried this writing tool for your brainstorming and outlining needs? (Click to tweet)
19 comments:
You know, I must admit that when I take notes of any kind my first choice is always paper, small sheets (like a post-it) that I can reorganize the way I like. Sometimes I use them for writing lists as well. Actually I have a lot of lists around me right now, and I find it useful to have all of them in sight at the same moment. And I really like to use a pen for doing this. Moreover my PC screen is too small. Not that it is really small, but it's smaller than a table or even the floor, where I can arrange all my papers much easily :)
It's available as a Chrome store web app. Just downloaded it and I can't wait to try it out!
Yes! I actually forgot to mention that it has an iOS app too, so it works on iPhone and iPad. :) Hope you enjoy!
I have just tried workflowy, based on your recommendation, and I love it! It really is easy to use and the ideas really seem to FLOW right onto the page effortlessly! I hae tried several other list/mindmap/note-taking apps and workflowy is by far the best.
...but I admit to a certain reluctance at keeping the my novel on their servers. I know it's as secure as any other server based app, or banking, etc, but for some reason keeping my writing notes and chapter outlines online really scares me.
what are your thoughts on this?
Hi Joey! So glad to hear you've been enjoying WorkFlowy! You're completely right about it working pretty effortlessly, which is something I really like about the app.
As for the security thing...
While I won't write my novel there (or store it online in a program like that), I don't worry at all about keeping my notes or outlines online. It might be a personal thing, but I don't think hackers are really all that interested in someone's novel notes. And even if someone DID see your notes prematurely, they'd still have to write the novel. :)
So in short, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
I used Workflowy to keep track of my job hunt, and my wife uses it pretty consistently to keep track of her to-do list.
I can definitely see how it'd be useful for both of those purposes.
I've been using Workflowy for probably about a year or so now, and I use it for absolutely everything: organization, notes, journal, decision making, writing, songwriting, shopping lists, goals, projects, bill management, and on and on. The tags are awesome and provide great navigation. The new Star pages are great and enhance navigation. You can add hyperlinks, so you can easily go to key websites. You can even use it as a group or share certain items with others, keeping the rest locked up and secure. To me, the $5 monthly fee for unlimited items is so worth it! I've even started creating an account for my family to increase and enhance our communication with each other.
That's a great point about the sharing capability and hyperlinks. I haven't really experimented much with the tags, but I'll have to give them a try. It's such a versatile program and I am very happy to have stumbled upon it. Thanks for sharing your experience, Dave!
I have been using Workflowy for writing my book on building open communities (http://leanpub.com/community)
It's the perfect tool for not being dragged into too much details, and to structure a complex matter.
Working with Leanpub for the publication, I just wish Workflowy could better export in Markdown. Once you have to flesh out the book, it becomes hard / not possible to work with Workflowy.
That's really interesting! I never would have even considering writing the actual draft on Workflowy. Huh.
best software ever made. can't wait for reminders etc. 'external brain'. I read about it on zenhabits; also, like your article which was linked from workflowy blog.
Thank you! I agree that it's a fantastic program. And I was honored to have my post featured on the WorkFlowy blog. :)
anyone remember or used Ecco, from Arabesque Software (then NetManage)?
Great outliner.
Before that: Living Videotext had ThinkTank and then MORE (the best)
I'm still looking for something as good as those. I'm actually a reasonably happy Workflowy customer, but still looking for some of the features of Ecco and More.
I haven't tried Ecco or ThinkTank, so I can't speak for those programs. Is it similar to Workflowy?
Love WorkFlowy. Mac users. You can get Fluid for about $5 or $6 dollars. It will turn the WorkFlowy URL into a a desktop application. You'll have to login in once after you download and launch Fluid.
What's really cool, is that you can have Fluid select the WorkFlowy favicon to be the Application icon. I then "dock" my WorkFlowy App along with my other most used Mac Apps. Check it out, it's pretty cool.
Oh, one more thing, with Fluid, you can change as many URL's as you like into an Application.
That sounds interesting. Thanks for sharing, Ken!
Ditto, I got the Workflowy + Fluid combo too here, sweet! :)
Nice!
Post a Comment