#cheat sheet1

[spidermanifested]

heres me getting on the spreadsheet train: tally of all the times members of the devils nest talk to one another (in terms of number of manga speech bubbles)

THE FINDINGS:

bido and greed obviously mutually talk to each other the most (23 times on bidos end, 29 on greeds), the bulk of that coming from chapter 82

however dolcetto talks to roa even more than bido talks to greed, and a whopping four times as much as he talks to anybody else (24 times). yes he talks to martel, doc and greed in exactly equal amounts

martel talks to dolcetto exactly once. in chapter 26, when she responds to him with the words "got it"

greed talks to the gang the most (72 times), but more of them talk to roa (51) than to him (42)

he and roa each have 2 people who talk to them more than anyone else (bido and blondie for greed, martel and dolcetto for roa). although greed is kind of cheating because neither bido nor blondie interact with any other member of the gang

meanwhile dolcetto is docs favorite guy, and martel is roas. hang on ill just make a graph of whatever friendship cyclone is going on here

nobody care ulchi

[atopvisenyashill]

wait i wanna see if i can do it

i'll probably have to click out for work sometimes i realize that looks like i'm cheating but i swear to god i just have to get these fucking reading challenge sheets done lmao

[emoracreations]

Outlining a Novel with Note Cards and Excel

I’m by no means an expert at telling anyone the best way to outline, but I’ve tried a few different methods. They’re all valid based in how thoroughly you want to plan before moving on to the action of writing the actual dang thing. For me though, I like to plan as much as I can while allowing the story room to breathe on its own. 

So, I discovered the way of outlining through using Excel.

Before I start with that though, I usually spend a few days brainstorming ideas and writing them down on to note cards -- this ranges from full blown scenes, snippets of dialogue, symbolism to include, etc. I never know the order they’ll be in, but the best part is that they’re easy to rearrange and the ones you don’t end up using can be used for future books within that world.

[Image: my hand holding a stack of index cards with a clip to keep them together.]

I took a picture of the back to avoid revealing spoilers hhh

If you don’t have note cards or don’t have the money to buy them, then I would always either take notes on my phone when an idea struck me or if I was near my laptop put it into a word doc. I always keep a word doc just titled Notes as a sort cheat sheet world building reference. Here’s the one for my current wip:

[Image: Microsoft Word navigation pane with the sections of: terminology, magic, history and legends, creatures and lesser fae, and other.]

From there, you can go more in depth in Excel and expand on the cards or fill in the gaps. 

[Image: entire first column is highlighted to indicate Act 1 and for every shift in Act, change the color. First row are the sections in this order: chapter, characters, setting, plot/action, subplot/arc, word count, and days since mia.]

I found some templates online and mixed them into this sort of format. I also added word count and days since mia to fit the story. Keeping track of the days passing though actually helps and can let you see whether you’re spending too much time on one day. 

Everything else is pretty self explanatory. I only named characters that were important. You could probably go more in depth in the setting, but I just reference a map I made of the town/world. 

This was just for a single pov story, but if you’re planning multiple povs, you could highlight the characters section to match the color you assign to the current pov. 

For example: Valeria would be purple and Juniper would be orange in the photo. I would know to shift tone and voice to the pov character I’m writing at the moment.

[Image: Characters column with the first row being highlighted purple and reading: Valeria, Miras. Second row is highlighted orange and reading: Valeria, Juniper.]

The best part imo is that it’s really easy to add in new blocks or move them around if need be. ALSO you can have multiple sheets within, so if you’re planning multiple books, it’ll all be within the same thing for easy reference.

[Image: shows tabs labeled Sheet1, Sheet2, and Sheet3 with an addition button next to it to add more.]

I hope this helps others the way it did for me. Good luck in your writing endeavors, writers! 

Tagging @cawolters as they asked me for this.

[datasciencethings]

Pandas Cheat Sheet1