A Writer is a bundle full of ideas, thoughts, scenes, imaginations, and several more things. All of these run in their mind simultaneously throughout the day, and hence, it is natural that a lot of ideas keep flowing. But, chaos is a regular challenge faced by the writers when it comes to organizing those ideas.

Several sticky notes everywhere around their writing place, thousands of files on their computer (many of them even unnamed), a lot of frustration because of forgotten ideas, and writer’s block are among the common sightings in a Writer’s universe. Not many can actually understand what a writer goes through, even if you were to zoom your telescope into their lives to make sense of what’s happening. It is after overcoming a series of these challenges that a ‘Book’ comes out.

But fortunately, many people took note of these Writers’ struggles & grievances and took the responsibility of solving them. Many tools have been launched in recent times to help writers with these challenges and help them bring out their masterpieces in a lesser time. Some of the tools are to help them with organizing their truckloads of ideas, thoughts, researches, etc.

In this article, we discuss 7 organizational tools for the writers. Let’s dive in:

MindNode:



A writer might get an idea or a thought anytime during the day. It can be while traveling, on a walk, while cooking, on a beach, during conversations, while reading something, talking to a friend, and (if he/she is too much into it) even while sleeping.

You get a thought, and the next most important thing is to note down, isn’t it? There would have been situations wherein you have got an important idea, and you want to write it down, but you think that you would do it as soon as you get back home. But by the time you reach home, the very thought has slipped out of your mind. Happened? MindNode is the solution.

With MindNode, you can not only note the ideas and thoughts immediately but build on them too. MindNode is a mind-mapping tool that lets you capture the thoughts and organize your ideas as a flowchart or a table. Additionally, it also enables you to have outlined and structured brainstorming. You could make checklists of your tasks and track your progress.

Gliffy:



If you are a visual person, flowcharts are of utmost importance for your writing projects. Gliffy is a tool that helps you create any flowchart without any diagramming skills. Though Gliffy has been designed for business use and software engineers & design projects; even writers can also use it to create a flowchart about their plots or the story structure or a planned flow of the non-fiction book. You can even create an outline for your book.

How does a flowchart help? A glance at the flowchart can help you measure the progress of your story according to plan.

Scrivener:



Scrivener certainly makes a great writing tool. But the best part is that it can double up as an organizational tool as well. As a writer, you can finally get rid of all the sticky notes everywhere in your place and also umpteen scattered files on your system. Scrivener enables you to store all your files in one place so that they are available to view at a glance, and you can organize them in the way you seem fit.

It would help you save a lot of time that gets consumed in searching for a particular piece of information stored in some file in the system or in sticky notes that has the highest chances of being lost. Scrivener is very easy to use and can be customized to your way of working.

Scapple:



Scapple is one of the easiest tools to use to make a note of any thoughts or ideas instantaneously. You can even make connections between your notes to specify connected notes to make it easier for future reference. The interface is very simple and easy to use. Additionally, you can even add styling to your notes.

You can make the notes bold, add colors, add a border, fill cell color, change cell shapes, etc. It would make it neat and easier for you to follow the notes. What’s more? If you want to create connections between notes, you can do that too. You can stack the notes in the document and create connections between them. This video would give you more idea about its functioning:

Aeon Timeline:



Aeon Timeline is a tool by the writers, for the writers. Aeon Timeline is useful for you irrespective if you are in the opening stage of planning a novel or in the final stage of editing. It helps you bring out your story better by enabling you to organize & understand your characters better, avoid any plot holes in the story, and correct the inconsistencies. You can group the characters, locations, & arc visually and also capture relationships between them. You can use the feature of creating nested events that enables you to zoom in to have a detailed view of the scenes or zoom out to get a contextual view of the storyline. On Aeon Timeline, you can filter your events by almost any parameter. It helps you to narrow your focus when trying to resolve any specific plot points. Want to create a Fantasy calendar for the timeline of your story, with Aeon Timeline, you can!

Evernote:



Evernote has become one of the most renowned tools in the writing community. With Evernote, you can note the ideas, thoughts, photos, links, and any other thing instantly. You can organize the notes the way you would want to. One of the aspects that stand out is that it provides you a faster search using keywords. It has a powerful character recognition feature that scans and recognizes a word that appears even in photos, whiteboard scans, business cards, documents, and even your handwriting.

Another aspect that makes it more useful is that it synchronizes the documents and files to all your Evernote devices so that you can access them anywhere. You can also make To-Do Lists on Evernote.

Milanote:



Milanote is an all-in-one tool for writers. It enables you to take notes, create a mind map, set deadlines and manage your project, and much more. It is a web-based note-taking app that provides you a pasteboard-style interface that allows you to store documents, images, web pages with their previews, and text. What’s more? It also enables you to create diagrams of the flow and structure you envision to see in your book. You can also make To-Do lists and also add photos from your phone along with the text. Milanote matches the way writers think.

Conclusion:

These are 7 organizational tools to help writers. In this list, different types of tools that are useful for mind-mapping, outlining, note-taking, creating flowcharts, and others have been included. If you had been searching for an organizing tool to organize your content, we hope that you find this list helpful.

Image Credits:Image 1: Image by JD Hancock on Flickr
Image 2: MindNode
Image 3: Gliffy
Image 4: Scrivener
Image 5: Scapple
Image 6: Aeon Timeline
Image 7: Evernote
Image 8: Milanote