Working MyMind

Another problem with the first draft of Revival was (is) that I lost track of characters. So-and-so's not in this scene, so what's it matter what (s)he's doing. Before long, the character had dropped from my radar completely, and stuff I had planned on them doing later got left out. So, in the rewrite (I've re-done the prologue, so I'm officially in it - yay!), I'm working harder to keep track of everyone.

I've tried writing notes with bits of narrative summary, but by the time you get to the end of the notes you've forgotten the beginning. I've tried making outlines by hand, but eventually there's no more space on the page to cram things in and half of what's written is illegible.

Last night, more on a whim than anything else, I did a VersionTracker search for Mac Outlining Software. One little freeware gem came up: MyMind 1.2. It makes very nice outlines (here are some screenshots) and is surprisingly intuitive to use.

I monkeyed with it a bit and came up with a sample outline for my first chapter. First of all, I love that I can insert a photo into the background. It may be completely irrelevant, but it's fun. One thing, though, that's very useful is that the outline map is interactive. By stretching the outline points over to the right, I was able to create a timeline of sorts. Changing colors specifies what gets written about and what exists as background info only.

Pretty handy utility.