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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38009
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38009
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Wiki and Flash are all well and good, but here's an answer for lazy people, like me. **I use OneNote**. It's already on your Windows, and it requires 0 level of tech-savvy. I am a Wikipedia editor, so it's not like that's beyond my technical skills, but when I come to planning my story, I want to do just that - plan my story. No overhead. OneNote gives me just that: it's intuitive, it lets me add images, links, tables and text formatting, layer notes, Ctrl+F on the whole notebook, drag-and-drop ideas. It's not perfect, but it's good enough.

Whatever software you're using, consider this: ideas don't just come when you're sitting by a computer an actively planning. They come when you're commuting and bored, when something draws your attention on the street, etc. A useful way not to lose those ideas is to do your planning on a software that lets you access your file from multiple platforms, including your phone.

@Secespitus gives an excellent answer regarding placeholder names, so let me just stress one element: don't just call your old man `OldMan`: call him `{OldMan}` (or some other markup). The difference is that once you have several dozen names for places and characters, some of them still placeholders, other replaced with what you're actually going to use, you can search for the `{` to find what you still need to find names for.

Original score: 10