GoogleDocs writers - how to organise story chapters?

[Deleted member 5560]

So I write my stories as a single document in GoogleDocs and just highlight+copypasta the chapters into the SH editor, but recently kind of ran into an issue. My main story (plug: LOGIK: Slow Healing Life Online) has now hit 120 pages in length, making the document really slow to load and laggy to scroll through. This is fine when typing on my PC, but when using my laptop or phone to write while I'm away from home it also causes a lot of lagging during typing (my laptop was a cheap little one and doesn't have a lot of power ya feel me). So I've been thinking of maybe reverting back to the system from the FF.Net days (for those not in the know: the main method of uploading chapters to FF.Net was import the document directly, meaning each chapter had to be its own Word file).

The pros of this is naturally smoother loading and typing, but the con is that I use the GD "comments" feature to make notes on parts and also bookmark plot-critical details to make it easier to refer back to, and don't necessarily memorise which chapters these were in. Splitting up the story into a separate document for each chapter will make referring back to these notes way more difficult. Hmm, a conundrum.

(Of course, the obvious answer is to just write each chapter as its own document, and then once I am done and it has been uploaded, "dump" the chapter into the full file, but then I'd also have to manually recreate comments and I am so very, very lazy.)

Anyway, this isn't a thread looking for advice. I'm just thinking (textually) aloud to myself. Mostly I'm just curious -- how do you organise your story chapters? Do you partition them into individual documents, or do you, like me, keep them all bundled together in one mammoth unwieldy document? I mostly direct this question at fellow GD writers, since I'm interested to know how many people might deal with lagging like me, but I guess people who use other platforms can answer. For science.

 

[Sabruness]

For my stories with enough content, i have them bundled into separate arc documents (i write with wordpad so .rtf). way back when i started penning my first two stories, i used GDocs but the problems you mention as well as the potential hazards of writing in the cloud led me to the more old-fashioned approach.

For notes, details and other such things i have one of more text files that i use to jot down and mark them, where relevant, with the chapter in question. That way i can just use the search function.

 

[CupcakeNinja]

So I write my stories as a single document in GoogleDocs and just highlight+copypasta the chapters into the SH editor, but recently kind of ran into an issue. My main story (plug: LOGIK: Slow Healing Life Online) has now hit 120 pages in length, making the document really slow to load and laggy to scroll through. This is fine when typing on my PC, but when using my laptop or phone to write while I'm away from home it also causes a lot of lagging during typing (my laptop was a cheap little one and doesn't have a lot of power ya feel me). So I've been thinking of maybe reverting back to the system from the FF.Net days (for those not in the know: the main method of uploading chapters to FF.Net was import the document directly, meaning each chapter had to be its own Word file).

The pros of this is naturally smoother loading and typing, but the con is that I use the GD "comments" feature to make notes on parts and also bookmark plot-critical details to make it easier to refer back to, and don't necessarily memorise which chapters these were in. Splitting up the story into a separate document for each chapter will make referring back to these notes way more difficult. Hmm, a conundrum.

(Of course, the obvious answer is to just write each chapter as its own document, and then once I am done and it has been uploaded, "dump" the chapter into the full file, but then I'd also have to manually recreate comments and I am so very, very lazy.)

Anyway, this isn't a thread looking for advice. I'm just thinking (textually) aloud to myself. Mostly I'm just curious -- how do you organise your story chapters? Do you partition them into individual documents, or do you, like me, keep them all bundled together in one mammoth unwieldy document? I mostly direct this question at fellow GD writers, since I'm interested to know how many people might deal with lagging like me, but I guess people who use other platforms can answer. For science.

Do you copy, paste into the website, and just leave the content all in one single doc on google doc?

Am i understanding that right?

Cuz personally I dont leave everything there. Isnt that more logical? Cuz the doc is gonna be saved to SH and RL and Webnovel anyway. And any place you post it.

I got three documents each dedicated to one of my stories. Making chapters, posting and deleting the content from the doc after, reusing the same doc as its now empty.

I vote for adding a "reuse same document" option m'dude. I feel thats easier than using one long document where everything is saved. Cuz then you cant ctrl-A and Ctrl C or else you copy the whole damn thing. And if you dont use a mouse to copy everything from a certain point doen, then you gotta do it the other way. The whole the shift-down thing. And that takes forever if you got at least 2k words which i normally do

 

[Owl]

I have google docs up to a maximum of 150 pages (usually ~100) and just write as I please. Then, when I know I'll upload it soon, I reread the mini-arcs, correct mistakes as I see them and place myself numbered chapter markers after certain word counts. When it's time to upload the chapter, I check at which number I am, go into the doc and just search for the marker. Voila! (That said, I usually need several docs that I number in their title)

 

[tiaf]

I used to dump everything into one file, but the scrolling on phone made it though. So I make one one for each chapter since the word count is around 4K, having multiple chapters in one file would be too laggy.

 

[honeymilkwrites]

I write every chapter in its own Google Docs file. Even my notes got really long two weeks ago, so I had to divide it into one doc for character notes and one doc for plot + setting. I'll probably have to divide the latter soon as well.
edit: also i voted for the wrong option in the poll lmao

 

[BenJepheneT]

It's sort of different for me. I don't have just one doc for one chapter; I have several. Everytime I do a chapter I'd have at least 2-3 docs ready just for that one individual chapter. I usually start off the first one without structure, then scrap the first one and begin on the second one once I settle with the narrative and the tone. Then I start incorporating ideas by the time I reach the third chapter. Then I leave the third chapter alone for a day and come back tomorrow for a fresh mind and starting editing the whole darn thing.

Then I control C control V the whole thing into SH, do the last edit there and finally publish it.

 

[CupcakeNinja]

Everything you just said horrified me down to my bones.

1. I only post to SH. I do not post on WP or RR.
2. Imagine wanting less backups of your story. Imagine having complete trust in a third party website to retain the entirety of your work. Bro. Wow. The confidence of you. I'm in awe. Hats off to you. I update the exported offline copy after each chapter is finished for added security. Are you a leo? I feel like you're probably a leo.

Holy fuck dude, i am a leo. July 31st.

Also: Bruv i've got balls made of fucking adamantium.

Really its no different from saving it to google anyway. You post at multiple sites and the odds of ALL of them going down permanently are pretty damn slim especially if they as large as RRL, WN and Wattpad. Cuz i posted there too, and i dont mention SH cuz its still small right now

I'd say its even safer than keeping it only on google. Remember its always better to keep this stuff at multiple places rather than just one.

 

[NiQuinn]

I write per chapter in a separate document. Writing it down in one doc just freaks me out. What if it gets corrupted or something goes wrong while saving and I lose everything? Coz, you know, both happened to me already. Which leads me to my current practice of saving files in my hard drive, my external, on cloud, and on an online writing platform meant for writing novels.

It's the paranoia stemming from my many dismal experiences with tech. I have particularly bad luck with gadgets.

 

[PrincessFelicie]

So far I’ve had a one story one document policy and it worked for me, but my current story has chapters three times as long as my usual average and I can see myself hit the lag threshold relatively quick - so I might create a new document every X chapters and put them all in the same folder.

 

[Kotohood]

I have different folders and documents for each chapters and parts of the story.

One excell sheet for character designs.
One excel sheet for glossary.
One doc for the premise + major plot points.
One doc for the whole story codensed into small plot points.
One doc for each chapter. (Labeled chapter 0 to X so I have it all ordered in docs)

When I want to merge them. I simply download from google drive and merge them via microsoft word.

Edit:Oh yeah, I also have a doc for Trashed lines and a doc for story ideas(things I just thought up and wanted to put inside the story)

 

[NotaNuffian]

Writing on my phone in google docs and hating it, the table for stats fucks my phone many times, does not help when I clump chapters into a single doc and with me writing three stories at the same time, I sometimes fucking forget who is who.

I am a new writer so I am giving myself some leeways, but seriously I am planning to post on SH and delete shits from google soon.

 

[0xReki]

I have my stuff in a git Repository (private Repository because my whole backlog is there) so I have a copy on my PC and on GitLab. Plus I post it here. Though I don't use a Word Processor to write. But I have each chapter in a separate file.

 

[AlwaysxDreaming]

So far I have everything on a single google doc and then use the 'Outline' feature to keep the chapters organized. If I start having issues with lagging I may split them up in the future so that's good to know! I haven't backed up anything either...

---update---
Just reached page 66 and its finally lagging even adding a single word is taking several seconds. So I've decided to make Docs with around 10 chapters each. Disappointed :(

 

[BenJepheneT]

Holy fuck dude, i am a leo. July 31st.

28th here brudda

and yeah, right after it gets posted onto SH i delete the file in docs

and I only post in SH

damn my balls are magnesium that melts water

 

[AliceShiki]

I use a MS Word file for each chapter and I have a separate document just for notes.

It works fine for me, and it's easier to manage if I have only one chapter per document.

... On a side note, I'm surprised this many people use Google Docs, even a 0 words file in it lags for me, so I never touch Google Docs unless I have no other option.

 

[SillyIslandBum]

Right now I use MS Word for my entire story, which is only ~80,000 words. Originally I made a new file for each chapter, but it became annoying when I went back to check something. I haven’t really seen any lag or problems so far with one file. As for backups, I use google docs, and external drives. I post to SH, WN, RRL, and CN, so those are backups as well, but I haven’t saved any drafts on them.

 

[Rellawing]

Breaking it up into parts is a good idea if you can keep tabs on all the parts, but my book got to 600 pages or so, and while it was indeed slow from time to time, it was easy enough to work around if a pain sometimes. It was worth it for the feedback I was able to get. Anyhow, 110,000 or so words. I think it could go higher, and I also think the performance will improve even more. Things are already far better than they were over the last 8 or more years.

 

[Phantomheart]

I have one doc for my general ideas and bullet pointed plot points I want to hit for each chapter, and then I have another document with all of my actual story. Each chapter has a header title so that I can navigate to it from the outline feature and quickly scroll through the entire story on days where I am looking for plot holes.

 

[Igi]

I personally tried writing only in Word, and GoogleDocs, and it was fine at first. But once I hit around 120-140 pages it was a mess. So I searched for something that would make my life and chapter management much easier. And surprise, someone had already made a program that was a solution to all my problems. Scrivener (works on macOS; Windows; iOS) just makes sense. I used it for a couple of years now, and have no complaints.