Manage/ Organize Stories...Can you help?

[jadedinnocent]

I hope someone has some advice for me...As a story lengthens,

How do you keep it organized in your WORD files?

My one story ( not yet posted here) has reached 22 Chapters.

I currently have the next 2 chapters and about 4 or 5 more future chapters in the works and also some miscellaneous notes.

It is getting confusing to keep organized. today I was very upset when I tried to cut and paste something to where I decided they should "go" and then realized in scrolling up and down I "lost" some of it.

Has anyone here written such lengthy stories before and how do you keep such things in order.

I could really use some help!!! Hope this made sense.

[barbayat]

I keep a folder for each longer story, in it I make one word file for each chapter.

Additonally I pút everything into one file, which I print out double sided, so I can re-read everything easily.

[Tempted Saint]

*nods* Yep! FOLDERS! I can't stress them enough! I have an on going Fan Fiction that is 27 chapters and I have just started to tell the story, I also have a novel that is over 30 chapters and still in progress, so organization IS A MUST! If I had random files I would be SO LOST! (I know because when I started writing did just that! lol)

I save everything under My Documents Then under Fiction Then under Blue Bird (example story title) Then I put every chapter in THAT file.
I make surte to ALWAYS save my chapters the same way for ease of finding them later. so I go like this:

Blue Bird Chapter 1
Blue Bird Chapter 2
Blue Bird Chapter 3
so it's easier to see what I have.

If you do this: (bad idea)

blue Bird Chapter one
B B chappie 2
Bird 3 (etc..)

The files will be a mess and they may more than likely will not come up in order when you pull up the folder.

[jadedinnocent]

Thanks. Thoses will help and any additional ideas are welcome too.

I've just been saving them in My Documents under the title or working title (I always give it at least that). But the longer ones are getting awkward with that much in one document. I did try making a folder for stuff a couple months ago but had trouble. I'll try again.

I may have more questions. Thanks again for helping.