How do you organize research notes for a novel?
Do not build a folder hierarchy before you know what the book is. Novel research arrives as fragments over months, and any structure you design up front will be wrong by the time you have enough material to need it. Capture everything with tags instead, and let the shape emerge from what you actually collected.
Capture first, structure later
The cost of a research system is paid at capture time, and anything that makes saving a fragment take more than a few seconds means you stop doing it. Tags are cheap to add in the moment and can be reorganised later; folders force a decision about where something belongs before you know.
Tags that earn their keep
- Tag by what the fragment is about, not where it will end up: a character name, a place, a period, a theme.
- Use specific tags. "1970s-glasgow" is worth more later than "setting".
- Tag the same fragment several ways when it genuinely serves several purposes.
Turning research into chapters
- Open a storyboard and pull in the notes for a section. Storyboards are for sequencing material you already have.
- Drag cards until the order reads the way the chapter should.
- Combine the storyboard into a document. Each note becomes its own paragraphs, in the order you set, and from there it is a draft you can edit like any other.
Common questions
Should I use one storyboard per chapter?
One per chapter or per sequence works well, because the point of a storyboard is ordering a set of material small enough to hold in your head.
What happens to my notes when I build a document from them?
They stay where they are. The document gets a copy, so editing the draft does not disturb the research it came from.
Can I bring in research I already have in Google Docs?
Yes, Yarnboard imports Google Docs and Word files with their headings, lists, and formatting intact. Import is a Pro feature.