Sunday, June 10, 2012

Things - a new outline tool?

Things is an application that you can use on the iPhone, the iPad, or on your Mac.  It's a a step-child of sorts to David Allen's Getting Things Done.  It represents the next attempt in a long line of time management and project management tools for the computer.  Overall, the app is good.  I use it to keep track of projects for work and other parts of my life.  But I don't think I've trained myself to take full advantage of the app.  But, recently I was in Evernote (I do a lot of writing in Evernote) and I liked the layout Evernote had of the index cards to sort of visualize your documents.  I thought about using that as an outline.  You guys are all familiar with the screenwriter who writes the scenes on Index cards and then moves them around -- pins them on cork boards, etc.  

I know Final Draft has some version of this capability, but unless new versions have nailed it -- I haven't liked it.  That brings me to things.  With Things you can separate things by various categories.  My "Area of Responsibility" and then by "Project" and then underneath Project you can separate by "Task."  Within each task you can add tags and notes.  So, I started outlining my current project on there.  The Area of Responsibility was the SCREENPLAY -- and then the Project was the Scene -- and then I could break down the scene into action bits by the various notes.  

Just something to try out.  If anyone else has any success on a new outline tool or any other "visualization" tools.  I've heard of "mind mapping" applications that people in the field of User Experience use a lot.  I'm toying with looking at some of the User Experience applications to outline and visualize the story as I go.  

Alright, back to writing!

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