Spreadsheets revisited

Off to Paris today. I’m not sure what my intramanet access will be like while there, plus I’ll be busy, so I figured I’d best leave you with a slightly meaty post given as I’m not sure when I’ll be posting again.

For your delectation some thoughts on the efficacy of spreadsheets for novel writing:

A while back I posted a tongue-in-cheek guide on how to write a novel in which I suggested using a spreadsheet. I’m still getting letters from folks telling me what a revelation that was, how it’s transformed the way they write, solved all their plotting problems, and made their teeth whiter.

And I’m still coming across comments from those who are appalled and outraged by the very idea. A spreadsheet! For creative work! The utter utter horror! Spreadsheets are for accountants! The muse is allergic to spreadsheets. What kind of philistine is this Justine Larbalestier? (If that is her real name.)

I don’t get the outrage.

A novel is a large document containing a whole world with a population that can range from one (boring navel-gazing novel about a man trapped inside a unicycle) to billions or more (space opera where the Empress of the universe destroys a whole planet and the reader follows the last day of each inhabitant of said planet). Keeping track of all of that is tricky. The longer or more complicated the novel the harder it is to keep all of it in your head.

I’m sure some writers can do it. Some writers can also write entires novels in their head and produce but one perfect draft.

But pretty much every writer I know has some method of tracking their novel. It might be a set of notes, a wall chart, a spreadsheet, a ouija board, an outline they annotate as they go, index cards, pigeon entrails, their ghostwriter, whatever. They have some kind of a thing that is not their novel that tells them stuff they need to know about their novel.

My first novel is an epic, 145 thousand words long,1 spanning many years, with a cast of gazillions, and multiple point-of-view characters. I wrote the first draft using another word document to note down who was related to who, what the countries were, the different language groups, the seasons, things I needed to change, and etc. By the time I finished the first draft, my notes about the novel was almost longer than the actual novel. I needed another document to keep track of it. And then I needed another one to keep track of the one keeping track of the notes keeping track of the novel. Spot the problem?

My boyfriend of the time (thank you, Geoff!) suggested I use Microsoft Project. I fell in love. It was the first (and only time) I’ve been smitten by any of Microsoft’s software.2 Project was exactly what I needed: I could chart each character in relationship to the other characters over a period of days, months, years, whatever I needed. At a glance, I could see characters who disappeared with no explanation, who remained pregnant for two years, babies who stayed at the baby stage even though five years had passed since their birth.

It made rewriting much easier.

My second novel was much more straightforward, shorter, and told from only one point of view. A very short file was all I needed to keep track. And to be honest I didn’t use it much, which might be why it’s so very bad, and will never ever see the light of day.

My third novel was Magic or Madness, which while not as complicated as my first, had its own challenges, such as being set in Sydney and New York City. Towards the end of the first draft, Scott introduced me to his spreadsheet method, which made it much much much easier to track what time it was in the two different locations as well as the shifts in points-of-view.

I used the same spreadsheet for all three books of the trilogy. It made me happy.

For the Great Australian Mangosteen Monkey Knife-Fighting Elvis Cricket Fairy Young Adult book I also used a spreadsheet, but it served mostly procrastinatory purposes. The book is told from one point of view and is pretty much beginning, middle, end. It woulda been just as easy to write it without one.

So there you have it: spreadsheets neither write your novel for you, nor do they stab the grand muse of writerising through the heart. They’re just this sometimes-for-some-people useful thing, ya know?

And now I believe I have a plane to catch.

  1. For contrast all the Magic or Madness books are around 65 thousand words. []
  2. And, of course, Microsoft instantly stopped producing a Mac version. So I never got to use it again, which is a shame because it is the most excellent instrument of procrastination novel tracking I have ever used. []


  1. Rebecca on #

    “pigeon entrails”

    i’m trying to figure out exactly how that works…. this is what happens when one has a term paper due at 3:30 on wednesday which one has not started writing, or even researching, yet. one thinks of using pigeon entrails for keeping track of stuff.

    hey! maybe a spreadsheet will help me write my term paper!! ahahahahahahahaha….

    have fun in franceland!

  2. Misha on #

    If you ever decide you do want a replacement for MS Project, have a look at OmniPlan. , which is Mac-native.

    I use OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner all the time (OO is particularly good for the shortish speech and essay writing I do for work), and if I needed a project-management tool, I’d try OmniPlan first.

    There are also some good collaborative web-based project management tools from other small companies, but I don’t think that’s what you need, somehow!

  3. Ally on #

    i hate spreadsheets..we had to learn to use them in school, but they are really helpful and “smart”

  4. Candy on #

    wow, never heard of microsoft project. always on the lookout for instruments of procrastination. just got an amazon email saying my order for magic’s child and magic lessons are to be delivered tomorrow! can’t wait! i’ve got a queue of teenagers here in london waiting for me to supply them with the rest of the series! have a nice time in paris, justine

  5. lili on #

    I’ve been writing and planning my next book with Scrivener, which I’m loving. It’s designed for Book Writers, and organises your book into chapters, lets you view all your chapters as note-cards on a cork board, has an ‘outline’ option where you can track themes or characters through each chapter, and work in ‘full screen’ mode, where you don’t get distracted by the clock, or your email, or the word-count.

    so far, i love it.

  6. Robert Legault on #

    I think a spreadsheet is a perfectly good idea. Copy editors don’t usually use them, but we do sometimes construct a kind of primitive version of one to keep track of things. Somebody has to, so the reader won’t say, Hey, it’s two days later, and the full moon is now a tiny crescent…

  7. Ally on #

    wait, yall must be talking about another kind of spreadsheet b/c the one i’m talking about is the microsoft office one that u put numbers in the little boxes and it like carries the results all the way down..and a bunch of other stuff

  8. Malcolm on #

    @ally: that’s exactly the same sort of spreadsheet program Justine’s talking about. If you look at the article from last year that she linked to, there’s a screenshot there to prove it.

    There’s no rule to say you can’t put text (or even graphics) in the spreadsheet cells — it doesn’t have to be numbers. You can see from the screenshot that you can use the spreadsheet functions to help with things like adding up word counts from different points of view, etc. So aside from being a really handy “big sheet of paper”, the spreadsheet functions are also useful.

  9. Kathryne on #

    I love my spreadsheet. Oh, how I love my spreadsheet. I update it every day as I’m starting work–sort of like wading into the WIP, rather than jumping in all at once by actually opening my manuscript straight off. I track which plotlines are covered in each chapter, so when I get stuck I can look back and realize “oh, hey, that whole set of characters hasn’t been heard from in a while.” And in those wonderful moments when the whole thing starts to click and an entire storyline explains itself to me as I’m typing, I can quickly jot down on the spreadhseet what should happen when.

    I also carry a notebook for those moments when a spreadsheet would be unwieldy, but it’s kind of a mess, impossible to know exactly where I noted any given idea (“did I have that thought last week, or three months ago?”) and often hard to read. Ergo, I love my spreadsheet.

  10. hwalk on #

    i mostly keep everything in my head or on scraps of paper and random documents when i need them. i am totally unscientific about the way i write novels–i don’t know what day it is or how much time passes exactly. i just sort of go with the flow and say that i’ll edit out errors later.

    i wouldn’t use a spreadsheet–basically because i wouldn’t keep it organized and it would confuse me. but it would be a good idea for a lot of people.

  11. David Cake on #

    Ah, someone already beat me to recommending OmniPlan as a substitute for Project.

  12. Ally on #

    oohhhh i see now..thanks malcolm!

  13. maureen on #

    I cannot think of the spreadsheets now. New York mourns because you are gone. Herds of chocolate-bearing unicorns have entered the streets. Everyone is wearing ugly shoes, and no one can say the name of Elvis. English cricket fans are drinking all of the good wine. The New York Liberty cannot find the will to play.

    Come back and save us as soon as you can! Bring zombies!

  14. liliya on #

    When my russian colleagues at work say ‘spreadsheet’ their accent makes it sound like ‘spread shit’. makes me laugh every time, I’m sorry to say. Spreading shit as a metaphor for novel writing (it’s the only way to encourage your crops to grow)…

  15. Steve Bcuhheit on #

    There was a rush of spreadsheet articles last year, yours included. And when I read them all it was a Homer Simpson revelation moment (smacks forehead, “D’oh! Spreadheets!”)

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