Otherworld Ink

Stories don’t usually arrive fully-formed. Often, they come as fragments, disconnected scenes, anonymous conversations… Or perhaps you have a more fleshed-out idea, but it’s missing something crucial. You know, like a place name or a dirty joke or even a whole protagonist.

This is why you need an Idea Bank.

What’s an Idea Bank?

An Idea Bank – much like a real bank – is where you deposit your valuables for safekeeping. In this case, the valuables in question are promising story fragments and inspiration. When an idea comes to you, bright and shiny and incomplete, you stash it in your Idea Bank for a rainy day.

Later when you’re looking for inspiration for your next project or when you need something special to add to your current one, you can sift through your Idea Bank for something fitting. Some fragments may sit for years before finding their purpose, but that’s alright. The point is that they’re available when needed.

If this all sounds like a good idea, you may be wondering…

How to Make One

Any writing software can serve as a good Idea Bank, as long as you’re comfortable using it, but some are more suited than others. I’ll cover a few options briefly, but by no means should you feel constrained to these.

Microsoft Word (or similar freeware)

Whether you use Microsoft Word proper or one of the many freeware options (such as Libre Office), this choice can be tempting out of sheer familiarity. After all, if Word is good enough for resumes and school assignment, why not as an idea cache?

There are a few reasons for hesitation. First of all, there’s no way to organize your ideas into easily navigable sections. Yes, you can use page breaks and create headers, but how helpful will that be when you’ve got fifty pages to scroll through? Or even more?

There is also a lack of native cloud support. If you want to be able to add or manage ideas on the go, Word can be a bit restrictive. You can get around this by pairing it with a cloud storage service such a Dropbox, but this may not be ideal for someone who wants a one-stop solution.

Scrivener

This is the program that I’ve historically used for my Idea Bank. It’s a fantastic piece of writing software with tons of features and flexibility. It allows you to create folders and sub-documents within your project, which gives you incredible power over organization.

The most obvious downside is that it’s not free. You’ll have to shell out $59.99 for your own copy of Scrivener (though at least it’s a one-time payment!). If you want to use Scrivener for other writing projects, it may be well worth the cost, but if you’re only looking for something to host your Idea Bank, I wouldn’t recommend it. (Yes, you would also have to pay for Microsoft Word, but there are plenty of free analogs with near-identical functionality. Meanwhile, I’ve yet to find any freeware quite like Scrivener.)

Another thing to consider is the lack of cloud support. As with Word, you’ll need to pick a cloud storage service to house your files if you want them to sync automatically between devices. And don’t count on mobile access with this one. You can buy an additional license to cover iOS devices, but there is currently no Android app.

Google Docs

Ah, Google. They run everything else on the internet, so why not this? Google Docs has a LOT of advantages in this arena. For a start, it’s free and comes with built-in cloud connectivity, meaning that you can access your files from any device anywhere with an internet connection. That’s a lot of advantages right out of the gate.

The place where Google Docs stumbles is organization. You can create internal links within a Google Doc and use headers to auto-populate a side menu, but depending on the length of your document and the number of sections, moving around may still feel a bit cumbersome. You could create multiple Google Docs within one folder, but I personally dislike having to switch between multiple documents to find something.

Notion

Notion is a note-taking application with a crazy amount of features and tons of versatility. You can create customizable pages featuring text, lists, tables, images, etc. You can squish everything into one page with toggles or create multiple pages that all link to each other. And, as a web-based service, everything is accessible as long as you have an internet connection.

Notion has both free and paid versions, but as long as you’re using it for personal projects, the free version will be all you need. Syncing happens automatically, and you can download your files any time if you’re worried about losing your content to the vagaries of internet hosting.

For me, the biggest downside of using Notion is simply that the Android mobile app has been a bit slow on my phone. Also, it’s just not my favorite way to view text. But these are very small personal gripes, and you may find that Notion or a similar note-taking app is perfect for hosting your Idea Bank.

All of these options have their pros and cons, and which you choose will come down to your personal preferences, budget, and access. In any case, don’t worry about being wedded to your first choice. You can always switch software whenever you want. It’s more important that you start storing and organizing your ideas today so that they don’t slip away from you!

Of course, the longer you keep your Idea Bank, the larger and more unwieldy it will become. To ensure you can find what you need, you’ll want to get an early start on…

Organization

It’s up to you how many sections – and even, perhaps, sub-sections – you want to divide your Idea Bank into. As a starting point, I’d recommend having sections for:

• character ideas
• dialog snippets
• places and things
• plots and events

You may also want to have sections for names, futuristic technologies, magic systems, unique monsters, or whatever else your brain tends to spawn. You can always add sections, split sections up, or meld them together as needed. Remember: your Idea Bank’s only purpose is to be useful to you!

As time goes on, you may find that not all of the ideas in your Idea Bank really speak to you anymore. Maybe that quote that sounded totally hardcore five years ago just sounds juvenile and silly now. If an idea you once treasured now seems stale or cringe-worthy, don’t feel bad about deleting it. It’s much better to have a small Idea Bank full of things that truly inspire you than to have to wade through pages of trash to find “the good stuff”.

In an Idea Bank, it should all be “the good stuff”!

In Conclusion

I hope I’ve inspired you to set up an Idea Bank of your own and to make good use of it. One of the most common tragedies that writers experience is losing a good idea simply because there was nowhere to write it down. Or, if it was written down, losing that scrap of paper or digital note in the shuffle of life. Having an Idea Bank will give all your unpolished ideas a good place to live until it’s either their time to shine or be willingly let go.