Organize Your Research with Notes at One Stop for Writers

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From Writers Helping Writers:

Before I started using One Stop for Writers, I purchased The Emotion Thesaurus on Amazon, then The Positive Trait Thesaurus, and so on. After starting to use One Stop for Writers I fell in love with having all the thesauruses available to use online, but I ran into a problem: often, more than one entry applied to what I was working on, and in a given entry, only a few lines might apply. I ended up with multiple books lying open and half a dozen browser tabs open as I frantically flipped back and forth between all of them looking for the crucial details I knew were there. Little did I know that One Stop for Writers has a solution for this. It’s called Notes.

The Notes Feature at One Stop for Writers

When I first saw this feature, I thought it was just a place for me to add my thoughts to an existing entry. And this is possible; if you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for in a thesaurus entry, just scroll to the bottom and create a note for that entry that can be kept in your workspace. I also knew that I could highlight the details that I wanted to use from an entry and save it to a note (so I wouldn’t have to go back through the whole entry later to find it). 

What I didn’t know was that I could use a note to collect information from multiple thesaurus entries and save it to a specific project. This changed everything. Here’s how it works:

Collecting Info from Various Sources into One Note

Let’s say you’re doing some setting research. My current book contains a scene set in Highgate Cemetery in London, so let’s start there. First, head to the Setting Thesaurus and locate the graveyard entry. 

When you find multisensory details that might work, highlight the line(s). A pop-up appears that says “Send to Notes.” 

. . . .

You’ll be prompted to create a new note for the highlighted details or add it to an existing note in your workspace. Then you can choose to save the note loosely in your workspace or add it to a project. The latter is a great way to keep all your research and materials for a story in one spot.

Link to the rest at Writers Helping Writers

As a sheltered recluse mired in the legal profession, PG had not heard of One Stop for Writers.

Is there any experience with this tool among the visitors to TPV?

1 thought on “Organize Your Research with Notes at One Stop for Writers”

  1. This sounds like a substitute for the essential combination of research and imagination that most writers use. I mean Highgate Cemetery is not a generic cemetery that you can define by means of some ‘graveyard atmos’. But it does help to explain some of the howlers I’ve encountered when reading!

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