Im thinking of buying a small book which i can write ideas/thoughts/discussions/interesting facts into. I find on a day to day basis i have alot of strange thoughts and ideas which could have maybe been something but then i forget parts of it and have to rethink. Ill probably use it as an organiser aswell. Its kinda like a diary but more practical. Does anyone else do that? any segestions on how to organise the book? because, im a really deep person...(j/k)

I'd recomend keeping the organiser in a seperate notebook, not just another section of a notebook. This will prevent having to flip back and forth between your ideas and orginizing your project. Also if your doing anything with specfic dates, times get a real orginizer. Well worth it.

Keeping an idea book is an excellent idea. There have been many times I've come up with something, and told myself, "Ah, I'll remember that, no need to write it down." Needless to say, I forgot :(

If you are familiar with mind mapping, that might be an excellent way to jot down your ideas. Mind mapping allows you to write down words or pictures without following any type of format.

Dedicate a notebook just for your ideas.

Wiki Mind Map

I usually sketch my thoughts (which often results in pretty chaotic slices of paper) and when I think I've got something interesting, I draw more specific concepts and usually write something about it on a private forum, to discuss with some friends. That forum is sort of my idea 'book', and I store the sketches in a big map (I scan and upload some, too).

Some organizing might be fine, but since a lot of these idea's are pretty vague I would only reserve space for more solid idea's and stuff the rest together. However, now that I think of it, doing it electronically is much easier to keep track of as it's immediatly sorted by date... :)

Highly recomend the idea book. I have been keeping a journal for several years, and it is surprising how often a game idea sneaks in when I am writing about family problems.

The one thing to watch out for is that you don't spend so much time writing down game ideas that you don't leave yourself any time to write games.

I have a private wiki on my main home computer than I use for recording ideas, and find that I'll usually remember any decent ideas long enough for them to be added. If I know I'll be away from the computer for longer than a day I normally carry a small notepad with me, but because I use the wiki no organisation system is required - the notepad will never get that much material.

I'd second the idea of keeping the organiser in a seperate book.

Heh, I do that but inside a notebook that I use for school. My good ol sketch book. Even got around to writing a 90 page story cause of doing this. Damn high school must have been boring, I wasn't paying attention.

Years ago, I used to have a book(s) that I'd write ideas in. These days I tend to just email the basic idea to myself and flesh it out later at home.

Quote:

Original post by Kazgoroth I have a private wiki on my main home computer than I use for recording ideas, and find that I'll usually remember any decent ideas long enough for them to be added. If I know I'll be away from the computer for longer than a day I normally carry a small notepad with me, but because I use the wiki no organisation system is required - the notepad will never get that much material. I'd second the idea of keeping the organiser in a seperate book.

Interesting. How could I go about setting that up, myself?

Quote:

Original post by Benjamin Heath Quote: Original post by Kazgoroth I have a private wiki on my main home computer than I use for recording ideas [...] Interesting. How could I go about setting that up, myself?

You need to have some kind of webserver running (not neccesarily open to the internet, and you can just fire it up when required if you like) to host it on, and you need to make sure it supports everything required for the wiki system in question.

I do some web development anyway, so I already had Apache running with PHP and MySQL, but if you'd like to set these up quickly and don't already have them (or some alternative) you could try phpdev to quickly get apache, php and MySQL running on a win32 machine. I use the MediaWiki package and havn't had any difficulties. There are other wiki packages out there, and other setups you can run it on (IIS/Access/OpenWiki for one), but I'll leave it up to you to look around if you want to check out other options.

It's certainly not for everyone, but I've found it to be pretty effective, and as an added bonus I can make the wiki publically accesible when the need arises when working with a team.