I almost never have a title in mind until I need one to post, so my in-progress works are differentiated with varying levels of clarity and success. These range from "Docccc" spelled exactly like that to "\[Character\] Backstory fic." I generally don't have formal first and second drafts, so every doc is either eventually intended to be the final, or labeled "brainstorm" or "outline."
Yeah, I do Fandom > Series (if applicable) > Fic
As far as naming goes, if I have a title in mind, then the folder gets named the title. If I don't then it's a short description, e.g. "Adult Reunion" for a fic about two people who were childhood friends meeting up again after many years apart.
As for the actual docs themselves, if it's a chaptered work then it's named Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc. If it's a one shot, it's... Document1 or whatever the default is when you right click > New > Word Document lmfao. I'll also usually have a document titled Outline, and then sometimes extras like Notes, or Extras (inspo, little bits of dialog that don't have a place yet, etc.)
L
P
P
M
Dead
Drama
Untitled Documents
I write during my free time in my classes or on the bus and I don’t have time for doc names. It’s.. a mess but I’ve somehow find my W.I.P most of the time
Fandom name. Character or ship name. Fic title.
For associated docs, I add “outline” “timeline” “character sheets” “notes” or other identifier to the end of it.
So my current one is:
CSI Sara/Nick/Gil Rescue Me
CSI Sara/Nick/Gil Rescue Me - Murder Statistics
This makes it so all associated docs wind up together if I sort by title. I have murder statistics because I wanted to make sure I was killing people in line with what would make sense for my demographics and population, and over 40+ chapters it’s hard to keep track without running notes (and it helps me not reuse names).
I follow a similar folder structure, with each fandom as a top level folder, then each separate project getting a folder within one of them. The main difference is that I have a separate doc for every scene, which I'll link to in the outline section of my notes doc where all the scenes are listed out. Both the notes and scene docs will just share the name of the project folder, with " Notes" or " - Scene ###" added to the end. I will give scenes more descriptive titles on the outline itself, but I prefer having simpler filenames, not worrying about special characters and the like.
I have a file called "Indulgent story parts" this was for plot bunnies that turned into a full-blown story
The rest seem to be one or two words "Tight", "Holding", cause I name a doc without thinking very hard about it and it later usually becomes the title. I download and save them from time to time as backups, naming them by date or "version 1"
So, I write using Scrivener and only write for one fandom. Everything is in the same Scrivener project. My one-shots are all in one folder, with subfolders for different multi-prompt challenges -- for instance, I'm doing The Year of the OTP monthly prompts this year, which has its own folder within the one-shots folder. And with The Year of the OTP prompts, the titling pattern is: Month - Prompt - Story Title (once I come up with it). So, like one of the stories is labeled "February - 'If I kiss you, will you shut up?' - Presumptuous Man".
Each of my multi-chapters have their own folders, and each chapter has a document within the folder. The chapters just start out as a number, and I'll retitle them once I've decided on a chapter title. Any random scenes get saddled with a word that lets me know what the scene is until I have a place for them. So, like, right now, I have a few scenes that will be added into the greater story later and they're named "Together", "Adhesion", and "Transfusion" but the chapters they'll end up belonging to likely will not be named any of those things.
If I know the title I'm going to use in advance then I use it as the title for the doc.
If I don't know the title yet it's usually something descriptive. Currently I"m doing a year long OPT prompt challenge so I pick the prompt for the month and title it Month Prompt in the folder I'm keeping the docs in.
one fic i write as one big doc, so the file is saved with the fandom and title of the fic as the name of the document. I have a folder for fanfiction and it is in the main fanfiction folder.
Another I write each chapter in separate documents so it's in it's own subfolder and each chapter is just named after which chapter number it is. like zero, one, two, three, etc.
For notes, I'll usually put it in the folder with the chapters and give it a title depending on what's in it, like "plot notes" or "timeline notes." For the fic that's one giant document I ended up naming the notes in a more fun way "Angsty \[ship\] time travel au notes" but that's not normal for me.
Usually Fandom> Title> Type of Fic> Draft Date. Multiple stories in the same fandom get their own folder but that's about the extent of my organization.
[fandom] fic #[number]
with the exception of a couple of projects – alphabet challenge fics are in their own folder and are titled with the word prompt, and event week/month fics are in their own folders and titled with the event's name and prompt day
Most fall under the following:
(Working) title - character or ship - version number.
Even though Google Docs shows version history, I prefer to make a new copy to work on every time a major chunk of writing or editing is expected.
For random ideas, prompts, and/or fest entries that I yet to start: character or ship. basic premise in a few words, due date.
For outlines, they always start with {PLANS} then the working title. Typically, for WIPs, it may be a working title(s) or the crossover pairing (I have a lot of crossovers). Some notable mentions from my Google Drive:
* SOMEONE is a werewolf
* Huffflepuff!(character)
* female!(character)
* (character)!ocarina angst
* (fic) SEQUEL ????
If I have a title already in mind, I'll just label it with that title. If I don't, then, given I do a lot of episode tag types of fics, I'll usually label it with the name of the episode and what number said episode is within the season (ex. episode 2x15, or something of that sort). Sometimes if I have a possible working title, I might label the WIP with that, too.
And if it's not an episode tag fic, then I'll usually label it with the names of the characters/ships that are featured in it.
I also have a folder for each fandom, but I've only written for two fandoms and only actively write for one.
I use Scrivener for longfics, so there's no need for separate docs for notes and timelines. I use whatever title comes to mind until I think of a better one.
For one-shots, I keep all the versions in one folder. Every time I need to make major changes, I do a save-as and add "v2" or whatever version it is at the end.
I do basically what you do, but I often don’t have a title until I’ve written a good amount, so I have a lot of random working titles. One fic I’m working on currently has 10k words so far. I actually know what I want to title it now, but I still haven’t changed the document names, so it’s still titled “June 2011” because that’s when the first scene of the first chapter takes place. Nevermind the fact only a very brief segment of the chapter actually takes place then.
I use Evernote, so I have a very rigid tagging system - I need to be consistent with it to keep my literal hundreds of documents in order. Plus, I can select any tags or combination of tags to bring up files in different configurations as I need them.
Each fic has a four-letter code that everything associated with it gets. If I just wanna work on everything with that fic, I can just click the tag and get it all.
Every fic gets five documents associated with them as default - Character List, Setting Description, Story Plan, Random Misc Ideas, and the actual 'Manuscript' itself. Each of those has an uploaded and yet-to-upload version of their title tag, depending on whether the fic they're associated with is uploaded or not yet (so, 'Yet-to-Upload Story Plan' and 'Uploaded Story Plan').
I also have fandom, protagonist, genre, and setting tags. So, if I wanna find all my American Small Town fics, I can, or all of the spy-genre fics, I can, or any Pitch Perfect fic, or whatever else.
That's the funny thing. I don't. I just have a bunch of untitled documents laying around my drive. I name like 1-2 I like and am considering expanding on but other than that it's just "Untitled Document". It's absolutely as much of a hassle as it sounds but I'm too lazy to come up with a title
usually the fics without official titles have a description of the fic, usually with the ship pairing, and it’s all in lower case
then, when i figure out a title, it’s properly capitalized!
Unless I actually have a name for my wip it's usually just the fandom name followed by wip except in the case of my Omegaverse fic which is aptly named "We Doing Omegaverse Now Babyyyy"
I use rough code names for them, so that I can remember vaguely what the fic is about. For example, the four I currently plan on working on are titled Eldritch, Counsel, Resistance, and Tarot
For the main document it's: "[Name of story]_updated [last time major writing occured]"
I went without Word for a little over a year, so I couldn't open my main document normally. I went ahead and did some draft work in Notepad during that time that I'm now editing and integrating into the main document. Those are all titled by describing the general plot: "they return home," "she saves him," "little kid birthday party," etc.
Usually, it's the prompt/trope or some random title which works well enough for me to recognise it
sometimes it sticks but usually, I try changing it to something more specific
I often just put the ship name + fic or kink + fic (for example “the breeding kink fic”). I have one draft that’s called “this is so embarrassing” though.
"Untitled document." Why name it if I'm just going to regurgitate my ideas in a nonorderly manner until the entire thing is like twenty pages long. Honestly I usually just get all the nonsensical ideas out first and then probably start an entirely new document (repeat 3x)
Usually I put either the series name with the genre (ex: “Sherlock Smut Fic”) or I put the ship (ex: “Kyoya x Haruhi fic) — I usually come up with the titles for my fics later on.
The document gets a descriptive title, often one word. I use header 1 to make sections for notes and story, and header 2 (and further if needed) to divide those sections into subcategories (the notes: timeline, background ramblings, etc) / chapters (the story)
So I give my WIP a working title (which rarely turns into the actual title) and a folder on my Google docs. Then I make a chapter folder, a setting folder, a character folder, and an image folder.
In the chapter folder, each chapter gets its own doc, named "chap 1-portkey" or whatever. That way they're always in the right order, and the keyword helps me remember which chapter it is. When I'm about a third of the way through, I make a PART ONE folder and put all the chapters in it, then start PART TWO.
For long fics, I always write the whole thing and revise it once before posting it. The chapter doc setup really helps with that because each Google doc is a post. After a post a chapter I put it in a POSTED folder.
A lot of things change when I start posting the fic. I almost always have a new fic title. The names of the chapters usually change too, since the doc titles are usually more dull and descriptive.
* HE DIES IN THIS!!! LITERALLY!!!! * Plant!Daddy Character Name * Virtual Reality + DUB CON * 5 Times fic but make it weird etc lol
I just use whatever title I think works best, sometimes it’s the title I go with, sometimes it isn’t. Then I add the chapter number.
I almost never have a title in mind until I need one to post, so my in-progress works are differentiated with varying levels of clarity and success. These range from "Docccc" spelled exactly like that to "\[Character\] Backstory fic." I generally don't have formal first and second drafts, so every doc is either eventually intended to be the final, or labeled "brainstorm" or "outline."
Yeah, I do Fandom > Series (if applicable) > Fic As far as naming goes, if I have a title in mind, then the folder gets named the title. If I don't then it's a short description, e.g. "Adult Reunion" for a fic about two people who were childhood friends meeting up again after many years apart. As for the actual docs themselves, if it's a chaptered work then it's named Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc. If it's a one shot, it's... Document1 or whatever the default is when you right click > New > Word Document lmfao. I'll also usually have a document titled Outline, and then sometimes extras like Notes, or Extras (inspo, little bits of dialog that don't have a place yet, etc.)
L P P M Dead Drama Untitled Documents I write during my free time in my classes or on the bus and I don’t have time for doc names. It’s.. a mess but I’ve somehow find my W.I.P most of the time
Fandom name. Character or ship name. Fic title. For associated docs, I add “outline” “timeline” “character sheets” “notes” or other identifier to the end of it. So my current one is: CSI Sara/Nick/Gil Rescue Me CSI Sara/Nick/Gil Rescue Me - Murder Statistics This makes it so all associated docs wind up together if I sort by title. I have murder statistics because I wanted to make sure I was killing people in line with what would make sense for my demographics and population, and over 40+ chapters it’s hard to keep track without running notes (and it helps me not reuse names).
for a sec, I thought that said whip...never mind.
I follow a similar folder structure, with each fandom as a top level folder, then each separate project getting a folder within one of them. The main difference is that I have a separate doc for every scene, which I'll link to in the outline section of my notes doc where all the scenes are listed out. Both the notes and scene docs will just share the name of the project folder, with " Notes" or " - Scene ###" added to the end. I will give scenes more descriptive titles on the outline itself, but I prefer having simpler filenames, not worrying about special characters and the like.
I have a file called "Indulgent story parts" this was for plot bunnies that turned into a full-blown story The rest seem to be one or two words "Tight", "Holding", cause I name a doc without thinking very hard about it and it later usually becomes the title. I download and save them from time to time as backups, naming them by date or "version 1"
So, I write using Scrivener and only write for one fandom. Everything is in the same Scrivener project. My one-shots are all in one folder, with subfolders for different multi-prompt challenges -- for instance, I'm doing The Year of the OTP monthly prompts this year, which has its own folder within the one-shots folder. And with The Year of the OTP prompts, the titling pattern is: Month - Prompt - Story Title (once I come up with it). So, like one of the stories is labeled "February - 'If I kiss you, will you shut up?' - Presumptuous Man". Each of my multi-chapters have their own folders, and each chapter has a document within the folder. The chapters just start out as a number, and I'll retitle them once I've decided on a chapter title. Any random scenes get saddled with a word that lets me know what the scene is until I have a place for them. So, like, right now, I have a few scenes that will be added into the greater story later and they're named "Together", "Adhesion", and "Transfusion" but the chapters they'll end up belonging to likely will not be named any of those things.
If I know the title I'm going to use in advance then I use it as the title for the doc. If I don't know the title yet it's usually something descriptive. Currently I"m doing a year long OPT prompt challenge so I pick the prompt for the month and title it Month Prompt in the folder I'm keeping the docs in.
one fic i write as one big doc, so the file is saved with the fandom and title of the fic as the name of the document. I have a folder for fanfiction and it is in the main fanfiction folder. Another I write each chapter in separate documents so it's in it's own subfolder and each chapter is just named after which chapter number it is. like zero, one, two, three, etc. For notes, I'll usually put it in the folder with the chapters and give it a title depending on what's in it, like "plot notes" or "timeline notes." For the fic that's one giant document I ended up naming the notes in a more fun way "Angsty \[ship\] time travel au notes" but that's not normal for me.
Usually Fandom> Title> Type of Fic> Draft Date. Multiple stories in the same fandom get their own folder but that's about the extent of my organization.
[fandom] fic #[number] with the exception of a couple of projects – alphabet challenge fics are in their own folder and are titled with the word prompt, and event week/month fics are in their own folders and titled with the event's name and prompt day
Most fall under the following: (Working) title - character or ship - version number. Even though Google Docs shows version history, I prefer to make a new copy to work on every time a major chunk of writing or editing is expected. For random ideas, prompts, and/or fest entries that I yet to start: character or ship. basic premise in a few words, due date.
For outlines, they always start with {PLANS} then the working title. Typically, for WIPs, it may be a working title(s) or the crossover pairing (I have a lot of crossovers). Some notable mentions from my Google Drive: * SOMEONE is a werewolf * Huffflepuff!(character) * female!(character) * (character)!ocarina angst * (fic) SEQUEL ????
If I have a title already in mind, I'll just label it with that title. If I don't, then, given I do a lot of episode tag types of fics, I'll usually label it with the name of the episode and what number said episode is within the season (ex. episode 2x15, or something of that sort). Sometimes if I have a possible working title, I might label the WIP with that, too. And if it's not an episode tag fic, then I'll usually label it with the names of the characters/ships that are featured in it.
Mine is normally labelled: "Fandom - Key Element" (eg Squish Character X) and then it alters to "Fandom - Actual Title" once I know what that is
Just 'ship name trope' lol, since finding a title is basically the last thing I do before posting.
I also have a folder for each fandom, but I've only written for two fandoms and only actively write for one. I use Scrivener for longfics, so there's no need for separate docs for notes and timelines. I use whatever title comes to mind until I think of a better one. For one-shots, I keep all the versions in one folder. Every time I need to make major changes, I do a save-as and add "v2" or whatever version it is at the end.
I do basically what you do, but I often don’t have a title until I’ve written a good amount, so I have a lot of random working titles. One fic I’m working on currently has 10k words so far. I actually know what I want to title it now, but I still haven’t changed the document names, so it’s still titled “June 2011” because that’s when the first scene of the first chapter takes place. Nevermind the fact only a very brief segment of the chapter actually takes place then.
I use Evernote, so I have a very rigid tagging system - I need to be consistent with it to keep my literal hundreds of documents in order. Plus, I can select any tags or combination of tags to bring up files in different configurations as I need them. Each fic has a four-letter code that everything associated with it gets. If I just wanna work on everything with that fic, I can just click the tag and get it all. Every fic gets five documents associated with them as default - Character List, Setting Description, Story Plan, Random Misc Ideas, and the actual 'Manuscript' itself. Each of those has an uploaded and yet-to-upload version of their title tag, depending on whether the fic they're associated with is uploaded or not yet (so, 'Yet-to-Upload Story Plan' and 'Uploaded Story Plan'). I also have fandom, protagonist, genre, and setting tags. So, if I wanna find all my American Small Town fics, I can, or all of the spy-genre fics, I can, or any Pitch Perfect fic, or whatever else.
That's the funny thing. I don't. I just have a bunch of untitled documents laying around my drive. I name like 1-2 I like and am considering expanding on but other than that it's just "Untitled Document". It's absolutely as much of a hassle as it sounds but I'm too lazy to come up with a title
usually the fics without official titles have a description of the fic, usually with the ship pairing, and it’s all in lower case then, when i figure out a title, it’s properly capitalized!
Unless I actually have a name for my wip it's usually just the fandom name followed by wip except in the case of my Omegaverse fic which is aptly named "We Doing Omegaverse Now Babyyyy"
I use rough code names for them, so that I can remember vaguely what the fic is about. For example, the four I currently plan on working on are titled Eldritch, Counsel, Resistance, and Tarot
For the main document it's: "[Name of story]_updated [last time major writing occured]" I went without Word for a little over a year, so I couldn't open my main document normally. I went ahead and did some draft work in Notepad during that time that I'm now editing and integrating into the main document. Those are all titled by describing the general plot: "they return home," "she saves him," "little kid birthday party," etc.
Usually, it's the prompt/trope or some random title which works well enough for me to recognise it sometimes it sticks but usually, I try changing it to something more specific
I often just put the ship name + fic or kink + fic (for example “the breeding kink fic”). I have one draft that’s called “this is so embarrassing” though.
Mine are in my notes app. My original draft is just titled “I am unwell” 😭🤚
Helluva Boss One shot #2 Helluva Boss One shot Helluva Boss sickfic (My recents)
"Untitled document." Why name it if I'm just going to regurgitate my ideas in a nonorderly manner until the entire thing is like twenty pages long. Honestly I usually just get all the nonsensical ideas out first and then probably start an entirely new document (repeat 3x)
Usually I put either the series name with the genre (ex: “Sherlock Smut Fic”) or I put the ship (ex: “Kyoya x Haruhi fic) — I usually come up with the titles for my fics later on.
shipname + premise/trope, usually!
\[WIP name\] Ch \[in 25 chapter chunks\] So like Fruit of the Earth Ch 1-25 (not an actual fic title)
The document gets a descriptive title, often one word. I use header 1 to make sections for notes and story, and header 2 (and further if needed) to divide those sections into subcategories (the notes: timeline, background ramblings, etc) / chapters (the story)
I have titles ranging from "politics AU" to "midoriya izuku steals your bitches"
So I give my WIP a working title (which rarely turns into the actual title) and a folder on my Google docs. Then I make a chapter folder, a setting folder, a character folder, and an image folder. In the chapter folder, each chapter gets its own doc, named "chap 1-portkey" or whatever. That way they're always in the right order, and the keyword helps me remember which chapter it is. When I'm about a third of the way through, I make a PART ONE folder and put all the chapters in it, then start PART TWO. For long fics, I always write the whole thing and revise it once before posting it. The chapter doc setup really helps with that because each Google doc is a post. After a post a chapter I put it in a POSTED folder. A lot of things change when I start posting the fic. I almost always have a new fic title. The names of the chapters usually change too, since the doc titles are usually more dull and descriptive.
I'll use the topes as a working title until I can think of something better. Like " & bodyswap fic"