Fanfic organization tips?

[asperityq.livejournal.com]

Who's got some good tips on keeping track of all that fic? I'm putting most of it in Calibre what with using that for converting it and making my ebook reader do my bidding, but it's too much trouble for shorter fic.

And then there's the problem of wanting to keep track of fic I didn't like all that much. :/ I don't have any great need to save it, but the rating feature in Calibre's reasonably convenient once I've already gone to the trouble of adding it.

Anyway, I'm sure y'all have some ideas! Do you use Delicious, maybe? And if so, what's the most hassle-free way to do it? Thanks for the help!

Comments

Re: Organizing and tracking

[geyer-fb.livejournal.com]

I meant to say in my previous post that if you'd like a list of more of my column one groupings, which would probably be of interest only if you read a lot of Stargate fanfic with an emphasis on Jack and Daniel, I could probably pull one out fairly easily. I tend to add categories as they catch my interest or when someone posts a fic search that I realize I can answer and might want to keep track of in the future. That's where all the "Daniel leaves" headings came from.

Re: Organizing and tracking

[dj-aida.livejournal.com]

All of this is fantastic, thank you so much! I'm actually creating my spreadsheet right now, as I'm typing this. I will most likely have to add another column to the crossover sheet - AUs. My fandom has hundreds of them, in various genres, both open and closed. So, I'll have column one for AUs - whether it's the original OW universe, ATF, Trek etc, and column two for crossovers (say, ATF AU, crossover with e.g. White Collar).

I just wanted to clarify what you meant by saying "Below the main entries". Does this mean that this goes below the table? If not, where would this section be placed?

Re: Organizing and tracking

[geyer-fb.livejournal.com]

I tweak the layout pretty often. When I first posted, I had all the family stuff on the third sheet. Since then, I've decided it makes more sense to have the family headings on sheet one, with the characters. Currently, the main entries for each character I track are all entered in alphabetical order on sheet one, with all their individual headings. To use Daniel Jackson as an example, under his name I have all the headings I described above, e.g. "Daniel leaves Earth," and at the end of Daniel's section is "Daniel's family", where I have all entries pertaining to Daniel's parents, Daniel's children, Daniel's foster families, etc. Then on to the next character alphabetically.

After all the characters, on the same sheet, which is what I meant by "below the main entries," I now have all the "real family" headings, grouped by biological relationship--real father, real mother, etc. These tend to be crossovers, and it made sense to just put those in alphabetical order by the name of the real father or whatever. So "Chris Larabee is Xander's father" is separated from "Ezra Standish is Xander's father" by all the entries for Daniel Jackson, Eliot Stabler, and Evan Lorne being someone's real father. On sheet three, currently the crossover page, where the BtVS/Mag7 ATF crossovers are listed together, the family relationship is mentioned in the notes for a particular story. Since I've read only a handful of ATF stories, I'm not tracking those characters individually on sheet one, except in the "real family" section when they pop up in crossovers.

This does mean some duplication, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. "Daniel is Blair's father" entries can be found both under the "Daniel's children" heading and under the "real father" heading.

I started my spreadsheet after my interest moved from BtVS to Stargate, but I've found myself adding in other fandoms due to crossovers. That's partly why I gave up my original Word document of story summaries for a spreadsheet--I can just start new sheets if I start reading heavily in another fandom.