Reflexive outlining with several outliners

Posted by Dr Andus
Oct 19, 2011 at 07:02 PM

Dr Andus wrote:

>As I’m constructing an outline from
>scratch, there is nothing to import or export for me. I’m using simple copy and paste
>between Scrivener, Bonsai and Storybook back and forth to build my outline
>incrementally and keep them up-to-date. I’m focused on maximising creativity right
>now, and I’m finding that creativity is helped by being able to distill the messy
>planning process in Scrivener into a distilled logical outline in Bonsai and a big
>picture outline in Storybook.
> The point I’m trying to make about “reflexivity” is that as I change one outline in one software, the other two become out of sync, and so as I try to manually update the other two, I realise I can further improve the outline in the other software given its different visualisation, so then I have to return to the first software and update that one and the third one. And for some reason this really seems to work, I’ve never been this productive with writing before. So creativity seems to emerge from the minor disparities between the three outlines, as I keep tinkering and trying to keep them identical. So maybe it’s “recursivity,” rather than “reflexivity.”