Experiments in Novel writing with WhizFolders

“It’s perfect. It’s very close to Info Recall with some very nice added functionality. One of the ways I used the other program, which I’ll now do here, is to keep notes on characters in a complex novel. For example, I created the MicroTech Inc. and used it in various chapters. Each time I mentioned a new peripheral character, like a security guard, I’d go to the MicroTech Employees topic, and list that character name, and where s/he appeared. These characters didn’t need a profile, but it’s nice to know that in Chapter 20, when I refer to the security guard again, I know his name. :-)”

“Another example is that my characters either smoke or don’t, or they drink tea or coffee. I have a Coffee & Cigarettes topic, and list each character there by their preferences. Then I put a JumpLink to that topic in each character’s bio. It’s a quick way to know what they drink in the morning, instead of having to wander through a whole profile. After all, they pick each other up spontaneously, and spend the night. This gives me a way to stay consistent without having to lose my train of thought in the midst of a chapter.”

“Finally, I use Jump Links to connect up related characters, rather than having to make long references to family trees, character profiles, and so forth. “Mike” is married to “Kate” and each has their own profiles. The link feature is perfect for joining them, then their kids, and so forth. I can have the McCaffery family as a Topic, but all it contains is named links to each individual family member. Then that topic is the profile, with further links to other relatives and their profiles.”

“I’d suppose that WhizFolders could easily step in as a way to keep track of extended families. :-)”

— Craig Landes

Helping a child master spellings

(applicable to other types of information too)

This post will also give you an idea on how you can use the list coloring and drag & drop features to revise and remember any set of information.

Recently, I had to teach spellings of about 50 words to my child. I used a WhizFolder document for this purpose. Here was the general approach.

  • I first went through the list and found out the words that the child already knew. I added them first, each as a topic name.
  • Then, I took one of the remaining words and taught the child how to break the word into several parts and spell each part. I added each such word to the topic list and colored the topic name “yellow.” I added a note at the top that “yellow” topics were those that the child didn’t know but had had a briefing on.
  • Next day, we revised the yellow words to see how well she got them. I marked the ones that she still had difficulty with in “green” color. To each word’s (topic’s) text, I also added a note on what the difficulty was.
  • This way, each successive day, I could use a different color scheme to narrow down the words till she mastered them all.
  • I also made notes inside the topics themselves on which part of the spelling the child had a difficulty with. Getting her to first remember the mistake before trying next time helped a lot.

Hence, the coloring scheme of WhizFolders can be used to filter or screen any such list of things. Of course, you could do this in a word processor too. But, the advantage here in the topic list is that you could easily drag or move around the words in a “Done” section or a “Difficult” section of the topic list and adding notes or subnotes to an item becomes very easy. You only see as much detail as necessary.

Using OLE features

A new feature now offers the option of inserting an embedded object, rather than an external Jumpfile link. This is done by holding down the Ctrl key when dragging and dropping a file name on the topic editor. A dialog appears allowing you to select the OLE object options. I will describe this dialog in another post. But for the following discussion, assume that I selected “Create from file” and “Link” on the dialog. This way the file stays outside, available to others but its contents are shown by WhizFolders topic viewer or editor.

An OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) object is different from a jumpfile link, in that WhizFolder shows the actual content of the file directly within the topic viewing area. For example, when you drag an MS Word file name (e.g., myfile.doc) from the Explorer to a WhizFolders topic area, the default is to insert a link to that file. Now, holding the Ctrl key during the same operation inserts a representation of the actual content of “myfile.doc” directly into the topic. In this situation, you would have only WhizFolders open, and not the file’s application.

WhizFolders can hold an embedded link, such as this, in the topic area, allowing the underlying and actual file to be modified separately. For example, you might place an embedded object into a topic called “This Year’s Budget.” The object refers to an actual Excel spreadsheet called “thisyear.xls.” Using WhizFolders, you would click on the topic, and the viewing area would show the actual numbers in the spreadsheet. On the other hand, you (or someone else) can open Excel separately, without having WhizFolder open, and make changes to the spreadsheet. Those changes will then be automatically reflected in the WhizFolders topic, the next time you view the “This Year’s Budget” topic.

With this feature you can use WhizFolders as a consolidated “viewer” for many types of different files, gathering them together into an organized project. At the same time, you can create, edit, and format, additional topics within WhizFolders itself. One topic might be text you create directly, whereas another topic might contain a jump link to a Web site. Yet another topic might be a link to a file located on your hard drive (or on a network drive), while a different topic might use an embedded object to show an existing graphic, spreadsheet, document, or other file. Any change to the actual file outside of WhizFolders, is then automatically reflected with the updated information the next time you click on the topic within WhizFolders.

On the basis of a note sent by Craig Landes

List of Bible Books

Here is an interesting file containing a list of Bible books. You can add more topics to this and modify it for your own use. For instance, if you are studying these books, you can add subtopics and start writing your notes on a book.

Download bible.wzfolder (49,074 bytes). After downloading, just open it in WhizFolders Organizer Pro.

Many thanks to Jay Winter for contributing this. I have slightly modified the index using Tables formatted with Microsoft Word.

“I use the program to track contacts, research materials, to-do lists, and its usefulness to me is growing.”

“I am also using the program at work to track all incoming phone calls in a service related environment. Works great at that and for many other things. It’s a super program saving tons of time and allowing my to keep lots of random notes linked together.”

–Jay Winter

Where does WhizFolders keep my notes?

Avoid this common misconception. WhizFolders does not keep your notes in some mysterious database hidden away like Outlook does.

You always get a choice to select a file name and a location whenever you create a new WhizFolder file–a sort of notebook for your notes. And you can have many WhizFolder files in many locations.

The List of Files that you see in WhizFolders is just a list and not a database of your notes. It merely lists your files in the recently used order so that you can open them easily from there.

You must understand that all these WhizFolder files are in your file system and have the file type or extension as .wzfolder. Just open Windows File Manager and see Documents folder to look for those files, unless you created them in some other folder. You can even open them from the File Manager by double-clicking on them.

Also see: What are WhizFolder files.