Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I look at a couple of methods of storing information to be used in fiction writing: mediawiki software and good old HTML.

Writing a large piece of fiction, like a novel, can be messy. How do you keep track of characters, places, dates, and all that stuff?

The answer for many writers is that you don’t keep track of all that stuff. That stuff isn’t important. That is all about organization and novel writers don’t need to be stifled by organization.

Well, I need to be organized. It is part of my temperament.

My favorite way to keep all this unstructured information is in a wiki using mediawiki software. The information is:

• easy to enter
• easy to search

But, and there must be a but, mediawiki software is:

• hard to install
• hard to move the information from machine to machine

To install, I must first install that MAMP or WAMP software to have a server or something like a server running on my computer. I don’t like that. And then there is moving the information from machine to machine. I still can’t find the ASCII information on the disk drive. I am told that the information is in a SQL database somewhere. Where? Someone find it for me, please!

Another method to enter unstructured data and link it all together is through good old HTML (no links for that because, well because). HTML is:

• easy to enter
• easy to install (you don’t install it)
• easy to move the files from machine to machine

But, yes, there is a but here as well, HTML is:

• hard to search

Yes, I can use Windows and OS X tools to search files, but that is messy.

I wonder if I can run mediawiki and keep the information on DropBox or some cloud service like that? If anyone knows how to do that, I would appreciate the information.