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The Novel Writing Organizer Notion template, home page on a laptop
The Novel Writing Organizer home page with Capture, The book, and The draft, on a tablet
The full Novel Writing Organizer home page, with scenes, the current round, and status
The Novel Writing Organizer open on a laptop and a phone
The Novel Writing Organizer user guide, included with the template
The Novel Writing Organizer on a laptop resting on an armchair
The Novel Writing Organizer: scenes, rounds, door notes
What The Novel Writing Organizer includes: the Notion template and the 31-page user guide
What's inside The Novel Writing Organizer
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The Novel Writing Organizer

A novel in progress asks you to carry more than anyone can keep track of: who everyone is, where things happen, what the book has promised its reader, which fact you changed in chapter six, and where you stopped on Tuesday. The Novel Writing Organizer keeps all of it in one Notion workspace, while the manuscript stays wherever you already write it. Scenes sit at the center, and characters, places, beats, promises, research, notes, Story Bible entries, and revision debt all link to the scenes where they matter, so opening one scene shows you everything attached to it.

See the demo: open The Novel Writing Organizer in Notion
A view-only copy of the template with its sample novel in place, so you can click through every database and view before you buy.

The work moves in rounds: stretches of about five weeks, each with a finish line someone else could check, a decision date or two, and an end. At the close of a session you leave a door note, a few lines on where you stopped, what comes next, and what you were unsure of, so the next session can begin without an hour of rereading. Problems you notice mid-draft go into Revision Debt in a line, and you go back to the sentence you were writing. There are no word counts, streaks, or daily targets anywhere in it, and if you step away for a week or a year, the latest door note and the last round's handoff tell you where to pick up.

It suits a novelist at any stage, whether you have three sparks and no premise, a plan you want to test before you draft, or forty thousand words and a growing suspicion that the brother's job changed somewhere around chapter six. Your copy arrives with a sample novel already filled in, about a daughter who inherits her mother's bakery and the loan her mother took out against it, so you can see how the pieces connect before you add a word of your own.

$25.00
Notion template
  • 13 linked databases, 8 guide pages, and a home page that maps the whole workspace
  • Sample novel included, with six scenes and a row in nearly every database; delete it in a few minutes and keep every view
  • Runs on Notion's free plan, with no paid features, automations, or charts
  • Duplicate it into your own workspace from the link in the user guide; your copy is private to you
  • Designed for a computer, in a browser or the Notion desktop app, and works in the Notion apps for iOS and Android. Requires a free Notion account.
User guide

A 31-page digital PDF, 7 × 10 in, with screenshots of the template, a linked index, and bookmarks for every section. It includes the link to duplicate the template, so you can make a fresh copy for your next novel.

License

For personal use. Please don't share, resell, or redistribute the template.

Capture

One inbox for anything that comes to you about the book, with a form you can save to your phone's home screen. Each note waits until you sort it into the database where it belongs.

The book
  • Idea Bank, where an idea moves from Spark to Chosen, with its premise, theme question, genre promise, and the weakest part of the idea, plus one repair
  • Characters, with want, need, the lie, ghost and wound, and arc for the main cast, and a weight for everyone else: promote, keep, or dim
  • Planted and Paid, a ledger of every promise the book makes, the scene that plants it, and the scene where it pays
  • Places and Rules, each marked by how it presses on the protagonist: it constrains, exposes, or tempts
  • Research, one row per question, sorted by when you need the answer, with the finding and its source on the same row
  • Notes, for fragments, lines of dialogue, and images that belong nowhere else yet, and the Story Bible, for every name, date, fact, motif, and style choice the draft has settled
The draft
  • Novel at a Glance, the whole book on one page, dated at the end of each round
  • An Outline with a skeleton after Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method, the beats, and a by-chapter view of your scenes
  • Beats, starting with six landmarks from inciting incident to resolution, which you can replace with any structure you use
  • Rounds, with dates, a finish line, the next decision date, and a handoff written at the end
  • Scenes, each with its order, chapter, state (Planned, Drafted, Moved, or Cut), and what changes by its end; moved and cut scenes stay on record
The desk

Revision Debt, with cheap repairs sorted from expensive ones, and Door Notes, one per stopping point, each tagged with the season you're in: drafting, intake, rest, or returning.

Resources

When you're stuck, with ten kinds of stall, each with a first move, and four short guides, including Coming back; Terms used here; an End-of-round review; and a Scene card with prompts for before and after drafting a scene.

Home page and user guide

Home page views that update as you work: your scenes as cards in order, the round you're in, and a board of where the book stands. The 31-page guide covers every tab and database, a first session, a week at the desk, a round from its first day to its review, coming back after a gap, troubleshooting, and common questions.

Part of The Notion Collection

The Novel Writing Organizer is one of three Notion templates in The Notion Collection, with The Idea Archive and The Project Organizer. If you plan to get all three, buy the collection instead of the single template.

Also in The Novel Writing Toolkit and the Workbook and Organizer Set

The Novel Writing Toolkit includes the organizer with all five books for novelists, and The Novel Writing Workbook and Notion Organizer Set pairs it with The Novel Writing Workbook. If you plan to get either, skip the single template.

Pairs with the craft workbooks

The Plot Workbook, The Character Workbook, and The World Building Workbook teach the methods behind its databases: the story question and beats, want and need and the lie, places and rules. The organizer is where you keep the decisions the worksheets produce.

On paper

Writing Notes is the paper version of the material around a novel: six indexed sections for ideas, characters, settings, plot, research, and everything else.

Instant download

Right after purchase, you'll get an access PDF on the order confirmation page and in your confirmation email. It links to the user guide, and the guide holds the link that duplicates the template into your own Notion workspace.

Instant downloads can't be returned or refunded. If a file won't open or a link stops working, email hello@saintvioletcreative.com and we'll send a working copy.

Saint Violet is an independent creative studio for artists and writers building a more durable creative practice through tools, publications, workshops, and systems for attention, experimentation, and actual follow-through.

The Novel Writing Organizer

$25.00

The Complete Saint Violet Collection

If you find yourself coming back for more than one or two of these, the whole shop is available as a single instant download, built around the five books that take a novel from first idea to finished manuscript and growing with each new release, so anything made later arrives in the same library at no extra cost.

$250.00, one link to the whole library

Five books for novelists
  • The Novel Writing Workbook
  • The Plot Workbook
  • The Character Workbook
  • The World Building Workbook
  • The Revision Manual
Planners and ebook
  • The Creative Planner
  • Writing Notes
  • The Defiant Creative Process (ebook)
Zines and mini planners

Five zines and five mini planners.

Planner inserts

All 181 planner inserts, plus the 19 collections and folios built from them.

Notion templates

All three Notion templates, including The Idea Archive and The Novel Writing Organizer.

Bonuses

Bonus files, plus each new product as it's released.

See the collection

Formats
Workbooks11 items
Books & Zines8 items
Planners & Notebooks11 items
Calendars4 items
Planner Inserts200 items
Planner Insert Sets19 items
Notion Templates5 items
Objects & Apparel13 items
The Novel Writing Toolkit13 items
Gifts36 items
New Arrivals22 items
By purpose
Writing66 items
Planning103 items
Visual Art & Design35 items
Business & Freelance28 items

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