Taking Effective Notes to Write From

By Sean Brenner

As a writer, I find there are few things worse than coming back to the preliminary notes I’ve made for a project and not understanding any of them. Even when my notes are understandable, trying to piece together what my thought process was when I wrote them feels like an archaeological dig. It can leave the final product feeling like something’s missing or, worse, it can force me to waste time reinventing the wheel.

Everyone takes notes differently, so there’s no universally applicable standards for how to write notes that will actually end up being useful. But in this post, I’ll give you a few tips that I’ve found helpful for taking effective notes that help create a better final product with less agony and hair-pulling.

Understand Your Memory

For your notes to actually be useful for you, they need to be tailored to how your memory works. For some people, this means writing down every detail you want to remember; for others, you need to write down just enough to jog your memory.

I fall into the latter category, so for me, taking notes usually means making lists of words or short phrases, the briefest possible references to what I need to remember. My memory is good at recognizing words or short phrases that bring me back to exactly where my thought process was when I wrote them. The most important thing I need to be mindful of when taking notes is making those phrases distinctive enough that they can jog my memory properly. 

Obviously, not everyone has a memory that works like that. Most writers will need more detail.

Understanding what it takes to trigger memories of a certain thought process is the key to taking good notes, but it’s also good practice to not lean so much on your memory for specific, heavily detailed parts of your thought process. This is especially important if, while you’re making your notes and conceptualizing your manuscript, you start thinking about how you’re going to write it. If you can think of a good sentence or even a good paragraph while taking notes, include them in the notes. For many writers, their memory will dredge up trends and vague concepts, not the exact way they were thinking of writing something. If part of the writing comes to you early, even trends and vague concepts, write it down for later.

Manage Your Quotes

When it comes to handling your sources, quotes, and other references, you want to be especially detail oriented. All material drawn from other sources should be properly formatted as quotes in your notes—otherwise, you run a high risk of accidental plagiarism. 

Make sure you’ve noted the source each quote comes from, along with all the information about that source you’ll need to cite it properly, including page number (if applicable). Personally, I prefer to write out my works cited during the note-taking process. I’m gathering all the information at that stage anyway, so I might as well format it properly and get that step over with.

While you need to be careful with how to manage quotes when you include them in your notes, including those quotes is still generally good practice. I prefer to include all the material I might possibly quote or reference in my notes, so that I only have to go through my sources for quotes once. It adds time to the note-taking process, but far less than the time it would take to chase down and recheck all those sources. Future You will be grateful.

For that matter, so will your editor. It will take them even longer, and potentially cost you more, if they have to do heavy citation work for you–if that’s even a service they offer.

Stay Organized

Finally, it’s always good practice to keep your notes organized. I prefer to order my material based on when I expect to use it in the manuscript, which allows my preliminary notes to double as a rough outline. You could also order your notes by topic or source, keeping all the facets of your main concepts together.

Whatever your preferred method, there should be some rhyme or reason to it. Otherwise, going back to your notes later will be like trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together without the box.

Whatever way you prefer to take your notes, do your best to give Future You the easiest time possible working through them. Notes are an opportunity to make the job of writing easier. You just have to be aware of what you’ll be able to remember.