A couple of times. It's common enough that I recognize what you're talking about, but I couldn't give you an exact count. On the one hand i can respect how hard it is to pick up after losing all your notes, but as far as I'm concerned if all the important stuff isn't cemented in your mind you probably weren't about to write a great story in the first place.
I can understand the need to write down some notes (relationships between characters, for example), but if you have to write your plot down, it means it's too complicated.
>>4612 It's not the plot that's getting written down, it's world-building details. Note that two of the stories in which this has happened are Fallout Gensokyo and Palingenesia, stories for which a unique and memorable Gensokyo is a significant part of the charm. I mean, look at the world-building info that Fallout Writefag has posted on /words/ alone and imagine trying to remember all that.
Writing down, organizing and then distilling my notes as a part (a part being a fictional newspieces, the thoughts of character, a moment in time, etc) of the greater story/world sounds like a pretty damn good idea. Reminds me of the Silmarillion actually. So far, I've only written down my notes in a stream of consciousness style, and that has been rather inefficient. Proper note taking-- knowing what concepts are concrete, in need of expansion, revision etc-- seems like it can help me know what to write next more easily.
Not this will be easy to do, it seems. The need to write down the concepts will vary based on complexity, the author's taste and matters like that. If anything though, writing notes with more clarity and well, seriousness, so as to make them comprehensible and interesting to a normal reader, definitely opens a new door for me in matters of planning.
Thanks for the advice, and apologies for half-talking to myself, though it's needed to see if my guiding beliefs are incorrect or not.
