How do I keep research notes next to my manuscript?

In Word

Keep the research in its own document and put the two windows next to each other. With both open, View → View Side by Side sets them up in Word for Windows; on a Mac, or if you prefer to arrange them yourself, drag the windows to either half of the screen. If the two windows scroll together, click Synchronous Scrolling in the same Window group to turn it off, since notes rarely line up page for page with the book.

To look at two parts of the manuscript at once, such as the chapter where a clue is planted and the one where it pays off, View → Split divides a single window into two panes that scroll separately.

In Google Docs

Docs has no split view, so the usual arrangement is two browser windows side by side, one for the book and one for the notes. Tabs offer a second route. A tab named Research at the end of the manuscript keeps the notes inside the same file, and one click moves between them, though you see one tab at a time.

For short facts, the side panel on the right of a document can open Google Keep, and a note then sits beside the page while you type; a note can even be dragged into the text. It suits a list of names or dates. It does not suit fifty pages of transcribed interviews, which belong in a document of their own.

Whatever the tool

Research drifts from the draft the same way an outline does. Two habits slow it down. Record where a fact came from alongside the fact, so it can be checked later without redoing the search. And when a detail makes it into the prose, mark the note, so the notes file becomes a record of what is settled rather than a pile of what was read.

In Tabularia

Sheets live in a tab of the right-hand panel, open beside the page while you write. There are four kinds, each with fields of its own:

• People, for appearance, goals, and relationships.
• Places, for location and why the place matters.
• Items, including who currently holds one.
• Concepts, for the systems and rules that must not contradict themselves.

Every kind also has a free Notes field and room for a picture. What you type saves as you go. A sheet's name and alternate names are also given to the spellchecker, so an invented place stops being underlined.

A note about a particular passage belongs on the passage. An anchor marks a point or a range in the prose and carries a comment, and it keeps its place while the text around it is rewritten. That is the right home for "check this date" or "source: the 1911 census".

The limits are real. Sheets hold text and a picture, not files, so PDFs, saved web pages, and audio stay wherever you keep them now. The Related to and Held by fields are plain text for the moment, with no link between records. And Sheets belong to one project; a second project does not see them.