Notes? A common practice is having a story bible. It's an encyclopedia of sorts, where you collect and sort all your notes. If I'm doing some original fiction, I'll write out a section on setting, on plot (organized in story arcs and with a couple notes at the beginning about the story as a whole), and on characters. Character section is mostly just a set of notes important to the character, such as how they look, what clothes they wear, defining features. If a character has a scar on one side of their body, I'll note which side it is because that's something I'll commonly forget. I'll also put in the notes any changes that then happen to the character, with when it happens relative to the plot, in case I flashback or talk about the past, and in doing so need to make sure my characters are correct.
It only needs to be as detailed as you require. My bibles are usually a collection of bullet points and nothing more, not even an image, because I prefer working without visual ques in pure literature. In a different situation though, like say in fan fiction, where the characters and setting are well defined and a google search away, I'll just write out a paragraph for each story arc generalizing my idea of what should happen. In a short story, I may just have a note or two for setting, a list of characters without details, and a paragraph on what the story is supposed to be.
So I recommend compiling all your folders and notes into a single document, preferrably in an application where it gives you an outlone lust on the side so that you can jump to different sections quickly.
I also know people who write 100+ chapters and 500k words with no notes at all, because they keep all the information in their heads. In writing you can get away with knowing generally what happened in the past and reference events rather than very specific moments or lines of dialogue, because typically that's all the reader remembers anyway. Knowing exactly what happened doesn't hurt, but it's not like you need to have detailed notes on every paragraph of every chapter. If a moment stands out and you think it'll be important later on, write it down in the plot section of your bible under whatever chapter it's in, and boom easy quote to reference later.
