Last week I talked about some of the tools in my writer’s toolbox. This week, I want to get into some detail about how I use Obsidian.
If you don’t know, Obsidian is an app that resides on your computer where you can create pages and take notes on anything. Not only is the app on your computer, but so are all the files you keep there. This makes it so privacy is not a concern and, even if you are not connected to the internet, you still always have access to your information. The files are also formatted in a computer language called Markup, which is used in many places and can be read and understood by many different apps so that, should anything happen to Obsidian, your data is still retrievable.
What I love about the program is the ease of organizing information and linking it together. There a thousands of plug-ins for the app, making it very easy to customize it to your way of working and for your specific needs.
As an author of over 40 historical romances, I use it to organize my historical research, articles and notes on writing craft, all of the characters that have appeared in my books, and my current WIP.
You can organize your notes any way you want. For myself, I find folders and tags to be easiest. I have these folders:
You’ll notice that there are numbers to the right. Those are the number of pages within each folder. The folder labeled “Black Widow” is my current work in progress. Within that I have a sub-folder containing a page for each scene in the book, another for the characters, as well as pages with notes.
With the “Templater” plug-in, you create a template of any page. I have one for my scenes, and another for my characters. Here is my scene template:
The properties at the top can be used to create a table of all the scenes which can then be organized by the scene number, when it happens, or who the POV character is. With the plug-in “Auto Note Mover”, all notes with the hashtag “BWscene” are automatically moved into the folder of scenes for my WIP, which is then automatically added to the scene table.
My character template is this:
These pages are automatically moved to my master character list. I add additional hashtags for what level the character is (main, secondary, minor, or random), and what book(s) the character appears in. With these tags, it’s really easy to find a name to use for a walk-on character or get more information—like someone’s physical description—for any character I might be using. I can also easily find a list of all the characters within a particular book.
Obsidian also has a blank board in which you can put blocks for mind-mapping or making time-lines. This is one I created for another book I wrote where I needed to keep close track of when real life events happened in relation to fictional events in the story.
Once a book is published, I also keep a page on each book with links to each retailer where it’s published, ISBN, an image of the cover, and the book’s description.
There are many authors who not only keep their information in Obsidian, but write in the program as well and there are a number of plug-ins that help you do so with pomodoro timers, word goals, and their own organizational structure.
If you’re interested in downloading a copy of my templates or seeing a list of the plug-ins I use, you can find that here. Feel free to use and adapt these templates for yourself.
It took me a little while to organize Obsidian to the way I work, and it may take you some time as well, but as it is the most versatile software, you can arrange it any way you’d like. It is, most definitely, one of the most important tools in my toolbox.