Best practices for tracking characters, locations and timeline etc. in a novel?

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Thanks RoyRogers, I’m really glad it helped. TBH I didn’t think anyone would find my post of value, so I left out a lot of things that I wish now I had added.

I just wanted to ‘edit’ my post to add some details and some extra things that I didn’t add but wanted to at the risk of appearing excessive (couldn’t find the edit button so I made a new post). Here are the below edits and extra thing I wanted to add:

Edit #1 - Folder =>Indexes

I meant to write: you can create your scenes and drop these tags or backlinks into your your index file of choice (such as plot index, scene index, timeline index, etc.). I label my Indexes for easier search functions, and place them in a folder related to that index, but that’s one way out of the many I’ve seen!

Edit #2 - Summary => Template

I forgot to add templating into the summary, and wanted to share some links that I wanted to add but didn’t:

How to use Templates in Obsidian (DRY) - this one was the one that helped me the most when I first learned templating, because it taught me how to do templates.

Templating resources- Some templates from github.

And many more in the community!

Edit # 3 - Just Examples

I’m still exploring templates and categorizing my tags and statistic methods, but a basic template set-up might look something like:

# {{title}} //example "Scene 1" > Scene 2 > Scene 3, etc.

## Chapter X 


Your Story Here


---
#### Tags / Stats
#time #place #charactersInScene #act1 #climax #etc.

#### PreviousScene and nextScene
[previousScene] [nextScene]

#### Index
[linkToIndex]

####anyOtherCategories, etc.

Example folder structure (random):
Book 1 > Act 1 > Scene 1.md
Characters > Book 1 > CharacterName.md (template)
Worlds > etc.
Timelines > Timeline Index.md (etc)
Book Index.md

Tags Tip

Try to keep your tags reigned in and strictly curated / consistent. They can get messy. I rely on links and backlinks but my tags are colour coded/highlighted using CSS Snippets I snagged from a theme and then customized to fit my needs.

Rearrange your default Panels and explore Workspaces

Another Tip: Rearrange the default Panels / Workspaces
As of late I haven’t heard many people speak about this (but then I’m also new and only been around for 3-4 days), but you can rearrange Obsidian panels, tabs and pin things in every imaginable combination possible and then save them as workspaces. You can even pull tabs out of the panes and merge them altogether or separate them into their own panes.

Structure your panels, so it shapes to what you need.
I’m so used to the inflexibility of traditional notetaking apps, so, the moment I discovered I could move things around and save user states /workspaces in Obsidian… was the moment I actually switched to Obsidian as a tool.

Example workspace/ panel set-up:

  • “Writing To do list” pinned to the right side, but it could easily be a “Plot Tracker”, a “Time Tracker” or a link to those things, or a combination.
  • In the middle is my writing document, and then on the left side can split into two sections.
    • At the top is Open Graph View (visual nodes) and
    • at the bottom (beneath it) are organization panes, (you can drag the tag panes, outlines, and other things of interest into that left bottom pane, so you can easily click between file structure, tags, and outlines).

Another workspace:

  • Live Preview on Left Side
  • Read Mode on Right Side
    So you can see your story’s print mode at the same time as your live preview (they don’t scroll at the same time though)

More Resources

workspaces and Pane layouts in Obsidian) -

automating the workspace’ - it shows how complex or simple it can be.

YT Obsidian Workspaces-

More tips for Tag vs. Page management- Obsidian forum where they discuss how they use tags vs. links and ways to manage tags.

Obsidian Daily States- (I wonder if you can retrofit it to pull up your time / location stats, I’ll have to play with that myself later)

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