#14

I can certainly understand that. The infrastructure isn’t there in Obsidian yet. And I don’t know if it ever will be because there’s little consistency in the perspective of the few plugin developers who are developing writing related features.

I’ve never got along with Scrivener for productive work. It strikes me as being something of a Heath Robinson construction that encourages the same view of writing and manuscripts. There are so many little bits. Like Liquid Story Binder with lubrication. But, afaics it’s the approach that works for most people and is very similar to the way Obsidian works.

I use WriteMonkey 3. Interestingly it started development at about the same time as Scrivener but a totally different design philosophy. It’s markdown not rtf. There are no menus; I doubt even the majority of active users have a knowledge of half of the features available. There’s a command palette and a multitude of keyboard shortcuts which allow a very fine level of control but you can struggle if you can’t remember them all.

There is also a WriteMonkey 2.7, which some prefer. It hasn’t been in active development for a few years now but still functions perfectly well. 3 is a complete rewrite and something of a redesign. 2.7 has some features missing from 3, which itself has its own unique features some of which I use a lot. 3 runs on a json database with synchronised attached files (which is what I always do); 2.7 loads each file alone and works only on the file; the design of 3 is the one most similar to Obsidian.

I’ll just describe a few features I find indispensable:

  • Word Count - there’s a document total at the bottom of the page. A session count at the top (including wpm and time spent). Immediate count at the bottom of any selected text.
  • Folding - apart from folding under headers, I can fold any selected area and then fold the area around it and so on ad infinitum. I don’t think I understood how useful this was until I started using it.
  • Focus - the three side panes can be hidden or visible; sections can be hoisted, I can fade everything except the line, sentence or paragraph being worked on; typewriter mode to control cursor position.
  • Repository - I can cut or copy selected text into the right side pane (and back wherever I want) which is a major aid when editing or switching parts around.
  • Projects - makes it easy to work with sections of text (like small Obsidian notes), shuffle them around and put them back together to make a whole. I can deconstruct a long document and reconstruct it in a few minutes.
  • Single right click copy all.
  • Multiple themes with control of brightness etc, avoiding any reliance on f.lux

I could go on and on, but I doubt there’s any point as I really don’t recommend anyone use it. For most people it is too different, the learning curve is too great and they don’t spend enough time writing to benefit. If anyone’s interested I could do a few screenshots.
It’s also free, with a donation of any amount to release a few extra features.

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#15

Just to clarify. I think that most of the best programs for writers have been developed by writers (or those who had a need at the time for a writing program with features they couldn’t find on the market). This includes Scrivener, Ulysses, WriteMonkey, yWriter, Final Draft, Plottr, PreWrite etc. Anthemion’s Writers Cafe/Jutoh is an exception being written by a husband for his writer wife. I believe that for Obsidian to move to that level as a tool for writers will require a writer/developer who has the time, commitment and vision to set out to produce a complete solution using Obsidian as a base. I don’t believe that adding ad-hoc plugins will be sufficient.

#16

Thank you for three interesting and graceful replies!

#17

I assume that you added your support for drag and drop for bullets, because that would solve your problem.

One option for doing the drag and drop in a single .md file is to open it in Logseq. That allows you to drag and drop the sections and headings.
Quite a large number of Obsidian users have explained how they integrate using both Logseq and Obsidian on the same files. Though I’ve never personally enjoyed using Logseq, it’s clearly a good option for some.

#18

Actually, it seems that Murf’s Obsidian Drag and Drop Blocks plugin solves the problem. Coming Soon.

#19

Definitely intend on using Obsidian for NaNo '21. I supose I am unique in that I have only used a simple text editor in all my years of participating so I don’t need all the bells and whistles that full-blown aspiring authors find essential. My personal aspirations of becoming a writer are long behind me, but I use NaNoWriMo as something of a benchmark to make sure “I still got it.”

It will be our seventh year, but first with Obsidian. One year I used an application closely resembling FocusWriter but I it’s long out of development.

Created a dedicated vault and styled it to be “writer friendly” by way of CSS and nifty Minimalist Theme settings. Good luck everyone! Get those writing totems out!

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#20

Neat, that plugin sounds excellent! I really like the flow of Longform (although I admit I’ve only just started writing out some skeletons for scenes…) so I’m going to try to use that for this year’s NaNo. I’d definitely use drag & drop in daily use though, I migrated to Obsidian recently from OneNote and I liked being able to quickly move blocks of text around in it.

#21

You know, now that I have all of my personal notes, work notes, writing notes, and everything else pulled into a single Obsidian vault… I feel like I should make a separate vault for novel writing. It would make it easier for me to visualize things with the graph view without all of the clutter of other personal stuff and my work knowledgebase.

#22

You can move selected text: select then drag and drop. If you tab indent where it’s dropped before dropping, it will even create a fold option above it. Also works for folded sections.
It’s similar to the way it works in Word and FocusWriter etc. An alternative to cut and paste.

#23

I have a highly organised system of nested vaults, partly for this reason.

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#24

I didn’t know about the tab indenting, but yeah I sometimes move text via highlighting. Just feels clunky compared to OneNote but it’s one small con next to a huge list of pros in Obsidian for me so I don’t mind much.

Hmm. I may explore this then. I like the idea of the “monolithic” vault but it just clutters up my novel prep a bit. I may just need to be smarter with my use of links and tags.

#25

My top vault is monolithic. Has everything except my secure vaults. Allows me to focus on a project but also access other notes when needed.

#26

Hello! I’m the author of Longform. This was an illuminating thread. I’m eager to add some of the features mentioned here; my job is pretty demanding atm, as is my toddler, so work on the plugin has slowed. I’m thrilled to read that people are planning to use it for nanowrimo!

The only other thing I think is worth adding is that the container of a fluid thing shapes what it holds. A writer’s tools are a part of the novel. While I’m doing my best to keep Longform usable by others, it is opinionated for this reason, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to use it if it doesn’t fit.

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#27

I think this is a key observation. It’s possibly a reason I never took to Scrivener, and why I ended up returning to a single markdown file rather than sections in separate notes. Despite the relative lack, in any program, of good management features for the header outline/scenes etc.

I’m surprised by the impact of the container, since intellectually the structure is the same no matter what, but it does seem to be the case - for me at least

I look forward to any developments in Longform.

#28

New forum user here, this is my first post. I had to set up an account just to jump into this discussion. :slight_smile:

I too jumped ship from Scrivener, after using it for about 7 years and over 100 projects. I played around with using Word or ODT files for a bit, but was getting corrupted files and it wasn’t really functioning the way that I wanted to.

I also used Evernote for my notes, but left them a few years ago, tried OneNote for about a year, and found it didn’t work for me and there was no exit without copying and pasting every note I had made since leaving Evernote.

I moved onto plain text files for my writing (and text, docx, or pdf for notes and clipping), and then after using Notebooks app for a while, eased into using md format.

Enter Obsidian a few months ago and upping my game! I am now using it for all of my notes. I use Notebooks and Obsidian together for my writing. They both use the same flavour of md, though there are a few unique points for each.

One of the things that Notebooks gives me is the ability to compile a folder of 50 chapters into a single book file in a couple of clicks. Usually, I have my novel draft open in Notebooks, and my series wiki, notes, etc. open in Obsidian and bounce back and forth between them without having to lose my place. With them both reading markdown files, they are sympatico and I can access the files on all of my devices. (On iOS, I use 1Writer.)

I have published 76 novels, so while my process is always evolving, I have settled into a number of patterns and habits.

My file tree structure:

Series folder

  • subfolder for the series wiki (series Bible)
  • subfolder for each book in the series

Book subfolders

  • backup - every few days, I compile my chapter files into a backup file and move it to this folder - and yes, everything is also backed up using Dropbox versions and Time Machine external drives, but I’ve lost/corrupted files before, so I’m pretty obsessive
  • characters - while I do have files for all of my characters in the series wiki folder, I have character sheets for the main characters in each book with questions and notes about their character arcs for that particular book as well
  • archived - old versions of anything
  • draft - each chapter is a separate md file, numbered so that I can sort them properly in any file browser or app
  • graphics - cover art, promo, ads, etc.
  • my notes - plotting/outline, research, pictures of whiteboard and index cards, etc. A combination of md files, pdfs, jpgs, etc.
  • published - output folder for vellum files
  • todo - one or more md notes with things I need to remember to do later, properly marked with - [ ]

One convention that I have been using over the past year or so is to tag the main characters and setting in each scene in the title/filename so that I can quickly filter down to all of a character’s scenes, for example. So a chapter title may look something like:

2 discovery of body in ^woods !Terry !Sheriff

That way it is super easy to find a scene no matter what program or file browser I am in.

But I wanted to include more metadata in the files and to be able to play with it in dataview if I wanted to. I ran into a bit of a roadblock, because I wanted it to all be available in both Notebooks and Obsidian, and not to interfere with book compiling in Notebooks. Notebooks doesn’t use YAML, Obsidian doesn’t use pandoc headers, Notebooks uses // for comments, Obsidian uses %%. After several failed attempts, I found that I could use <!-- --> html comments in both, and that comments would not be visible after compiling in Notebooks (which is what I wanted.)

So going forward, I am now removing my tags from the filenames, and doing something like this as the chapter front matter instead:

2 Discovery of the body

<!-- Character:: !Terry 
Character:: !Sheriff 
Character:: !Bernt
Setting:: ~woods 
Notes:: 
Draft:: 2 
Grammarly:: - [x] -->
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#29

It’s great to have P.D. Workman (@pdworkman) join this thread with real practical advice.

If you don’t mind a few questions:

  • How are you using Notebooks + Obsidian? Are all the folders you mentioned part of an Obsidian vault that is also indexed in Notebooks?
  • Are you using any plugins in Obsidian to assist your process other than Dataview?
  • Any Dataview snippets you would be willing to share?
#30

Yes, all of the folders are part of an Obsidian vault that is also indexed in Notebooks.

No process-related plugins. A couple of formatting tools - Admonition Blocks and Advanced Tables, and Obsidian Tabs for multi-tab management, but that’s it. Minimal distraction while I’m writing.

I have just started setting up the metadata for Dataview, so I don’t have any snippets yet! But I am looking forward to playing with it and coming up with some queries just because I like to tinker…

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#31

Okay, had a bit of time to play with Dataview today, so my metadata code has been updated a bit in my initial post to something that plays better with Dataview, and I have my first new snippets.

(Sorry, I’m not sure how to get it to show the backticks, I can’t nest them)

# Chapter Summary

```dataview 
TABLE 
	Character AS "Who?", 
	Setting AS "Where?", 
	Draft, 
	Grammarly 
FROM "On the Slab Pie ACB 18/draft" 
SORT file ASC
```

# Notes
``` dataview
LIST
	Note
FROM "On the Slab Pie ACB 18/draft" 
WHERE
	Note !=null
SORT file ASC

```

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#32

(Sorry, I’m not sure how to get it to show the backticks, I can’t nest them)

Just as a sidenote comment, you can show backticks by surrounding them with an outer layer of backticks if that outer layer has more backticks than the snippet you would like to showcase.

If your code snippet as 3 backticks at the start/end you can embed them in this forum by surrounding your code block with for example 4 backticks before/after. Anything more than 3 works. Like this, where I’m surrounding it with 4:

```dataview
TABLE WITHOUT ID (inlink + " (" + length(rows.file.link) + ")") AS Receiver, link(sort(rows.file.name)) AS Sender
FROM "inbox"
WHERE file.outlinks
FLATTEN file.outlinks AS inlink 
GROUP BY inlink
SORT length(rows.file.link) DESC
```
#33

Just popping in to let you guys know that we created a nanowrimo group for nanowrimo but the interface isn’t great and caps at 20, so @kinabalu is working on a plugin (hopefully for this year, maybe for next year). We’ve been discussing it in the #nanowrimo 2021 thread under #creative channel in the Discord if you want to join us there. We’ve also been coordinating writing sprints (for practice / to see how it works — hopefully we can move this into a plugin in Obsidian somehow :exploding_head: ) using this persistent link: Word Sprints - myWriteClub

They run from :00 to :25 and :30 to :55 every hour by default and anybody can show up :slight_smile:

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