149 - Fiction Writing with a Zettelkasten works particularly well because the novel writing process is one of creative development. You are creating characters, places, and events from scratch. These different pieces of the story are informed by your personal understanding of reality, which in turn can be further developed in a zettelkasten.
How the universe works in your story is informed by your own knowledge of physics and the other natural sciences. How the societies operate in your story is informed by your own knowledge of our social systems, which can be further understood through the social sciences. How the characters experience the world is shaped by their mental state which can be understood through the study of psychology. For example, on my bookshelf I have the textbook Personality: Classic Theories and Modern Research by Howard S. Friedman and Miriam W. Schustack. The idea of using the sciences to inform your writing is illustrated through the work of Will Storr and his book The Science of Storytellilng.
It doesn’t stop with the sciences though. You can study the existing body of literature (humanities) to understand the themes that have been important for our species and what has been said about them. By actively mapping them out, you can see how they have been already explored and use that information to say something new about a theme. The other option is to take a classic theme that has held true throughout human existence and illustrate an important point about it using a modern or new story.