Plugin: StoryLine - Obsidian plugin for writers

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41

This plugin looks similar to the novelcrafter tool (Unrelated to Obsidian). Please consider taking a peak at it to see if anything catches your attention. It is very clear that it is just convergent creation because there are only so many ways to make a good outline tool. Thank you for making this.

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Version 1.8.2

  • Separate Notes/ folder — Corkboard sticky notes are now stored in a dedicated Notes/ folder inside your project, keeping the Scenes/ folder clean. Converting a note to a scene moves the file to Scenes/ automatically.
2 Likes
43

I’ve seen it.

1 Like
44

Novel Crafter and SudoWrite are just the beginning of that space. I’m not totally on board, yet. Until any of those apps start dwelling on my prose style and resulting voice, I’m staying on the sidelines … that said, a saavy user of ai code platforms like claude code or vertex and an IDE could setup their own story crafter environment which does just that. I may do that over next winter… design knowledge model in a persistance layer locally that applies linguistic search and analysis using AI. That would be my dream space; it would reduce blocking time and increase “flow time” writing joy time.

I do really appreciate @Pixero 's approach. For me, it’s the best outlining tool I’ve used and since it is in my vault where all my research and idea crafting is located, it serves my need.

1 Like
45

I wanted to say thank you for this awesome plugin!

I have been using it for few days now. I also checked some alternatives, but I came back to StoryLine every single time.

There are however some problems that could be improved. I feel that the plugin does not scale well when the story is getting bigger. Maybe I am organizing my work in an atypical way, who knows?

I have currently about 40 scenes layed out and 11 plotlines, probably about half of what I expect to have at the end. Everything is just a draft and I don’t split it into chapters or acts yet. I just let myself brainstorm and fill up the story in a quick manner. And here are my few experiences with particular components of StoryLine:

  • Plotlines/Subway view. This is my go-to tab to see what is going on. But with my scene and plotline count the page is very sparse. There is a lot of blank space and scrolling involved. Some approaches that could improve density:

    • One scene per one column: some scenes are independent of each other and they both could share the same column. Or put it at 1/2, 1/3, 1/4… column width distance. It would make the presentation more dense.
    • Similarly - one plotline per row: Some line ends before another begins.
    • I wish I could simply hide some plotlines while I focus on another part of the story. Or maybe add the filtering mechanism that is present in the Board?
    • Finally, if the whole Subway could be transposed, with lines going down instead of right, perhaps more items would fit in a single screen?

  • The Board. Given the shortcomings of Plotlines, I thought I could perhaps recreate it manually in the Board. This way the program does not have to guess the best organizational structure, I would do it myself. But Board gets only half-way through. I wish the scene nodes could be resized. Some Scenes are important and affect multiple plotlines, while other can stay small on a side of the story. The important scenes - I would like to make them stand out, be much wider or higher than they need to be. Regular Notes can be dragged at least vertically, but scenes cannot.
    Also it would help if I could draw lines between the scenes (ideally, if the lines could end at an arbitrary anchor point at the edge of the scene box, not only in the mid)

  • Plotgrid: I don’t use it at all. Didn’t find a purpose for me or didn’t understand how it is useful. Maybe I could put my plotlines in this for more dense presentation?

  • Timeline: gets problematic with 40+ scenes.

    • When I just add “New Scene” it is put on the bottom of the list, while whole list is scrolled to the top.
    • Dragging scene from bottom to top is problematic, because you can’t scroll while dragging. So you drag half-way through and then scroll. What is worse, where you release the drag, list is scrolled back to top, so you need to search for the scene you released to pick it up again and continue dragging.
    • Sometimes when you drag scene one step up or down, nothing happens.
      Effectively, it is easier to just duplicate an existing scene and start writing new stuff in it. But then it gets the same sequential number and system gets temporarily lost on the ordering (until it does renumbering).
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Thanks for your comments. I will look into it.

In the meantime here is Version 1.8.3

  • View Snapshots — Save and restore point-in-time snapshots of your project’s view layout. Each snapshot captures corkboard card positions (including card heights), the full Plot Grid state (rows, columns, cells, zoom, styling), and scene layout metadata (act, chapter, status, POV, sequence). Create, rename, load, and delete snapshots from the toolbar button (clock icon) in Board or Plotgrid views, or via the command palette.

  • Scrivener Import — Import a Scrivener project (.scriv folder) as a new StoryLine project. Attempts to convert scenes, characters, locations, and research notes. Supports Scrivener 2 and 3 project formats. Results may vary depending on project complexity — review imported data carefully.

    • Access via Settings → Import or command palette → Import Scrivener Project.

  • Scene Inspector sidebar now works from Board, Timeline, and Plotgrid views (previously Manuscript only).

  • Research sidebar — Open and Edit buttons for all research post types. Web clips open their URL; all types support an edit modal.

2 Likes
47

The Scrivener import is huge. I’ll certainly be experimenting with this.

Kudos on your work!

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Scrivener import is kind of experimental as I have some experience with it but there are so many different ways to set it up.

1 Like
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Version 1.8.4

New Features

  • Scene Colors — Assign a custom background color to any scene card. Right-click a scene in Board, Timeline, or Navigator and choose Set color. The color tints the card background using a subtle wash, independent of the color-coding edge stripe. Clear it with Clear color from the same menu. Color is stored in the color field in frontmatter.

  • Codex Linking — Link Codex entries directly to scenes. Any enabled Codex category (Items, Creatures, Factions, or your own custom categories) can appear as a tag-pill section in the Scene Inspector sidebar, letting you associate entries with scenes just like Characters and Locations.

    • Inspector sections — Enable a Codex category for the Inspector via Codex → Manage Categories → Inspector checkbox. Enabled categories appear as tag-pill inputs in the Inspector with autocomplete from your Codex entries.

    • Assign from detected links — Right-click any detected link in the “Detected in text” section to assign it to a Codex category. The entry is added to the scene’s codexLinks frontmatter automatically.

    • Plot Grid sync — The “Sync from Scenes” modal now includes enabled Codex categories in the “Columns from” dropdown. Sync scenes against your Items, Factions, or any custom category. Click a Codex column header to open the entry file.

    • Stored in frontmatter — Codex links are saved as codexLinks in scene YAML (e.g., codexLinks: { items: ['Magic Sword', 'Shield'], factions: ['Rebels'] }).

  • Plotline Filtering (Plotlines View) — Filter the subway map and list view to show only selected plotlines.

Bug Fixes

  • Act reassignment — Changing a scene’s act in the Inspector now moves the file to the correct Act N/ subfolder and updates the filename prefix. Previously, only the frontmatter was updated while the file stayed in the old location.

  • Board resequencing — The resequence button now numbers scenes within each act starting from 1, rather than numbering globally across all acts. Scenes in Act 2 no longer continue the numbering from Act 1.

  • Timeline drag-and-drop — Fixed drag-and-drop scene reordering in Timeline view.

  • Timeline auto-scroll — The Timeline now auto-scrolls when dragging a scene near the edges.

  • Timeline scroll-to-new — Creating a new scene in Timeline view now scrolls to show it.

Performance

  • Query memoization — Scene filtering and sorting results are now cached and only recomputed when scene data actually changes. Views that haven’t changed skip re-rendering entirely.

  • Debounced re-renders — Board, Timeline, and Plotlines views now coalesce rapid refresh calls using requestAnimationFrame, preventing redundant DOM rebuilds during batch operations.

  • Progressive timeline rendering — Projects with 40+ scenes now render the timeline in batches (first 20 immediately, then 10 per frame), keeping the UI responsive during initial load.

  • CSS layout containment — Scene cards and timeline cards use contain: content to isolate browser layout recalculations, reducing paint cost as scene count grows.

  • Reverse tag index — SceneManager maintains a tag → scenes lookup index, updated incrementally on each mutation, for O(1) plotline-to-scene queries.

3 Likes
50

let us know if we can help. Reach out to the Scrivener forum as well. As you probably know, there’s a core group of us that use Obsidian and Scrivener.
Best wishes.

1 Like
51

In the Corkboard view, scene cards may not display properly after being filled out, but they appear normally when switched to the Kanban view.

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That should be fixed in v 1.8.5.

Version 1.8.5

New Features

  • Show in StoryLine — Right-click any character, location, or codex entry file (in the file explorer, tab header, or editor) and choose Show in StoryLine to jump directly to its detail panel. Also available in the command palette (Ctrl+P → “Show in StoryLine”). The command auto-detects whether the file is a character, location, or codex entry and opens the correct view.

  • Formatting Toolbar Toggle — The formatting toolbar in the Manuscript view now respects the Formatting toolbar toggle in Settings. Previously the Manuscript view always showed the toolbar regardless of the setting.

Bug Fixes

  • Corkboard scene card display — Scene cards in Corkboard view now expand to fit their content (title, conflict, characters, etc.) after being filled out. Previously, cards could appear clipped because CSS containment prevented them from growing, and persisted sticky-note heights were incorrectly applied to regular scene cards.
2 Likes
53

Wow! I really enjoy this app - I’ve had scrivener unused for a long time and was wondering whether similar experience would be possible in Obsidian. Thank you for creating this. Also … I’ve developed a tool for my own use case of being able to talk and type in one flow to write as well as structure notes. Would love some writers to try it out and let me know what you think. If real-time transcription and being able to type at the same time is a way of working you like when writing - as it is for me - you might find this a really powerfull combination with storyline to help your writing process. Hope you don’t mind my sharing it here: Voxtral Transcribe — dictate and type at the same time into your notes with voice commands (beta testers wanted!)

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I see some improvements, thank you. I like the new color feature.

I can also confirm the timeline auto-scroll works, even if it is a bit slow (maybe a setting to control the speed and pixel height where the dragging occurs?)

Still, Plotlines resets its view often, for example:

  • Change the scene name (or any other attribute)
  • Finish dragging a scene from one place to another

In all these cases the resets occurs, which puts the plotline at the top and one has to scroll down again, if the change occurs at the bottom.

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The cork board occasionally displays errors. Existing scenes are not being displayed.

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Version 1.8.8 should hopefully fix these issues.
If you still are having problems with corkboard I would need more info about it to be able to dig further.

1 Like
57

How are footnotes handled?

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Thank you very much for this excellent work. Since the type of writing I do doesn’t quite fit into any existing categories, I often find myself not yet fully comfortable with the plugin. I’ll be sure to reach out to you if I have any questions down the line.

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On the iPad, when I open the Corkboard for the first time, the scene cards do not appear immediately. They only appear after I tap other buttons, such as the timeline, and then tap the Corkboard again. Additionally, after designing a scene card, the order elements for acts, chapters, and scenes are not fully displayed on the scene card. I am using plugin version 1.88.

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Version 1.8.9 should hopefully fix thew corkboard issue on ipad.

1 Like