StoryLine doesn’t have any built-in footnote handling. Scene content is standard Obsidian markdown, so footnotes work through Obsidian’s native markdown rendering (using [^1] / [^1]: text syntax). The plugin’s Manuscript view embeds Live Preview editors, which render footnotes via Obsidian’s built-in markdown-it engine. StoryLine itself doesn’t parse, transform, or export footnotes specially — they’re passed through as-is in the markdown body.
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I’m just stopping back here to say thank you so much for creating this plugin. I’ve been using it for several weeks now, and I’m really enjoying it. I am especially grateful for your attention to detail and consistent updates. You are amazing.
I see so many people here giving great constructive feedback, too. I am sorry I don’t have anything to add except that perhaps it might help to create a video tutorial to walk through all the features of the plugin. That’s really all I can think of.
Thank you again! Keep up the good work!
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Thanks for your kind words. Im a bit hesitant doing a video as Im not natively english speaking. But feel free if you want to give it a go.
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First of all, thanks so much for making this Obsidian plugin available to us writers AND Obsidian fans. Just what I’ve been looking for. I installed it as per some instructions I found on Reddit, that worked. (Never used a plugin before straight from Github, ya live ‘n learn 
). Just a couple of Questions:
- I don’t want to use Save the Cat or any of those “beat” templates, so I was able to start of without a template as an option.
- I have no Chapters, that works fine.
- Is there any way I can edit “Act” so that I have Parts 1-7, each with Scenes instead of Acts 1-7?
- Scene templates: Any way I can write a template to support, say, Lisa Cron’s Scene Cards (just as an example)? How would I go about adding my own custom template? Would love to be able to do that.
Again, thank you so much for your hard work.
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Yes. StoryLine uses actLabels to control how act dividers are displayed. You can:
- Add Acts 1–7 to your project (in the Board View or Timeline View, add acts up to 7).
- Use the inline-editable act labels — right click on any act divider label (e.g. “Act 1”) in the Timeline or Board View and rename it to “Part 1”, “Part 2”, etc. These labels are stored per-project as
actLabelsin your project’s frontmatter and persist across sessions.
Under the hood, the underlying act field on each scene remains a number (1–7), but the display label can be whatever you type. So your scenes will show “Part 1” through “Part 7” everywhere act labels appear (column headers, timeline dividers, etc.).
Custom scene templates (e.g. Lisa Cron’s Scene Cards):
Yes, this is fully supported. Go to StoryLine Settings → Scene Templates and click “Add Template”. You’ll get an editor where you can set:
- Name — e.g. “Lisa Cron Scene Card”
- Description — e.g. “Story Genius scene card structure”
- Default fields — optionally pre-fill status, emotion, tags, conflict, or target word count
- Body template — the markdown text inserted into the scene file
Once saved, your custom template appears in the Template dropdown whenever you create a new scene (via Quick Add). You can create as many custom templates as you like. Built-in templates (Blank, Action Scene, Dialogue Scene, Flashback, Opening Chapter) remain available alongside yours.
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I totally understand this, and yes, you made an amazing plugin, let’s have somebody else do an amazing tutorial 
Have you or anyone else already found someone who’s already made a video (or a blog post) about this?
I’m not a writer, but from time to time I like to challenge myself with writing. And I don’t understand the writing workflow. With this plugin, it would be two-in-one! Learning the workflow of writing and learning the use of the plugin.
I know! Agatha Christie didn’t have this or any other tool, but I’m not her 
Once again, from a technical POV - amazing plugin!
Cheers, Marko 
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Is this plugin build on native bases or doing it’s own thing?
Its doing its own thing. Bases wasnt released when I started making it.
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I haven’t tried your plugin (I wish it were already in the community repository!) but want to. If footnotes are simply entered via native markdown in a scene, will that result in sequential numbering throughout a manuscript? I have a multi-chapter project and want endnotes.
As footnotes are not treated in Storyline it will most likely work as with any multi note obsidian vault.
Thanks for your quick response. I’m not sure I entirely understand. Are you saying Storyline may not (yet) be a good choice if one has endnotes.
I really don’t know as there is nothing in the plugin itself that handles that. If Obsidians built in (or plugins) handling is working for what you need it might be ok. My advise is that you try it out yourself.
Thanks so much for answering so clearly and promptly! I was able to make a scene template as per your instructions, thanks. It’s similar to your action template (Goal, Conflict, Action, Outcome) but with different structure as per the book Story Genius by Lisa Cron. OK. Quick question: how can I change the contents of the scene details (I saw you can add a custom status). How can I modify, or add additional forms like “Conflict”, “Emotion”, “Intensity”? Thanks again for your hard work creating this plugin. If I can express my writing process in it I will definitely be using it, since I am using Obsidian for most of the writing artifacts; just need the outlining mostly. Great features!
## Version 1.9.2
### Bug Fixes
- **Setup / Payoff links** — Fixed broken references in the Sample Project. Setup/payoff ordering warnings now use full reading order (act → chapter → sequence) instead of sequence alone, eliminating false warnings. Renaming a scene now automatically updates setup/payoff references in all other scenes.
- **Plotgrid rename sync** — Renaming a scene no longer leaves orphaned rows in the Plot Grid. Merge mode auto-cleans orphaned rows while preserving manually added ones.
- **Timeline & Board sorting** — Sorting by chapter now uses multi-key act → chapter → sequence order, fixing incorrect scene interleaving across acts.
- **Navigator sorting** — Chronological order now uses the correct fields (`chronologicalOrder` → `storyDate` → `sequence`) and displays as a flat list. “Recently edited” sort uses actual file modification time.
- **Manuscript backlinks** — Obsidian’s native backlink panes are now hidden inside embedded manuscript editors, removing visual clutter and gaps.
- **Tag text contrast** — Tag pills, chips, and color-coded badges now automatically use black or white text based on background brightness (WCAG contrast formula), fixing unreadable light-on-light combinations.
- **Resequence preserves chapters** — The Resequence button no longer assigns every scene its own chapter. It now sorts by act → chapter → sequence and renumbers scenes within each chapter, keeping your existing chapter structure intact.
### New Features
- **Four new beat sheet templates** — Seven-Point Story Structure (Dan Wells), Story Circle (Dan Harmon), Romancing the Beat (Gwen Hayes), and 27 Chapter Method (Kat O’Keeffe). The template picker is redesigned as a compact list with expandable beat previews.
- **Beat sheet YAML field** — When a beat sheet template is applied, the template name is stored on the project and auto-populated as a `beatsheet` field on every new scene.
- **Custom scene fields** — Define your own fields for scenes (text, textarea, dropdown, or multi-select) via Settings → Field Templates. Custom fields appear in the Inspector under “Custom Fields” and are stored in YAML as `universalFields`.
- **Save as Template** — Right-click any scene card in the Board view and choose “Save as Template” to capture its fields and body as a reusable scene template.
- **Quick Add chapter dropdown** — The Quick Add modal now shows a dropdown of existing chapters with scene counts, defaulting to the latest chapter. Includes a “+ New chapter” option.
- **Writing Sprint timer** — Fully functional sprint timer in Stats View with start/stop/reset, editable duration, live word count and WPM during the sprint, and a persistent sprint history log.
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Here is a more detailed answer:
No. The Manuscript View embeds each scene as a separate Obsidian editor, so footnote numbering restarts at 1 in every scene file. There’s no cross-file sequential numbering — if Scene 1 has [^1] and Scene 2 also has [^1], they’re independent and both render as “1” within their own scene block.
The same applies to exports (DOCX, PDF, HTML) — each scene’s content is processed individually, so footnotes don’t merge into a single continuous sequence.
Workaround: Use globally unique footnote identifiers like [^ch3-1], [^ch3-2], etc. They’ll still only render within their own scene, but at least they won’t collide if you ever concatenate the files manually outside StoryLine.
For true endnotes with sequential numbering across an entire book, you’d need to export to DOCX and handle endnote conversion in Word/LibreOffice, or use a pandoc post-processing step. This isn’t something StoryLine can control. Iit’s a limitation of Obsidian treating each file as an independent document.
A workaround for now: use globally unique footnote IDs in your scenes (e.g. [^ch3-1], [^ch5-2]), export as Markdown, then do a find-and-replace to renumber them — or open the exported DOCX in Word and use its built-in endnote conversion.
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Somehow I don’t get how the sorting works. There is of course act-chapter-sequence but also a Chronological number. And when I change numbers it sorts in something I didn’t expect.
I really like your solution for writing books in Obsidian. For me it is the best fitting plugin for writing! Love it!
Regards,
Hans.
In my idea the sorting would work like this (Board view):
act - chapter - sequence
1 - 1 - 1
1 - 2 - 1
1 - 3 - 1
2 - 4 - 1
2 - 4 - 2
2 - 5 - 1
2 - 6 - 1
2 - 7 - 1
This is the sort order I get in the board view:
1 - 1 - 1
1 - 2 - 1
1 - 3 - 1
2 - 6 - 1
2 - 4 - 1
2 - 7 - 1
2 - 5 - 1
2 - 4 - 2
(Field Chronological Order left empty…)
So, I don’t get or it’s working other than my thoughts, or the Board view workst differently.
In the Timeline (Reading Order) and the StoryLine Navigator it works perfect like my first row ordering.
When I press “Resequence all scenes“ (Board View - Kanban) it orders it like this:
1 - 1 - 1
1 - 2 - 1
1 - 3 - 1
2 - 7 - 1
2 - 8 - 1
2 - 6 - 1
2 - 4 - 1
2 - 9 - 1
2 - 5 - 1
Thanks for your comment I will look into it.
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Hi Hans1,
Both issues are fixed in v1.9.3:
Board view sorting — The Board view now sorts by act → chapter → sequence (multi-key). Previously it was only sorting by the sequence field, which caused scenes in Act 2 to appear scrambled. Timeline and Navigator were already using the correct sort, which is why they worked fine for you.
Resequence — The “Resequence all scenes” button now renumbers sequences within each (act, chapter) group while preserving your existing chapter assignments. So your Act 2, Chapter 4 scenes will stay in Chapter 4 and get sequences 1, 2, etc. Previously, resequencing could overwrite chapter numbers.
After updating, your Board view should show the order you expect:
1-1-1, 1-2-1, 1-3-1, 2-4-1, 2-4-2, 2-5-1, 2-6-1, 2-7-1
Let me know if you still see any issues after updating!
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