RFC: Oblique Strategies | writing prompts, reflection, creator's block

crabtree · 2020-12-18T12:51:08.489Z

thanks both! really appreciate the insight. i’ll see what i can do to work in both use-cases and in the meantime if you have any further ideas then feel free to get in touch!

i’ll keep you posted on development.

jkb · 2020-12-30T11:32:58.759Z

I like the sound of the idea a lot – I have the Oblique Strategies in markdown files in my vault and link to them sometimes, I absolutely love them. I have had brief thoughts in the past about some kind of website/software for randomly spitting out cards, but wasn’t sure how cool it would be to share without permission. The physical cards are out of stock at https://www.enoshop.co.uk/product/oblique-strategies (could do handwritten/homemade on index cards?). There are quite a lot of links at http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/ but as as far as I can see, they are all very old and broken.

Some strategies I think about/could relate to note-taking/linking:

A line has two sides

The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten

State the problem in words as clearly as possible

Not building a wall but making a brick

Use fewer notes

(…or not )

miguelmarcos · 2020-12-30T12:35:09.384Z

I love the idea. When I thought about it what came to mind was that this is the Random Note Core Plugin restricted to a directory or collection of notes. This made me wonder if it’s not better to customize this core plugin to accept different parameters. Perhaps it could be done via the Command Palette: Random /Oblique picks a random note in the directory Oblique.

This would actually be useful for any directory. If I had an extensive set of notes for a certain topic I would appreciate the display of a random note in that collection.

jkb · 2020-12-31T12:14:08.045Z

There’s already a great “Smart Random Note” plugin that opens random notes from search results. Works well for this (edit to add link, not my work but am enjoying using it – https://github.com/erichalldev/obsidian-smart-random-note)

akaalias · 2021-01-05T11:08:58.714Z

Hi all,

I thought Eleanor’s custom/randomized prompts would be cool to prototype.

I’ve created a basic plugin to play around with. It’s not yet in the directory, but you can get it from https://github.com/akaalias/obsidian-shuffle/releases/ - (It can also be used to simply randomize oblique strategies, just update the settings and the template)

Here’s a quick overview:

Example

Input template

## Prompt
1. Include one of these words: $WORD, $WORD or $WORD
2. Begin with a word that starts with `$LETTER`
3. Take place in $LOCATION or $LOCATION

Randomized output:

## Prompt
1. Include one of these words: Wall, Wind or Book
2. Begin with a word that starts with `g`
3. Take place in London or Los Angeles

Personalized variables and template

Screenshot 2021-01-05 at 11 56 581948×1110 192 KB

Example randomized prompt in a new note

Screenshot 2021-01-05 at 11 57 10970×424 27.1 KB

Steps to install manually

Download the latest main.js, mainfest.json and style.css from https://github.com/akaalias/obsidian-shuffle/releases/
Create a new folder named ‘obsidian-shuffle’
Place the files in the folder
Place the folder in your .obsidian/plugins directory
Reload plugins
Activate the “Shuffle” plugin

Steps to use the plugin

Hit the ‘Dice’ button in the sidebar to generate a new prompt note
Customize your variable names, values and template to your liking in the settings

I’d love to hear y’alls feedback. I’m thinking we could put together different “prompt-packs” that could be automatically installed with a click of a button inside the settings.
A pack could be:

Oblique Strategies
Flash Fiction Prompts
Writing Prompts from /r/writingprompts

etc.

What do you think?

akaalias · 2021-01-05T14:39:57.371Z

PS: To demonstrate the idea of a ‘pack’, I’ve added Oblique Strategies to the settings. Just click the “Load Oblique Strategies” button and you can use them right away.

Screenshot 2021-01-05 at 15.31.491478×268 24.5 KB

If you have a cool set of prompts, please share and I’ll integrate it as a new ‘pack’.

EleanorKonik · 2021-01-05T16:07:58.475Z

I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS.

You betcha I’m going to get started on a fiction prompt pack right away.

akaalias · 2021-01-05T18:01:25.158Z

Amazing, thank you for sharing! Eleanor’s Flash Fiction pack is now available with release 0.0.3

=>

Screenshot 2021-01-05 at 18.38.531556×356 34.1 KB

crabtree · 2021-01-07T13:38:33.132Z

welp! this certainly wasn’t what i was expecting!

i’m really glad this thread led to something excellent. @EleanorKonik you must be over the moon!

@akaalias thanks for stepping in - i’m glad you liked the idea enough to make something of it! i’m a compsci student with a pretty solid workload so i wouldn’t have been able to work on this properly for a good while.

i suppose the only feature i really envisioned that appears to be missing (or perhaps i just missed it) is the ability to generate a [[note link]] in place to either the generated or found note if it already exists (e.g. if i ‘pull’ an OS card that i’ve already pulled before). although having said that it does feel a little cheeky asking for a feature request for something i was supposed to build

outrageously good work, one and all.

miguelmarcos · 2021-01-10T18:43:35.197Z

I ended up creating an Oblique Strategy directory with one note per Oblique Strategy card. Each note’s filename is prefixed: “Oblique Strategy” , so I do a search for that term then use the Smart Random Note on the search result. It’s perfect, expandable and future proof.

base · 2021-03-18T12:21:18.595Z

I find this very interesting. Would it be possible to have your promts/locations and so on be existing notes from a vault (filtered by tag/folder)?

My use case for this would be rather weird (write about law); but I think in connection with your (@akaalias) journey plug in it could be rather interesting. I’d use it as a creative review - outcome uncertain

Moonbase59 · 2021-04-11T22:15:21.647Z

Just found @EleanorKonik mentioning this in Fantasy fiction writing using Obsidian - A discussion with Eleanor Konik - YouTube and I’m hooked!

As a writer, I love Eleanor’s Flash Fiction Pack, but I can think of so many more uses …

Q1: Would it be possible to have more than 3 variables?
Q2: In what format should a “pack” be created? [Probably JSON, with multiple values delimited by \n?]
Q3: Why has the “Conversation Starter Pack” been commented out?

Moonbase59 · 2021-04-13T02:08:31.691Z

@crabtree/@akaalias: I got inspired by @EleanorKonik’s idea of a Flash Fiction Pack and created a German version. I attach my data.json file here. Feel free to include it as a “pack”!

Note: German writers might not know all typical U.S./U.K. “stock characters”, and I might not know all of those typically used in Germany, so bear with me and suggest improvements (or a link to a good list). For the time being, I used List of stock characters - Wikipedia and tried to translate these.

Suggestion: Would it be possible to include a “version” variable, an author name and a pack name, so pack authors could update their packs more easily?

data.json.zip (4.9 KB)

Result looks like this (so pretty much a clone, but with German words and different stock characters):

obsidian-shuffle-flash-fiction-german855×1035 68.3 KB

See also: Created German Flash Fiction pack, inspired by Eleanor’s idea · Issue #5 · akaalias/obsidian-shuffle · GitHub

miguelmarcos · 2021-04-13T14:53:55.744Z

@akaalias I just got to try this out. It’s fantastic. You’ve written some nifty plugins! A lot of others would benefit from making it a standard Obsidian plugin.

I’ve attached a list of nouns and places I scrounged up from the web. It’s in a Markdown document, in zip format. I’ve tested it and the plugin and Obsidian work fine with this volume of data.