Content Warning: The following post discusses hang-ups, trials, tribulations and what may be considered negative opinions of Obsidian knowledge management software. Obsidibros and Obsidipreneurs may find this content triggering . . .

JK. JK. In reality, I’m actually really enjoying using Obsidian for my writing, however, it hasn’t just been sunny skies and smooth sailing . . . hence the reason for these “journey” posts.

Anyway, it’s been about 6 months since Part 1 of My Obsidian Journey was posted on the blog, and almost a full year (10 months) since I began using Obsidian in general. At the time I’m writing this, my vault has grown from around 200 notes to 532.

Seventeen new posts have been written with the software and added to this blog but sadly little new fiction. I managed a flash piece for the April newsletter and have recorded premises for what feels like a thousand new stories, but is probably closer to only 10 or 20.

In some ways, this doesn’t feel like a ton of progress but I have suspicions that this has more to do with the artist than the tools. Spring and summer have been BUSY, and August even more so.

I should probably also consider that I’ve pretty much gone back to school in terms of writing style for my fiction, studying and attempting to learn a different mode than what I’m used to. It’s slow going, and often makes for little output. Hopefully you’ll begin to see the fruits of that labor very soon.

Nevertheless, there is a quote from the book Blood Sweat and Pixels which feels apropos of my my experience using Obsidian so far.

“Making a game is like constructing a building during an earthquake or trying to run a train as someone else is laying down track as you go…”

This is perhaps a bit dramatic in the context of writing with Obsidian, but I think it gets to the point of why using the software for writing can sometimes feel a bit difficult. Obsidian is a highly customizable software, which is serving a wide and variegated audience. It isn’t built just for fiction writers. Also, with new plugins, and standard features being added all the time, it’s constantly changing.

The ground is shaking while you’re trying to construct your building, and since it seems like you always need to write another note to connect to your current note, it can feel like your laying down the track after the train has already gone by.

The good news is, that quake seems to be shaking less and less with each passing day.

For instance, in my last post about Obsidian, I bemoaned the lack of a spell check feature. It has since been added. I also mentioned some plugins which would allow me to highlight text and create footnotes. I’ve given up using the plugins as I finally discovered how accomplish those functions using markdown (two equals signs ( = = ) in front of what you want to highlight).

I’ve learned to underline text with HTML.

Of course these examples are a bit small in the scope of things (though surprisingly cathartic to be able to accomplish); larger examples exist. I’ll share some of these higher level methods now, in hopes that they may be of some use to any fiction writers reading this post. Enjoy!

1. Draft Versioning with the “Slate Method”

One thing I was really struggling with while writing in Obsidian was managing my drafts and revisions. As any writer knows, sometimes you reach a certain point in a document, and you can just feel that it isn’t quite right. You want to start again but it feels a shame to delete all that work. What if you should change your mind? What are you to do?

Creating a new note seems like the obvious choice, and that is for the most part what I ended up doing in this scenario. However, the difficult bit was in the naming of the note. You want something easily identifiable so that you can go back to it later, but it also needs to be specific, and short is probably best so that the note name doesn’t get cut off in the sidebar.

I eventually ended up settling on a system which I’m calling the “Slate Method” which borrows from the film world.

You know that black piece of slate that disembodied hands clack together at the beginning of a take just after the director yells action? Well apparently all the gibberish scrawled across that slate is actually vital information, used by editors to determine what version of a scene they’re looking at.

Typically it will provide info like:
Name of Project

• Director
• Camera person
• Date it was shot
• Does the scene take place during the day or at night?
• Interior or exterior shot
• Synced Sound (is or isn’t)
• “roll” – generally the sequential video tape, film roll, or digital card number
• Scene – this changes every time the script moves to a new location or a new time.
• Take – what version number
• Camera setup – things like long, medium or wide shots. Differing points-of-view etc

Something that says Scene 2E Take 2 would be the camera setup E for scene 2 and it’s the second time it’s been filmed etc.

Obviously we don’t need all of the same information. I’m not even sure what “roll” would translate to for an author hahah. But we can use the strategy. For my current WIP, The Klatch of Clans, it ended up looking something like:

KC1.3 – Cofi Intro and Plots

So we have KC the story name, the number one, which is scene one, and then a .3 which means it’s my third attempt at the scene. Everything that comes after the dash vaguely reminds me what the scene is about.

If I whiff this attempt then I’m on to KC1.4 – Cofi Intro and Plots. If I finally get it down the way I want, then it’s on to KC2 – Cofi Leaves the Cook Tent. And then KC2.1 – Cofi Leaves the Cook Tent if that goes awry.

Make sense?

It’s been working well enough so far. Everything I’ve been writing recently has been a short story so I’m not sure how it will hold up with something longer like a novel. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Random Note Function

This one is helpful if you’re not sure what to work on, or just need a change of pace. Apparently there is a little icon on the left side of Obsidian which allows you to just open a random note. My original plan once I discovered this was to click it each morning when I sit down at the computer.

That hasn’t exactly been happening. Usually when I sit down to work, there’s ten things I’ve been trying to finish on the screen and I never get to opening up something random. But in theory, this could help when you’re unsure what to work on.

Dataview Plug-In

This plug-in searches for metadata that you can add to notes and then format the results into interesting tables like this one below:

This particular table keeps track of all the story premises I’ve started which involve a particular character, in this case, Bezmira.

I picked this trick up from Eleanor Konik, the obsidian master, in her Fiction Project Management video (around 15 min mark).

So far, my Fairy Tale Russia universe is the only thing large enough to really make any kind of use of this plug-in, but I have some ideas for how I might want to do so in the future. As with seemingly everything in Obsidian, the more you use it, the better it works, but right now while I don’t have that many notes tagged with metadata, it’s more potential than practical.

Mind Mapping with Canvas

Canvas has apparently been a standard feature of Obsidian for at least two years or so. But apparently I somehow never heard about it until just the other week.

I think this is what I’ll be using for storyboarding and outlining from now on. It’s pretty amazing what it can accomplish. From the picture below, you can see I’ve started a flow chart like outline for a story called Like Clockwork. I can drop small comments on the canvas or whole notes. I can put in images for inspiration too.

Authors will be familiar with try/fail cycles in their scenes, essentially your character should not just succeed at every little problem that comes her way. In the image, you can see some of the comments are highlighted red. These are the “fails” before the MC eventually succeeded. With it all laid out like this it’s quite easy to see, and there’s a grouping function which helps you categorize stuff into say . . . Act 1 . . . or ‘Approaches the Inmost Cave’ if you’re a Hero’s Journey person.

A tool that is often recommended to help when developing characters is called Scapple. I’ve tried it and never really figured out how to use it in a way that actually helped develop more multifacited characters. I’m anxious to see if this changes with Canvas which (IMHO) seems a bit more intuitive to use.

Finally you’ll notice I’ve got the actual text of my story open in a pane on the left hand side so I can just look at my outline and write to my heart’s content.

Very cool.

Some Stuff to Try and See

These are more Eleanor Konik tips and tricks, this time via Eric Goebelbecker’s post on her newsletter.

• LongForm Plugin – allows for managing long form projects in Obsidian
• Pandoc Plugin – allows you to export documents to Word, PDF, ePub, HTML, Pwoerpoint and LaTex (and more)

I haven’t tried any of these yet, but I will certainly be doing so as I look more towards long form writing again . . . whenever I decide to do that.

Yeesh! When will this Post End: My Final Thoughts

I can’t say that I’m a thousand times more productive, or that sometimes I don’t still get writers block. However, I feel like I am keeping track of things a lot better, and that alone seems to allow me to get a little closer to what I actually am trying to write. To think slightly deeper. Cut a little closer to the heart of the matter.

Perhaps that is not true, and my quality is the same as it has always been, but everything feels just a little sharper.

And for now, that is making all the difference.

That’s all for this week. Are any of you using Obsidian for fiction? For something else? How’s it working out for you? Any tips?

Leave your answers in the comments. See you next time!