With LegendFiction, we do our darndest to inspire you to double or triple your writing output - because you're having so much fun.
You know the stories you heard about fiction authors, heroes, and writers? The lovers of Jedi, wizards, demigods, halfbloods, dragonborn, hobbits, superheroes, aliens... They’re real. If you ever feel like you don’t fit, like the world doesn’t make sense, then you might be a part of our world.
You might have the calling of legend. So don’t give up. We might need you.
Follow for writing inspiration for faith-inspired fiction, writing tips, occasional hilarity, and announcements from our community.
THE COMMUNITY
The fiction writing community for Catholic & Orthodox authors. Give and get feedback, join online workshops, and triple your writing output - because it’s fun!
Пікірлер
It's not free, is it?
Scrivener - it's a one off fee and brilliant for writing novels. There's loads of stuff online about it. Can't recommend it enough as it's actually designed for writing novels rather than business reports like word/google docs etc.
Good call! Never used it yet. Thanks for the recommendation!
There is no love triangle here. Just Aragorn Respecting Eowyn but being completely steadfast to Arwen. Eowyn sees him as a way our of her situation.
I usually use novelWriter, a Qt application on Linux. But as I'm still in the experimentation phase, KZread finally suggested your video to me.
Ive been watching novelwriter for a while. Love the interface. Hope you have fun in your adventures!
Obsidian vs Novel Crafter anyone? (novel crafter has become tedious and bloated with impractical features) Ive been having success with Notion AI for organizing my books and Gemini 1.5 for larger chapters and 'notion' is waaaaay more user friendly than Novel Crafter... But just hearing of this Obsidian now ill check it out
hope it works out well for you!
joe goldberg?
Hey how did you change the canvas background? I changed it back to dark mode but the canvas background is still in light mode.
First, Warpheonix is a crazy dope name. And 2, you might need to check the CSS file - I probably added a line of code that you can remove.
Try reading The Wheel of Time. Every character is broody and anxty. Every. Single. Character. I love the series; it's one of my favorites. But some well-placed levity wouldn't have gone amiss. And if you hate love triangles, you should watch a few K-dramas... 😂
Oh gosh, I've seen K dramas. That ain't a triangle. That's a more complex shape. 😂
@@katharinecampbell2524 Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!
exactly what i need. thanks for sharing!
I'm very glad! Have fun!
Personally I like Notion more. I do not say that it is better or easier, I just like it more. Obsidian, I haven't tried it yet but I have seen many videos about it.
thanks for chiming in. I tried Notion for a little while. Its quite powerful.
I’m currently on a writing block/ procrastinating but maybe this can help me come out of it and start writing again. Thank you for showing this😄
I'm very glad! Keep at it!
@@legendfiction will do, or try at least
I've been using Obsidian for the last year. While I like the program generally, I use it for notes and research and journaling, but I found it wasn't quite write for my novel and it's not open source (and for commercial use, you have to pay a fee. Remember that if you're operating your own publishing company). I've been using ywriter for years but recently fell out of love for it because it doesn't have the ability to make deeper hierarchies, which makes sense because it was programmed by one guy and started in the early 2000s and it's a good program, but it hasn't evolved a lot. My main points for ywriter is the exports it's capable of, like exporting the whole project to html or ebook, the character reports (complete with images) and other such automated tools. I'm planning on moving to novelWriter which is open source, and looks and works quite a bit like Obsidian with specific tools for novel writing, like outline views, notes and worldbuilding and the ability to have multiple books in the same project for a series so everything's easily referenced. The downside is that it doesn't support image files and they say they have no intention of doing so in the future, but hey, open source. No fee for commercial use necessary, either. It just needs more people to contribute and implement an image support. I'm pretty sure it and Obsidian are based on the same framework because the interface is extremely similar.
I was going to be mad that this video is a 19min ad, but then I saw it's free for personal use. If it's even close to as useful as the (imo) expensive Scrivener, I'm in. I'll give it a try...wearily.
Hope you find it helpful... and its not an ad. It's just me sharing my workflow. But hey, Obsidian... if you're noticing, I'll take my paycheck now!
So glad you shared this. Thanks for sharing. I'm new to using obsidian. Do you know how I can clone this template on Obsidian? Anybody would help me with is?
I recommend spending an hour or so watching 'How to use Obsidian' tutorials. Find a creator you like. This is me messing around with it after about 2 hours.
Nifty. I share a similar hierarchy and template for fiction writing with Joplin. But I didn't prepopulate it with a story like you did. Fancy fancy! :) I may replicate your idea in some way. Anyway. Indeed, I write and revise on the Joplin platform for 99% of the process. These note organization software applications make it a much more enjoyable process.
Very cool! I've not yet investigated Joplin. Thanks for the note!
@@legendfiction Joplin is more flexible, and customizable, and has better sync features, but it doesn't have the Canvas (and I haven't tried Joplin's kanban stuff). I use Obsidian just for the Canvas feature. And Joplin for everything else.
The problem with it is that even when paid for the more expensive subscription tier for sync, the sync itself is still extremely limited, especially when you consider it's 2024 and the sync should be basic optional feature when you pay for it...
Good to know. Thanks for chiming in!
hi nice video what do you do to avoid the pictures showing in your side bar and making a mess?
I don't remember that feature! peobably poked through the settings and disabled everything that didnt feel obvious to me. Over time, I switch things back on as I realise I need them.
Bear in mind the beginning of Two Towers is not actually the beginning of a second book. Tolkien wrote LOTR as a single-volume story. The publisher split it up into three volumes because the printing technology of the day couldn't handle a massive 1000+ page tome (which would've driven Brandon Sanderson crazy). ;)
Thanks a good point! Tolkien assumes I'm invested already!
Looks great. I am using Trello in combination with spreadsheets, google docs, notes, Twine, Scapple and Pinterest. The only thing I am missing is Trello's project management for when you want to collaborate with others and work with time constraints?
I agree that Boromir was better in the movie. I think that was possibly the only thing better than the book (and I think the movies were good). But I will agree that Boromir was improved by the film. I also agree about the book Merry and Pippin being far superior than the movie version. The only Hobbit that could have walked right off the pages of the book was Sam.
Thank goodness, I have one supporter! I won't tell anyone that you're my mom!
Katy is on the road, and so is the entire Fellowship. 🤣You can get through Two Towers, no problem. I suggest taking breaks from it and listening to something more exciting from time to time... Just throwing in an additional safety trip... tip... Safety tip.
Seriously! The whole first part is just a long road trip. So relatable. It's definitely way easier listening to the audio book than reading too because I can zone out when nothing is happening. 😂
Thanks for the safety trip.
Hi! Thank you for the template, but I can't get it to work properly. Nothing is linked and none of the plugins are installed, but I get the idea of the template. Can I please just get a list of your plugins?
Im sorry its not easy for you to work with. You'll find the list of plugins in a folder available in the zip file!
Thanks!
it's funny I clicked on this video because Obsidian is a studio renowned for their great writing, but it has nothing to do with them lol
What about Scrivener?
I never paid for it, so I havent used it. But in watching others use it, they do really well. I just don't like the interface. Too busy for me!
@@legendfiction I don’t like Scrivener.. it seemed like a good idea when it debuted, but it hasn’t kept up, and the labyrinthine workflow never helped me. I was also terrified it would overwrite work during sync between devices. Now I hardwire it all on BOOX Note then go back and tag the notes, with push to obsidian enabled, so it all shows up in Obsidian
I'm not as smart with tech, so Im glad it makes sense to you!
Honestly love this. My ADHD is an absolute nightmare with organization, and I think having this will help a ton. This tool looks incredible, I can't wait to try it out tonight :)
How cool! I also have ADHD, so the calm neatness really appeals to me. Hope you have fun with it!
The Silmarillion elves are much better than LOTR elves, and also explain the LOTR elves. Tolkien worried people wouldn’t be interested in the Silmarillion because it wasn’t “Gamgified”, i.e. no hobbits. My trick for reading TTT (granted I was young) was to read the second part first. I followed Frodo and Sam before I ventured into what Legolas’ elf eyes could see.
Not sure I am going to make it to the Silmarillion. Maybe if I love TTT and ROTK I'll try it but based on my experience with Fellowship, I'm thinking Tolkien might be right. I need hobbits to survive elves.
I'll admit, every time I've read LOTR, I've gotten bogged down in the Two Towers and the beginning of Return of the King. I had a point where I put down Return of the King for several years before I gHlted myself into picking it back up and finishing it. (I'd gotten stuck toward the beginning where Gandalf and Pippin are still making their way to Gondor). If you want some good pop action, I recommend Robert Howard's Conan stories. Phenomenal. No one writes action like Robert Howard... except, of course, Howard Lamb.
This is great to know because even though I am road-tripping next week, I doubt I can handle 40 hours of LOTRs straight.
@@katharinecampbell2524 Try Dune. Tolkien hated it. You'll love it. 🤣
Just discovered your channel today and I love your content. You seem so centred and sincere. No BS content and very useful. Thank you so much! Subscribed, hit the like button and even shared with a few author friends.
That's really nice of you! Totally made my day here. Glad its helpful, and hope to follow more of your journey.
I installed your template. It works really well.
I'm really glad!
@@legendfiction Thanks. I’m new to Obsidian and want to use it for writing historical novels (fiction based around actual events) and collecting research materials towards publishing. I will need notes of all types and materials. Can you reccommend a channel that can guide me through setup and collecting from various sources, preferably at beginner level? Any advice will be greatly appreciated. M
I don't have a favorite channel for learning Obsidian yet. I just watched a bunch of random videos to get an overview of it. wish i could be more helpful!
This is real encouraging. Going to try it today. Does anyone know if the pc version and mobile version sync(found it on iPad)?
good for you! I think they do if you pay for the full version of obsidian. I haven't done that yet. :)
Interesting usage. I use Joplin for all of my writing, research notes, and really to organize everything in my life. It's like Obsidian, mostly in that, at it's core, it's a notes management application. I tried Obsidian for awhile but went back to Joplin, though I don't think there is a canvas-like plug-in for Joplin. Not yet anyway. (New plugins for Joplin seem to arrive continuously.) I use Joplin as a giant notebook management application, with each scene, or poem, or short story, or research item, or world-building now … as separate notes. Joplin is far more customizable than any other notes management platform or there, if you know your CSS. After years of using it, my user experience is very customized. Joplin synchronizes between my writing desk computer, my phone, and laptop, all fully encrypted and in the cloud. I do pay for the developer's cloud service. (Though you can host your own synchronization through Dropbox and other services.) I pay the nominal monthly fee because the Joplin Cloud service includes a public publication feature that I use to share scenes and things with my critique group and others. Anyway. Joplin is fantastic and I prefer it over Obsidian, though it's been some time since I used Obsidian. The canvas feature didn't exist then. Maybe I will try it again and use Obsidian just for that brainstorming feature. Joplin does have the same looking features (your wiki concept) and can show that same graph view. Good video. Thanks for sharing.
Is it just me or is there a delay in the voiceover? Maybe I'm crazy, haha. Either way, this seems like an awesome program and I can't wait to use it!
nope, you're not crazy. I accidentally left a gap when I was doing a trim on the video. It was meant to be for 2 friends, so I wasn't worried about it being perfect. LOL now its out there making a ton of friends I didn't expect. Hope you have fun with it!
I'm using Doom Emacs with Org-Roam. Mainly because it allows me to just create functions specific to how I like to work. Entry is really fast. Single key-presses call the most common tasks. It's my main hub that pushes to Obsidian for specific franchises / projects. So Emacs has everything in a way that would bring Obsidian down too much in performance. But using custom links that call Obsidian pages/vaults is pretty close to my ideal setup. Proper Desktop Bus support would make it more seamless.
I have no idea what this means, but I'm really glad you do. (not tech savvy on this end!) Thanks for stopping by :)
@@legendfiction if you ever want to give Emacs a try anyway: I made an Emacs for Writers repository on GitHub. It’s based on Spacemacs which is slower than Doom but more beginner friendly. It’s what I learned Emacs with. If I put a link here, the comment just gets removed again.
I'm quality assurance engineer, and I work with Obsidian myself. Honestly I use it with zettelkasten methodology, and it works perfectly. I'm more of note-oriented person, than building worlds, but projects and features I have designed in hub/second-brain like method, and I can easily go around and search relationships between features
how cool to have you stop by :) thanks for the comment!
@@legendfiction my feed is so random that it showed up to me, your workflow looks neat and nice
"fiction novels". in other words, novels. but thank you!
lol yeah... can't blame a guy for keywords :)
Hello ! This is a bit of a superficial comment, but I was watching your video when I realized that you have a very nice collection of symbols, in the library displaying the titles of your notes on the left of your screen. Do you remember where you got them or how I can get them ? Also I apologize if my English isn't clearly understandable, I can rephrase if necessary !
Not superficial at all! I really like having those icons. You can use the community plugin Iconize to download packs and assign them.
@@legendfiction Oh so that's a plugin! Thanks a lot for your answer! I discovered Obsidian yesterday, and your video really helped me understand how to organize and use the app to its best potential. Your explanations and classification are inspiring !
Very helpful advice. Very daunting. Very daunting
agreed! Some folk have an edge like hers!
Such neat ideas -- I like the way you think about writing. I have Notes from a dozen sources or so for world building -- ready to get a little more complicated. I want to use Dataview to make lists while I'm weaving subplots and character arcs... We'll see how it goes.
Hope you have fun with it!
Thanks for the demo. I haven't used this app. I've used Scrivener for many years now, and have adapted it to a variety of uses--not limited to writing. Hell, I keep my guitar collection in a Scrivener file, including images, links to the sales page, and many more details. When it comes time to worldbuilding, I create a number of folders to keep everything organized--much like you've done here. I also use Scrapple that's a fairly limited, yet still useful 'murder board' app to plan out stories and characters. However this app allows for far more than Scrapple, so I'll likely give Obsidian a shot for an upcoming project (the planning phase). I'll likely continue using Scrivener for the actual writing. Thanks again.
Rivendell elves = Awesome drinking buddies. Lothlorien elves = pretentious college grads. The Lothlorien elves are the Crane Brothers of Middle Earth (you'll get it if you've seen the Frasier TV series).
LOL
XD Love it!
I would definitely use gpt4
Using AI to write fiction just feels gross.
Agreed. Thats why its a good brainstorming tool.
Hey! I would like to ask how did you make something like your scenes tab possible? I mean, I don't find such a function in obsidian. Is this some kind of plugin? This feature looks very cool❤
Hey there, you mean the Kanban board? Toggle that on in the main settings.
@legendfiction I am new to obsidian, can you do a video showing how to import this template into obsidian? Thanks!!!
You'll only need to download, unzip, and then open a new vault, and tell Obsidian to choose the new folder as the new vault. Please watch some Obsidian tutorials, and they will be helpful!
Prefect so far I’ve been handwriting a lot of my book, I’m almost more than 3/4 of the way done. But mostly this helps save me time since I’m mostly rewriting and editing stuff since for my first draft I had everything all jumbled up together since I just wanted to write as much as I can about the world, now I’m just seeing what parts to take out or add. Thanks so much for this.
Really glad its helpful. :) I hand wrote my first novel when I was a kid. It's a valuable experience.
Looks like a versatile tool that could be used for novels, role-playing games, film scripts, and more. I'm wondering even about historians using it to organize writing projects, research, footnotes, bibliographies. Is there a feature built in that already incorporates footnotes/citations and citation styles (Chicago Style, etc.?)
You're right! folk use it for all sorts of reasons, exactly as you describe. For footnotes, great question; I've not needed it yet, so I can't say. you'll want to explore their community plugins, or they have some relatively simple coding where you can link to external notes, then display them inline.
I've used Scrivener for years, but I really love Obsidian. Mostly planned on using Obsidian for my TTRPG games. They are very similar in so many ways, but now that I'm starting some rewrites I'm considering using Obsidian. I'm restructuring a lot of what I do, so I may as well try this.
How cool! Thanks for dropping by. I've not used Scrivener. What do you like more about Obsidian?
@@legendfiction I currently use it to create a database of my life. Personal things like my library and my professional gear (I'm a filmmaker). I don't know if I like Obsidian more than Scrivener. However, I've been thinking of using Obsidian for part of the writing process. Which would still include Scrivener.
smart. good for you!
highly valuable videos, keep going and thanks for the gift !
very glad they're helpful!
I have a writing friend who is so anti-technology (when it intersects with the arts) that she writes her early drafts longhand. To annoy her (in a friendly way) I gleefully chronicle all the details of my writer app journey with her. I've tried and liked many of them, but these are the ones that have made it into my routine. Obsidian: (Free) It took a little extra work on the front end, but it's allowed me to create a Story Bible or world codex for my novel series in the way that perfectly lines up with my haphazard process of deep worldbuilding, but also accounts for my laziness. I'd used Scrivener, and it was just not quite interactive enough for how I work. I then gravitated to World Anvil, and loved its interlinking and depth, but it was just a couple of notches too clunky for how I work, and the layout is too specific for how I work. I'm still going to use it as the ultimate public wiki for my story, but for my development and usage in my actual writing process, Obsidian has become the invaluable tool for storing all my lore and allowing me to access it as I write, in the way I write. Novelcrafter: (Monthly Subscription) I generally had always just used Word or Google Docs to do my base writing. But then I discovered Novelcrafter during its beta phase and started using it. For me, Novelcrafter has the best structure for an actual writer. It facilitates you setting up multiple books in a series (as I'm writing) and has a very intuitive way it lets you set up all your books, acts, and scenes. It's the best part of Scrivener's writing structure, but streamlined and interactive. What I especially love is its Codex feature that allows you to designate characters, locations, lore, etc and to track them as you write. For the characters, for example, as you type their name (or any alias or nickname you use for them) it'll give you a subtle hyperlink that when you click on it, their mini info page will pop up. You can easily put in primary lore but also all your notes as well as links to associated characters and lore. It also shows you in this pop-up all the appearances of that codex entry in the novel. So, all the stuff I create in Obsidian, the important stuff gets transported to that codex entry. So incredibly valuable, especially if you have a thousand characters and bits of lore to keep track of. You can also color code these entries, and I find that invaluable to, at a glance, see that it's been too many paragraphs since I've mentioned a characters proper name and have just been typing "he" endlessly. Something that Novelcrafter is most known for, and that I don't use it for at all, is its AI integration. In theory, Novelcrafter can write some or all of your book based on just your codex entries. It pulls from your codex to populate internally-created prompts and can continue chapters for you or create paragraphs in the middle of a chapter using your style (I've had little success with it even remotely matching my style). But where I do find lots of use is its "rephrase" feature, where you can highlight a sentence or paragraph and using any AI model you have access to (Chat GPT Turbo, Claude, etc) it will rewrite the phrase. I find that maybe 20% of the time, it gives me a great suggestion that I incorporate some or all of it. It's great at identifying tense problems or breaking up run-on sentences into shorter individual sentences. Lots more stuff about Novelcrafter I haven't even mentioned in this wordy section, but it's become my seamless, invaluable writing app that does everything like how I want it done. Azgaar Fantasy Map Generator: (Free) This is the densest app, but just ridiculously functional and allows you to use it at the level of depth you choose. I am writing a fantasy novel with the requisite map. I've tried lots of paid and free map-making options, but this is the most fully-featured by a landslide. But it's a lot of effort to learn enough of it to make a basic map. But so well worth it. It will generate a fully-formed random map for you based on if you want an island, continent, world of many continents, etc. You just keep randomizing until you get a shape and structure you like. It has ENDLESS ways for you to divide up the map into countries, add zones of religious influence, or cultural backgrounds for regions (that can differ from the country borders), you can determine climate zones and patterns. You can create each city or town manually or let it randomly generate every town in your world based on the type of population data you set up It'll place these cities where they logically would develop in each region. It will name the cities based on any cultural or language you establish that region to have, and will even let you upload your own fantasy language (or small database of words ) that it will then extrapolate from to create new words to make cities and towns. It'll even simulate battles for you if you want. It's ridiculous how detailed it is. Oh, and it'll determine for you how long it would take a person to walk, or ride by horse or whatever, from one city to another, taking into account the terrain. I'm only using maybe 5% of this app's capability at this point. This app is endlessly valuable if you're creating a fantasy world. Aeon Timeline: (One-time purchase) The newest entry to my toolbox is the best option I've found for making a detailed set of timelines. I'd tried using Kanbans and spreadsheets and mind-mapping tools to give me the functionality I've needed, but none of them were flexible enough. Aeon Timeline lays it all out in ways that work specifically for worldbuilding and novel writing. I have recreated the entire timeline of my fantasy world's history (thousands of years) in a way that lets you note Eras, Events, Relationships, Lore, and all the individual characters and locations associated with each thing. They all cross-reference each other and cross-pollinate. A great variety of ways of interacting with the timeline data, from a pure timeline structure, but also as a spreadsheet, mind-map, subway, and outline (and others). It's great for worldbuilding and history, but it's also great for plotting out and tracking the beats of your story, minute by minute if you need that level of detail. It's a bit of work having to input all the same characters and lore that you've created in other apps, but once it's in there, it's as invaluable as the other apps. Aeon Timeline syncs with Scrivener, but I'm not using Scrivener actively anymore, so I can't speak to that. With all these apps, I wish they all directly spoke to each other so I only had to input the information once and it populates everywhere a character or location is mentioned. But at the same time, I have found it very helpful to have these things all separated from each other, so when I go to use that particular app, I can stay more focused on why I opened that app, rather than just descending into worldbuilding madness. The one integration that I'm still looking for a great app for is Family Trees. Aeon Timeline MIGHT have a usable workaround, but I'd like to find a really good family tree app that allows me to input all my characters and their relationships and utilizes my world's timeline. I've used dedicated genealogy programs, but those usually don't let you use your own made-up fantasy calendar.
What an insanely cool comment with so much helpful detail and resources! I'm also seriously looking at novelcrafter because it maybe a superior novel writing experience that's beautiful and also affordable.
thank you so much for the video it helped me alot ~ but can i ask for the image that u used at the start of the video i fall in love with it ... i want to use it as wallpaper <3
It is a graphic I generated with Midjourney :) Here is a link to it: drive.google.com/file/d/1T88lfLo3Uy796LCThhtIv50DXurfzXdN/view?usp=drivesdk
@@legendfiction THANK YOU so much !!~~ amd yes i love it ~
I do too! one of my favorites :)