Keeping track of your worldbuilding

image of Obsidian.md

So I've got a lot of worlds in my head. From Aeolwyn's Conquest to the world of Olga the Heroic to some other stuff I'm not gonna talk about yet. That's a lot of stuff, and when you're doing a 5 book series like Aeolwyn's Conquest, it can be hard to keep track of where each character is, what they're doing, and what they've said about other stuff.

I've always used Word and Excel to keep track of stuff as a writer, but when I was a game designer, I used all sorts of different tools, from wiki articles to power points. I even wrote an article about it on GameCareerGuide.com. (hopefully that link still works). and while we're at it, here's a blog post from my old game designer website about a similar topic: Keeping Track of Your Work As a Game Designer

So what do I do when worlds get too big for my head? Well, I've never had that problem before. (I gotta big head!)

But I'm getting pretty busy with my writing, and really, really need a better solution than consulting Excel or hunting through a previous book's manuscript for new information, so I've been on the hunt for something new.

I checked out all sorts of different things, which I'm not going to review (google exists, after all). I had a few specific requirements:

• I had to own the data (no cloud solutions)

• It had to be accessible offline

• It had to be able to be synced cross different computers. (for my desktop, laptop, etc)

• Had to have robust world-building with a spot for maps, images, etc

• Low cost with no monthly subscription

Like I said, there's a lot of worldbuilding and writing planning tools out there, but not very many fit my requirements. I finally settled on two options: obisidan.md, and Plottr.

Obsidian is free, and Plottr has a lifetime cost of $199, which I thought was reasonable. (they also have a monthly subscription, but F that.

Plottr is more focused on the writing and planning aspects. It had some neat features for outlining and hitting beats, and even templates for stuff like the 3-act form and the Hero's Journey. Neat stuff.

Obsidian didn't have any of that stuff. All it really was is a notetaking tool that can link notes to other notes. Neat. But it has tons of plugins that were created by the community. One guy extended it so much, he uses it to manage all of his TTRPG. Check this out:

So, despite being more complicated, I chose Obsidian. Mostly because I've got a well-honed excel process for outlining and planning, and I didn't want to change that right in the middle of a big project (like Aeolwyn's Conquest).

Some of the great stuff about Obsidian is that I can configure it however I like, and If I store the files in my OneDrive writing directory, it'll automatically sync across all my writing devices. (it even has an android app, but I haven't tried that out yet.)

So, once I get my backlog on AC to a point where I can take a break (I'm almost done with Book 2) I'm going to dive into moving all my world building data into obsidian. I've already started work on it (as you can see in the top screenshot). It's going to be a lot of work, and I've got to focus on not getting too deep into the weeds (thinks like irrelevant details and images for all the characters). But it's going to help me a ton!