Using Obsidian for Creative Writing: Community Plugins
Community Plugins on Obsidian
As a writer, I love using Obsidian for my creative writing projects. In an earlier blog post, I already showed you the basics that I love about Obsidian and how you can use them for your writing project, and in this blog post, I want to show you how to use Obsidian’s community plugins to further optimize and personalize your vault. Here are some of my favorite community plug-ins for my creative writing work:
How to download community plugins
Before you can use community plugins, you have to download them in Obsidian. Here is how to do it:
Go to “settings“ in your vault, and you will see the section “community plugins“ at the bottom of "options." Click on it. You then have to enable them. After that, you can start browsing through all of the different plugins that are available.
Currently, there are 1.766 different plugins, so it can be a little overwhelming if you just scroll through all of them. If you know what kind of plugin you want to have, you can also put a fitting keyword into the search bar to find it easier and faster. As soon as you find something you like, click on it, and you will get further information on the plugin:
Then click on "install,“ and you’ll get to this page:
In order to be able to use community plugins, you have to enable them after installing them. Click on the “enable“ button, and you’re ready to go!
2. April’s Automatic Timelines
Now that I’ve quickly shown you how to install the plugins, let’s take a look at my favorites for my creative writing projects. The first one that I want to show you is April’s Automatic Timelines.
I use it to quickly create timelines for my story’s plot so that I know what happens when (because I do tend to mix things up easily). To use it, you first create a new page and put the following information into a markdown code block at the very beginning of the page:
You then add some metadata (markdown code block at the beginning of the page) to the notes that you want to appear in the timeline:
This can look something like this:
Now add the metadata to every note that you want to appear in your timeline, and you get something like this:
I really do enjoy this feature a lot, because it makes it easier to plan out my whole plot and also to keep in mind when certain scenes are happening (e.g., what happens right before? What happens at the same time? What season does it happen in: winter, spring, summer, or fall?)
Definitely a cool feature for all writers!
3. Charts & Charts View
Every time I am working on something, I make sure to create a chart as well to keep an eye on how far I am in the process. You can use either “charts“ or the plugin “charts view“; I use both. Here is an example of what these charts can look like:
Here, for example, I created a pie chart that shows me how many weeks I want to work on what part of my story. I added this to the homepage of my story vault to always keep an eye on it.
Or I create a chart to document how much I have already managed to finish for one specific task.
I just like the look of charts in my notes, so I really enjoy this plugin.
4. Colored Text
The next one is quite simple, but you need a plugin to use it in Obsidian. I like it when I can use different colored text, so I downloaded it to my vault.
In the settings for “Colored Text," you can select how many color options should be shown, and you can also see your favorite colors.
While writing your notes, you will see this bar at the bottom of the page (or sometimes at the top of the page, depending on what template you’re using). In order to use the colors, you type out your text normally and later click on the highlighter pen icon, select a color, and then click on the words you want to be in a different color. You can also change the colors; just click twice on a color you want to change.
5. Iconize
This is another plugin I use for aesthetic reasons. Search up the plugin "iconize," install and enable it, and then scroll far down in the settings of your vault to find “community plugins." Click on “iconize“ and scroll far down again. There you will find the option “browse icon packs." If you click on it, you can install different plugin packs and use them in your vault. This can look something like this:
This plugin just gives me the option to personalize my vault a little more, and I love it!
6. Image Converter
I really like to include pictures in my vaults: inspiration pictures for my characters, for scenes, or for a setting. But sometimes the pictures are way too big, so with this plugin, you can easily resize them. Simple, but cool plugin.
7. Longform
This plugin is by far the coolest for writers, I think, because it helps you write your whole manuscript in Obsidian. Let me show you:
As soon as you install and enable it, you can see this book icon in the top corner of your vault. Click on it.
You can now create different notes for all of your scenes, and you can easily change their order through drag and drop. When you click on "project," you can see information such as "title," “scene template," “word count," and you can create different drafts as well.
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