I would love if Aeon Timeline could work with Plottr. Both of these sync with Scrivener, so they should be able to work together as well.
Events in the Timeline syncing to our Scenes in Plottr.
Relevant characters for each scene/event syncing up (add a character that’s already in the apps to Aeon or Plottr and it syncs with the other app, assuming the same character name is used).
Being able to add the date from the Aeon Event as a custom Attribute.
Other fun things I may have missed
You can sync both through Scrivener.
Hmm. As someone who a few weeks ago ditched Plottr for Aeon Timeline and never looked back, I’m having a hard time understanding why it would be helpful to use both Plottr and Aeon Timeline when Aeon Timeline is just so much more robust. (@Faustyna, please don’t feel you have to defend your choice – we each have our own workflows. It’s just that I’m curious.)
I know this is a fairly old reply, but I just returned to using this and still wish it would all sync.
I think Plottr’s timeline is easier to move around and work through in some ways to Aeon, and it has more character and place wouldbuilding. Sometimes I like to work in one over the other, and if it would all sync up that would be perfect.
Makes sense, @Faustyna.
In the last few weeks, I’ve done something quite different. I’ve moved my entire novel-writing process into Obsidian. I haven’t ruled out returning to the Aeon/Scrivener combo (which I still like and support with a subscription), but so far I find Obsidian, now that I have it set up the way I want, lets me do things I simply can’t do with Obsidian/Scrivener and the few things that Aeon/Scrivener do better, I don’t miss.
I’ve been trying out Obsidian, actually! The fact that it’s markdown sort of annoys me, actually, but I’m trying to make it all work together.
For my ‘Worldbuilding Bible’ I use OneNote, and I just haven’t found another app that can let me have floating text boxes the same way. But I can’t really link OneNote to Scrivener or Aeon, and overall I’m working with like 4 programs when ideally I’d be working in one, or two tops.
Still playing around with it. I have heard people somehow integrating Obsidian into Scrivener, but unsure how. I think by syncing the external folders with each other?
That said, what we do have with technology is amazing, and given that 50 years ago we’d have to just deal with a ton of notebooks and papers, I am grateful for what we have.
I, too, have been on a quest to find one app that can do what I need, as is apparent when I started this thread.
I learned about Obsidian here, on this forum, though it was suggested as a note-taking app. When I checked it out, I began to realize that it is a full-fledged writing app, and powerfully extensible with community plugins.
I began to wonder if I could use it not just for note-taking, but for writing my novel. Could I finally do everything in just one app? The more I explored this idea, the more convinced I became that I had found, if not the perfect app (which probably doesn’t exist), an app that would let me do everything I need as a novelist in a way that doesn’t create friction and frustration by having to use two or more apps.
The thing about Obsidian is that I can use it the way I want. I don’t have to conform to any particular app developer’s idea of how things should work. I’ve been able to do sophisticated tracking of absolutely everything that I track in Aeon Timeline, but in a way that is much more flexible and intuitive.
Probably the most valuable discovery is that I can just create a character, or object, or place, or whatever, as I write and then instantly create a story bible page without even taking my eyes off the writing. It is, essentially, frictionless. My creativity does not get interrupted by having to navigate other apps.
In fairness, Obsidian doesn’t have the kind of timeline functionality that is the hallmark of Aeon Timeline, and at first that was a concern. But it turns out I don’t need that as I can use a plugin that lets me create custom tables, including tables with start and end dates for each scene. For writing fiction, I can then just select the table I want and sort it by dates to see my chronology. Or I can create a table of characters by scene – showing me which characters are in a given scene. The possibilities are endless.
The fact that it uses markdown doesn’t bother me. First, it’s simple to learn (took me five minutes). Second, the files are saved as text files using markdown. That means that no matter what happens to the app down the line, I’ll be able to access the files either in a text editor or another app that reads markdown. It’s future-proof. Third, there is a community plugin that gives you a toolbar for text formatting, in case you don’t want to deal with markdown.
That said, I continue to stay connected with Aeon Timeline because of how well it worked for me. I keep expecting to hit some roadblock in Obsidian that would give me a reason to return to the Aeon Timeline/Scrivener combo. So far, though, after several weeks, I haven’t. Time will tell, I guess.
I will look into Obsidian some more then, I might have missed something that made it all ‘click’ together for me, and I don’t mind giving it another shot! May I ask what plug-ins you’re using?
My only concern for the calendar is that I have a unique fantasy calendar that Aeon understands, but other programs may not due to it being not the real-life calendar. Though I’m sure there’s a work-around somewhere.
I believe there is a fantasy calendar plugin for Obsidian – though I’m not sure. My take about Obsidian is that its calendar plugins are not very helpful for novelists, so if that’s important, I think Aeon Timeline is the right tool. In my case, I don’t need a timeline as I could use the Dataview plugin to track what I need according to date or any other parameter.
Here are my plugins:
Theme: Minimal Theme
Core plugins. All core plugins are activated except:
Community Plugins. Those marked with “*” are especially useful for novel plotting and writing:
You should check out the Longform plugin, as well, though I don’t use it.
Hope this helps.
Hi Steve,
I found your reply interesting. Mostly because it’s great you’ve found a potential one app solution with Obsidian. But also because I too have tried a few times to use Obsidian and its various plugins to write my fiction. Data view is an amazing plugin and is super useful for generating an outline in tabular form much like Aeon and Scrivener do. I also tried a lot of the plugins you mention, along with Longform. But it just didn’t gel with me.
However, Obsidian has come a long way in the past year or so. Many of the third party plugins have now been melded into core functionality and so your post made me wonder whether I should take another look. But, like you, I have already found my one app solution and it suits my needs much better than Obsidian ever could. What is this app? My beloved Ulysses.
I was finding it frustrating waiting for Aeon to implement narrative order in other views. And, ironically for a user of a timeline software, I found I rarely used the timeline view in Aeon. So I bought a license for Plottr. I found it rough around the edges but preferred its focus on writing and story structure and narrative, as well as its large text boxes and ability to get text out and work with it unhindered. But the timeline view is clunky and buggy and they don’t seem quick to fix bugs.
So I took Plottr’s approach and made Ulysses work effectively in the same way. By using the app’s Material Sheets feature, I can add detailed, rich, narrative ordered plot info direct into my writing space. And, using their filters, groups and other organisational features, I can isolate the outline for my book both separately and also as ‘attachments’ to the scenes I’m writing. So I can see the bigger picture as well as the finer detail.
I envisage syncing everything into Aeon and pulling it apart to analyse it once the first draft is written. But until then, I feel like a sculptor who has become reconnected with his chisel. An artist at one with his medium again. Uninterrupted.
For the past week I’ve been going round trying to come up with a one-or-two app solution that fits all of my needs, and sadly I think I’ll have to stick with the mesh of things I’ve been using.
I love Aeon and how it helps me work out the order of things, and when/where it all happens. It’s easiest for me to plot when I have a timeline I can work with.
I do have it sync with Scrivener though, so I can see the notecards more easily, and work on summaries that way.
Similarly, I have Characters in Scrivener so I can look at things like birthdays faster, or quick reference tidbits, small facts, or the color of someone’s eyes.
But my main worldbuilding tool is OneNote. It has the best system for me to link it all together, and hop from one section to another. I have tried alternatives and they just don’t work with me- I can’t find anything else with ‘floating text boxes’ that is so easy to use. I finally realized I can copy/paste the link of a certain OneNote page into the ‘Notes’ section of Scrivener for the corrosponding item/person/book, and it will open that page in the OneNote app for me (as a bookmark in Scrivener it won’t work), so that’s as close as I can get to getting it all to ‘sync.’
It’s a hodgepodge that I wish would better work together, but it’s what I have right now. Maybe one day Plottr will sync with Aeon and Scrivener and I can move my OneNote stuff there, but as was mentioned, Plottr is still a bit rough in a lot of ways. Or I’ll find a OneNote alternative that I can force somehow to sync up with Scrivener. We’ll see.
Hi Andrew,
You wrote:
I feel like a sculptor who has become reconnected with his chisel. An artist at one with his medium again. Uninterrupted.
This describes perfectly how I feel with my Obsidian solution. It’s cool that you’ve found such a good fit for you with Ulysses. The main thing is, we’re both writing with a minimum of friction from our writing tools.
In case anyone finds it helpful (or at least interesting), here is a screenshot of my writing environment using Obsidian. FYI, I use a 4 ft. wide monitor so that I can have everything open to me as I write.
Panel 1 - Chapters and Scenes. I prefer to use the Obsidian explorer for this rather than the Longform plugin. It’s more consistent with my use of the Dataview plugin, since I can put the scene number in the scene title and sort that way in Dataview, if I want.
Panel 2 - Dataview Pages. I use this for my Dataview pages, such as story beats or anything else I want to track, such as “which scenes does character X appear in” or “in what scenes to I have that sword in?” Note: I also have the start and end dates for each scene, which I can see by moving panel 3 over a little.
Panel 3 - Manuscript. The ability to rapidly create a new character, magic spell, setting, object, etc. is why I love Obsidian so much. All I have to do is put a couple of brackets around the new character, etc. and click on it and voila, I have a new page for that character that I can fill out when I want to. Usually, I fill it out after my writing session so that I don’t interfere with my writing flow. Here, in panel 3, I have a link to a character “The Watcher” that goes to a page about this character in panel 4.
Panel 4 - Story Bible. I keep my descriptions of characters, world, etc. here. Because I can so quickly link characters, etc., as I write, I can just click the link anytime I want to look at the reference page (aka story bible page) or add to it/change it. It’s extremely seamless and intuitive.
Panel 5 - Tags, etc. I use tags as another way to bring up scenes that have the tag. In this particular screenshot, you can see I’m using it to track story beats. But I can also find characters, locations, magic spells, etc. with tags. Also, Obsidian has very strong search capabilities, which I sometimes use.
One more tidbit: At the bottom of a story bible page (or any page, for that matter) I can toggle on a list of every scene in which that character (or whatever) is mentioned in the novel:
I realize what works for me might not be at all what someone else needs or wants, but if you want to be free to organize things the way that works best for you, this is something to consider.
Hi Steve,
Thanks for sharing your Obsidian set up. You’ve got a really neat workflow going on there. I’m almost tempted to revisit Obsidian. The Dataview plug-in deserves all the praise it receives. And the linking in Obsidian is second to none. But I don’t own a wide monitor like you and I like to be able to work remotely on iOS devices as well as n my Mac. So I can see trying to make your set up work on an iPhone as being problematic. But I congratulate you on leveraging Obsidian to such a tight, focussed and information rich system. I can’t see you ever tiring of that set up. Especially if you write mainly at a desk with a desktop machine.
EDIT: I meant to ask you how you get your finished drafts out of Obsidian? One of the issues for me was always exporting the finished drafts. I know there is Pandoc compatibility using some of the plugins for Obsidian. But I had mixed results with that method.
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
Thanks. I like how each of us finds our own best way to work.
It’s true, I write mostly at my desk. Here’s my happy place – my home studio, where I divide my time between writing a novel and writing music.
When I travel, though, I just write with paper and pencil, taking care to shoot a photo of each page which I upload from my phone to Dropbox.
You’ve asked a great question about finished drafts. I haven’t decided yet. Sure, as you mentioned, there is Pandoc – but frankly, it looks like a time-consuming hassle. I could use the Longform plugin for that. Or I could just copy/paste each scene into Word, which wouldn’t take much time.
Hi Steve,
I love the look of your writing space. You can certainly escape there and let your creative juices flow, unfettered. I have a garden office crammed with books off all kinds as well as my writing desk and chair. That’s my happy place. So I get how important the right environment can be in order to maximise creativity.
Ultimately, all of these different software solutions us writers employ, have one and only one basic job: allow us to get the words down. However we get them back out again - as long as we can get them back out again - is largely irrelevant. So copying and pasting into Word is a perfectly acceptable approach. Although, as you said, you could also just turn the Draft folder you’re currently writing in within Obsidian into a Longform folder and use that plugin to compile your draft.
Regardless, carry on getting the words and the notes down onto the page, and enjoying every last minute of it.
All the best
Andrew
Well said, Andrew.
Steve
Wow I didn’t know you could get monitors that big… Seriously impressed 
Thanks for sharing a great photo
You can install and use the “Draw.io” plugin or the “ExcaliDraw”, ExcaliBrain, or use CardNote with the Obsidian Canvas…
There are multiple ways to be able to place floating textboxes and drawings on a canvas in Obsidian.
Try to explore some of the community plugins, you might find something that fit your need.
If you want to export all of your Onenote notes to Markdown and use them in Joplin, Obsidian, Zettlr or Foam for VSC, you can either use Joplin, or you can find multiple scripts on github that are really good, you just need to follow the instructions and do a few “test runs” to get the configuration that fits you.
i’ve tried a few of those things, but not all of them, Jaran. I may still look into it some more, thank you for the suggestions!
