An Introduction to Obsidian for Writers

Obsidian is a note-taking system where you can :

Link anything and everything — ideas, people, places, books, and beyond. Invent your own personal Wikipedia.

I think it's the best thing I've found yet for recording thoughts, ideas and links to resources. It is similar to the zettelkasten method of notetaking - you create links between notes and find what you want through links and tags, using the powerful search function.

It stores the notes on your computer in the markdown format - so, completely portable for you. They are also private. Or you can also publish your Obsidian wiki (or selected parts of it to the web) which is great for SEO. Here is an introduction to SEO for writers and artists.

There's a YouTube video below, which covers Obsidian essentials, which is probably the best way to get up and running quickly. It's about ten minutes long.

I have also written a post on how to publish your Obsidian Vault online.

Download Obsidian and set up your vault

It is free on one computer. You can upgrade to sync between devices. You can download at https://obsidian.md.

When you begin, it'll ask you to create a vault. This is the main folder for your work. Vaults don't talk to one another - they don't share internal links. And so it's something to think hard about. Most people have one vault with folders, to begin with at least.

Another important thing - the viewing modes. Top right menu - there are two icons - a book and a pen. These are reading mode and editing mode - please note, the icon shows you what you will switch to!

You can create folders for your notes. Looking online, everyone has their own way of doing this. I think the best way would be to let what you write guide any folder structure. Just start writing notes and see where it goes.

How to create and link Obsidian Notes

Then you can start making notes and ordering them in folders (or however you want - you can always just use the powerful search function to find things.)

Create a new note

To create a new note - command + N (Mac). CTRL + N (PC)

Add an internal link to another note

To add a link in a note type two square brackets - like this [[ ]]

It opens a list of possible notes to link to.

If you want to create a new linked note from within a note your working in, write some text in your note with two square brackets around it. Then click on thst and it opens a new note to work on, which is already linked.

Create external links

To create external links - type text surrounded by one square bracket on either side. Then put the URL directly after it in normal brackets.

To see the full text and the url link, click on the line beside the text.

Adding tags

This deserves quite a lot of thought, especially if you are thinking of publishing down the line. At the moment I have opted for the folder names in the vault to match the tags on my website, and also to match the top-line tags in Obsidian.

To add a tag : type hash and it gives you list of options to choose from of pre-existing tags. Or you can add a new one.

#obsidian #seo #zettelkasten

Click on a tag and it shows all notes with the tag in the search results. Top right, there is a menu icon where you can search all your tags.

I think nesting tags is a good idea for organisation, so you don't have a main tag menu of hundred of tags. And so you could have #digital-writing/obsidian instead. And it keeps your list of tags neat (there is a drop-down arrow to see the rest of the nested tags.)

And likewise - I'm aiming for them not to be too deep so they are readable i.e
not #history/neolithic/stone-circles/calanais

There's a question of whether your tags should mirror your folder structure. It might be unnecessary doubling up. But I have some similarity, as when you only have a few posts on a subject, it gives you a way to link them.

Other essential Obsidian formatting info

Formatting headings

Add ## immediately before some text to get heading two. then press return.

Format a block quote

to format a block quote
add > at the start of it.

Using backticks in Obsidian

Using single backticks (`) - one on each side of a line of text - displays the text exactly as written and prevents formatting from being applied.

Three backticks on either side is more for blocks of text, and does also shows your words exactly as written.

Adding footnotes in Obsidian

You simply put this after the quote [^]. A dialogue box opens which you can add the citation to and it appears at the bottom of the page. You can also edit the citation text there.

The Obsidian Graph View

You can see also view the 'graph view' of your notes - which turns it into a mind map. It shows how your ideas connect.

You can click on any of the nodes in the graph view and it takes you to the note. Here is an image of the graph view off a vault I've just started.

Obsidian Basic Formatting Actions Cheat Sheet

Here is a downloadable Markdown file you can use in your Obsidian with the main formatting commands that you need.

If you'd rather not download files from the websites of strangers on the internet, here is the text.

Organising your Obsidian Notes

There is a whole Obsidian Influencer Industrial Complex online with vanloads of advice as how to organise your notes.

Some thought on how to organise your notes is good, but not too much, or I find obsessing over it takes over from the writing.

The main tension is this. We are so used to using folders on computers that it is our default organisational behaviour.

Say you have folders for Writers, Myth and Sci-Fi. You write an article on George Lucas' inspiration for the narrative structure of Star Wars (The Hero with a Thousand Faces). Which folder do you put that in? Even using sub-folders doesn't get rid of that tension.

But that is why Obsidian is so good. Its search function is incredible, returning files with the search term in it as well as tags. And once you have an entry point ie a notes, the internal links are your way into the subject.

The main advice I found helpful was to let your writing guide the structure, rather than putting a folder system in place first and then filling it. And I try and keep the folder system no more than three deep. Writing : Film : Star Wars.

And then I use Maps of Content (MOCs) - an idea which comes from ACE.

Using ACE as a way to organise Obsidian Notes

ACE is a method of organising your notes, invented by Nick Milo, who has a YouTube Channel called Linking your Thinking. He's like the Tiago Forte of Obsidian.

ACE stands for Atlas, Calendar and Efforts. The Atlas is where you put your Maps of Content, Calendar for time-based notes and Efforts for project-based notes.

I have't fully adopted ACE yet. I find it introduces a little cogitive load, always having to decode the words… "efforts… that's…what again…?" But I have borrowed one thing from it. Maps of Content.

Maps of Content in Obsidian

A Map of Content is like the home note of a particular topic. It's like a pillar note, in the same way you get pillar pages. It's the magic sauce.

You add links to all the relevant notes for a topic into the MOC of your choosing. For example...

Star Wars MOC - could have links to notes like 'George Lucas Director', 'Joseph Campbell', 'Wookie - a grammar primer', and so on.

And the great thing is your notes can live in as many MOCS as you like. So you just choose a folder for your note, put it there, and let the MOCS do the work.

'Wookie - a Grammar Primer' could be in your Linguistics MOC, your Invented Languages for my Sci-Fi novels MOC (I know someone who does this!) and your Haircare MOC.

So I do use Atlas as a folder for my MOCs, just because that puts it first in the hierarchy. But otherwise, I put notes into a handful of folders (I limit this to as few as possible and never more than three deep).

Another option would be divide notes into two folders, like the zettelkasten method. Notes on things and notes on your ideas about things.

This is the top folder structure I have settled on. It's a bit zettlekasten-y.

Atlas is first as it contains all the Maps of Content. Notes are the finished notes. Ideas, the ideas the notes trigger for me, aren't published. Working drafts are at the bottom as it's where I work most. The publish.js file is a pain. It's to add Plausible Analytics to Obsidian. I can hide folders in Obsidian Publish on the site, but not on the app.

The Zettelkasten Method for Organising Your Obsidian Notes

Zettlekasten is German for "box of notes". A German sociologist, Niklas Luhmann, used it to turn him into an academic powerhouse and productivity Jedi.

He had two boxes. One was for finding and one was thinking.

He had one box of notes called "Bibliografie" (Bibliography). And he had a second box which he called "Hauptsammlung." This mean 'main box' in German. This is where he developed his ideas and theories.

He had a system of numbering and linking, and he used keywords. He didn't have any folders. Here is a link to Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten Archive.

Where Obsidian wins against a physical system, is in backing up. Imagine you spend years working on this and it was lost in a fire or something. Bad stuff happens. Back up your precious work in at least two places, and not the same physical location.

Obsidian Canvas

Canvas (menu icon is in the top left), creates an area similar to what you have on Miro. It is a limitless canvas on which you can drag and link your notes.

This might be a good tool for writers to help card a story. (I wrote a post about carding stories on the blog.) This is what it looks like.

Obsidian link to Zotero

It also links to Zotero - the app where you can read pdfs, highlight quotes and it exports them with the correct citations. And when you add the correct Zotero backlink, it takes you back to the source document. Amazing.

YouTube video

The easiest way to get up and running it to watch this video. You'll come away with enough knowledge to get up and running to start creating your own personal wiki.

Obsidian and Claude Cowork

An interesting workflow if using Obsidian with Claude Cowork. I've written about getting started with Claude Cowork - an amazing tool, but a tool one has to be careful when using it - how it handles your data privacy has a long way to go. I use this workflow mainly for grant writing.

Frequently Asked Questions about Obsidian