let's talk about my favorite tool to plot and plan a book right now especially if you want to create
what's called a series Bible or a story Bible and that is notion as you guys have seen previously
on this channel I've shared many different novel plotting and outlining tools I've used over the
years but as I've been using this preptober to prep the sequel of my why fantasy for nanowrimo
I have to say hands down notion is the tool I wish I had started with when I was writing
book one I even took some time earlier this month to try some software I've used in the
past like scrivener and I looked into a few online programs like campfire right dabble and plottr but
seriously notion is like all of these programs in one free completely online software because
notion is very customizable it can also be a little overwhelming at first and that's why I
initially created this notion for writers tutorial that is for complete beginners so if you're brand
new to notion I highly suggest watching this one first where I walk through all the basics that
helped me me get a handle on notion when I was first getting started plus you'll get access to
the free templates I included in that video which is linked down below then think of it
this video as kind of a notion 2.0 tutorial where I'll share a walkthrough of my entire series Bible
so you can see all the pages and features I use and then I'll show you how to use some Advanced
features like databases and tagging to create the functionality of these novel planning Pages plus
I'll give you access to those free templates I mentioned that will help you customize these
Pages for yourself with ease ready to get started let's head over to my computer let's first look
at my series Bible so you can see exactly how I use it and then like I said I will show you
later how you can create these Pages yourself this first page I have here is more or less a
home page or directory of some quick links I think I want to reference more frequently as I plot and
draft my book but all of the pages are listed in this menu here the first page I have is all about
my characters this one is for locations then I have a page for cultures Magic systems a few
other things that I'll go over later glossary and pronunciation guide and then I have these
two sections for outlining each season or book in my series if you're wondering why I use the
word season real quick my story was first rapid released as a serial series of six ebooks kind
of like a TV show but in book form that was season one that I packaged into one physical novel which
I'll reference to as book one season one or book one is already out in the world so what I've used
this section for is actually going back through season one or book one to record all the details
I've already written as a reference guide as I plot and plan season two or book two so this is
my section that I'm working on right now where I'm outlining season two then I'm using this page to
create a drafting plan for nanowrimo I then have a word tracker as well oops and then this should
probably go up here because this is resources that I'm using for the series with links and research
for the story and then here is what I'll show you at the end with those basic templates that you can
use to create these pages to show you a little bit more of these pages in depth here is my characters
page and the first section I have here is for my main characters or my fairy heirs that compete
for the fairy Crown in my story then I have the second section that has the rulers for each of
the fairy Clans and like I said not everything is filled out so there are more to add but here's a
few so far then I have a section for my side characters and I also included a section for
the fairy pirates in my story and you can see here that my main character Quinn is both in the pirate
section and in the main section but the beauty of notion is I only had to create this page once
and using some of the features I can enable it to show up in both sections automatically then
I'll just show you real quick as I click on each one we have a picture of the character and then my
character profile that has these toggle headers to organize all the basic details of each character
this profile with all of these details is also a template that I've created and can easily add to
to every character that I create for this page another feature that I love is tagging and I'm
using this in a multitude of ways but one of them is to tag certain characters together so
I have a section for key relationships and then I've tagged Quinn's father her mother her brother
and if I want to I can just click her father's name and it takes me directly to his character
profile my locations page is very similar where I have sections for different types of locations in
my story this one is for the five fairy provinces in my story for the different fairy Clans and then
I have a few other ones here if I go into one of the fairy provinces you'll see that I also have
a locations profile with different details that I can toggle as well I also use the tagging feature
to tag characters that live in this province so at any time I can go in here and see who lives
there and then click on their profile which brings me to Quinn's page and you can see this is where
I've tagged it right here the next section I have is for cultures so I have my five fairy Clans and
then other cultures that exist in the world in the culture pages I again have a basic template
where I have a description for that fairy Clan as well as other details and even a section where I'm
including some quotes from book one that have to do with that Clan as well and in the same
way with my locations and with my characters I also have backlinks here to everyone that is a
gwillian and you can see Quinn is a Guillain here so when I go to her page when I want to remember
some details about her fairy Clan or her Province or again other characters she's connected to or as
I'll get to even some items that are important to her I can just click on one of those tags
and it brings me directly to that page I also have these cards for magic systems which still need to
be filled out more and then in the other category I included items that are important to the story
different species that exist in my fairy world and then I also have terms here that are specific
to my world as well this term section actually started out as the glossary and pronunciation
guide which exists in the back of the paperback version of my book but then I realized I wanted
to include even more details about each of these so then I also created this section then we get
into outlines which I think there are so many different ways you could probably do outlining
a notion and I'll show you a couple when I get to the features breakdown but just to show you
an example for season one actually plot my ebook episodes in a 5x structure so I can just click
in here and this is the very simple breakdown of the 5x structure for episode one then I have the
second section that has the simple breakdown but then I can add individual cards for the
individual scenes where can I include a lot more detail and even reorganize the cards if I'm in
the plotting phase again this is not fully filled out because this book is actually already written
but I want to show you guys an example of what I'm working on for season two without spoiling
the story for anyone then I'm using this page to create that plan I mentioned and this first view
is kind of like a kanban board so for example if I want to plot a specific scene I can edit this to
say which scene I'm plotting and then I can say I've either not started it or it's in progress
or it's completed then I can also add dates to my to-do list so I can work out by November 1st
I'm writing scene one and either in the kanban board view or here I can click the status and
say not started in progress or completed to also help me stay on track I'm going to use this word
tracker and here's just a sample of I can set the date of when I'm writing how many minutes
I wrote and actually down here it's going to keep adding up all my words so I know exactly how many
words I've written finally this is just a page that I'm using to host my main Pinterest board
for this story so I can easily click on that and then I've got another page here that I can
click to see some website links to research and other things that I find helpful excited to make
a similar series Bible for yourself here's how the first thing I would do is create a completely
new workspace for each story you're creating thankfully with notion you can create as many
personal workspaces that you want for free simply click the dot dot dot in your account click create
a workspace and make sure you select for myself to create a personal plan that again is free and
click continue you will then get a blank workspace to start creating your pages from scratch here
I'll show you how to use some Advanced features like databases database templates and tagging to
create some of the functionality I showed you in my series Bible but if there's any basic
features I use quickly that you would like more of a step-by-step breakdown of don't forget to check
out that first video I mentioned for notion beginners let's first talk about databases
specifically Gallery databases which is what I use to make nearly all of my series Bible pages from
my characters locations and cultures pages to to even my outlining pages to get started quickly I'm
actually going to use one of the free templates I've created and duplicate the one I've titled
story profiles and outlining cards I'll simply click duplicate at the top here and then select
what workspace I want to duplicate it to you can see now that it's shown up in my blank workspace
and say we want this to be our characters page this template already has a gallery database set
up to use but if you wanted to create a new one all you have to do is go to a new line and type
backslash and then Gallery then say new database I'm going to stick with the one we had before and
don't forget to title your database as this will become helpful later then you can go into each
card and create your first character profile if you want to make things easy for yourself and
use the same character template for each profile make sure you click create a template first right
here this page says you're editing a template for this specific database name your template
and create the fields you want in each profile for example character name maybe you want personality
physical description key relationships if you need ideas for your character profile or World
building profiles you can also download my free profiles when you sign up for my newsletter and
paste it into your template here to customize it the way you want for example you may want to
make your character profile section headers into toggle headers by clicking the six dots next to
what you want to make a header out of typing in toggle and selecting the toggle size you want
then type any subheaders below each section now you can open and collapse these sections
to make it easier to navigate everything I also like making the character name header but not a
toggle header and giving it a colored background then when you're done with your template click
back and your character profile template is sitting right here simply click it and now you
can customize your character's name and details let's call this character character number one
now your card looks like this but if you want to add an image simply add a new line type backslash
and image here you can upload your own embed an image link or find an image on unsplash simply
type in a descriptor that might match your character or the mood of your character and
select an image you like now this picture will show up as the featured image for your character
card I'll create a couple more characters and now I can also reorder the characters if I want and
use the tagging feature to connect them so let's say that character one has a key relationship with
character two we simply type the at symbol and then the name of the character now I can simply
click that character's name to get to their page and this character also now has a backlink to the
first character additionally if you want to divide your characters into multiple sections such as
main characters villains and secondary characters you might think the best thing to do is to create
a completely new database but the drawback with that is that the character profile template you
just created only exists within this character database so you won't be able to use that same
template automatically in a completely new one if you create a new Gallery database collecting
new database here and a blank card you'll see that that character profile template does not
exist what you want to do instead is create a linked database which will include your already
existing template the easiest way to do this is to add a gallery database and click the database
you already created in the right hand column at first you'll see all the characters we've
already created but now you can do a couple of things first I'd create a header above each of
your sections so you know what each one is for for example let's call this one main characters
and we can duplicate this for ease drag it on down in front of this one and call this villains
then you can create tags in each profile to mark your characters as a main character
a villain or a side character do this for all of your characters then you can go to filters in a
particular section and filter to only show the tags that meet that section's character criteria
this is also helpful for instances like mine where my main character Quinn is a fairy Heir but also a
pirate so I can use tags to make her show up in both sections I've also made a tag section for
the fairy Clans and marked her as a Guillain so if I really wanted to I could create a gallery
and filter it so I only see Faye who are in the gwillian clan and I would have to get rid of
this one if I wanted to see characters who are in the Golian Clan but not a fairy Heir another cool
feature about databases is that you can add multiple views of your database one view is
a table which you can create by clicking the plus sign here and selecting table then you can see all
of your characters condensed in a table and even add other columns where you can add other details
for all characters as well and you can customize which one you're seeing by going to property shown
and hiding or making visible the ones you want to see again I use these features for multiple types
of pages and have loved the functionality one of them is for outlining Pages like I showed before
this Gallery consists of a overall outline in one card that has the bare bone story beats and a one
line description of each scene but then I go in more detail with a scene card for each scene
with season two I'm also experimenting outlining without databases and just using a simple page
with toggle headers here I create a hierarchy with toggles for each Act then the story beats
in each Act with a short description of that beat and then scene ideas and descriptions for those
scenes under each beat you can also quickly make some of these other pages with my free templates
for the nanowrimo drafting plan I used my kanban board template and simply added an additional view
that is a calendar view now I can toggle between both I also have a free template for that word
tracker and for the resources page I started with my basic starter template and then you
can simply paste direct links or you can type in a word highlight it then on a Mac at least click
command V and it becomes a direct link and you you can also add additional Pages by hitting backslash
and then page which creates a sub page where you can store even more also if you're wondering how
I made my custom banners I made them in canva with the custom dimensions of 1500 to 500 pixels then I
found a template I kind of liked and customized it with the colors and text I wanted I made one
for each page then downloaded them and clicked change cover and then upload to upload my own file
finally you might be wondering if you should draft your story in notion while I wouldn't say notion
is the best place to actually write your story you can link to or integrate Google Docs into your
notion to write your story I might add this to my nanowrimo drafting plan and here I have a couple
of options one is I can hit backslash type in embed and then paste a link to my Google doc this
literally embeds my Google doc into my notion so I can make this bigger and actually start typing
my first draft another option is to type backslash and then drive and then connect
your Google account to browse your Google Drive and find your document so I'm going
to click my doc here hit select but this only creates a clickable image that will bring you
to your Google doc in a separate window you can't actually type in it here the third and final way
is to Simply type something like my draft and then paste the link directly into the text or
you can just paste it here like this option here it will take me directly to my Google doc in a
separate window plus all I've shown you here is also available through Notions mobile app
and Google Docs also has a mobile app so I love that I can literally plot and draft my book on
the go wherever I am ready to create your own notion series Bible 2 you can definitely follow
what I did in this tutorial to make your own from scratch or you can get all of my
free templates by signing up for my newsletter which I'll link down below if you're looking
for more preptober or nanowrimo tips I'll link my playlist of videos as well and don't forget
to subscribe and hit that notification Bell so you don't miss out on videos like this and on
exciting video videos like the one I have coming up soon where I'm going to be revealing a brand
new cover for my book happy novel prepping and nanowing and if my four month old lets
me hopefully I'll be able to host some writing Sprints for you guys in November too see you then