A plotting board and writing desk for novelists
Obelisk lays a novel out as a grid of chapters and characters, with scene cards where each character's thread crosses each chapter. The manuscript, character profiles, world notes, maps and a screenplay sit in the same project file, so it suits writers who plan before and while they draft.
Projects are .osk files on your own disk that save automatically, and with an account you can move a project to the cloud, where it lives in a local database that works offline and syncs to your other devices in the background.
Chapters run across the top and character threads run down the side, and each crossing holds a card of scenes. Coloured thread lines link a character's cards from chapter to chapter, so you can see who goes quiet for half the book.
The Write tab has a binder of folders and documents, a rich-text editor, a corkboard of synopsis cards and an outliner. A document can be linked to a scene on the board, and you can jump between the two.
Revision notes attach to a passage of text and carry tags such as Continuity or Plot. The Revision view groups open notes by chapter, pass or tag, and ticks them off as you fix them.
The characters on the Characters tab are the same people as the board's threads. Each has a story role and a long profile covering demographics, appearance, psychology, story arc, relationships and skills.
The World tab sorts entries into ten categories, from locations and factions to history and law, each with its own set of fields. The Maps tab builds a terrain map you can paint, label and pin, and each pin can open the world entry for that place.
The Script tab formats scene headings, action, character names, parentheticals, dialogue and transitions the way Final Draft does. It sits in the same project as the novel, with the same characters.
Real screens from Obelisk, filled with sample data.
Chapters across, characters down, with a card of scenes where they meet.
An email when there is news about Obelisk, a new app comes out or a new Journal post goes up.
