The Notebook is a very powerful feature that lets you easily organize your thoughts—you can use it for brainstorming, as a journal, and more. But… what exactly can you use the World Anvil Notebook for? We asked our community, and here’s how five Anvilites are using this feature!
Note sure how the Notebook works? Check the Guide to the Notebook!
1. Worldbuilding brainstorming & staging area
Some worldbuilders have more ideas than time to write full articles, and the Notebook is a great place to collect them and brainstorm! While you could also create small stub articles for these ideas, you can keep them in the Notebook while you’re still figuring out if they’re even a good fit for the world. After all, ideas often end up scrapped, merged, or even moved to a different world—and editing notes is much quicker than moving articles around! Think of it as a staging area where you can organize and develop your ideas before finalizing them in the form of an article.
And that’s exacly what Make Lore, Not War does with her Notebook! As you can see in her screenshot, she uses color-coded sections for various areas in her dark fantasy world of Crux Umbra (which you should definitely check out!):
Pro-tip: If you expect to have a lot of similar notes (for example, many article ideas of the same type), you can use note templates to stay consistent in your notetaking! Learn how to use notebook templates.
2. Quick (but organized) notes
The Notebook is also great for quick notes, either as reference pages or to quickly note down something that might be useful. For example, you could have lists of names (characters, locations, and more) to pull from in a pinch, so you never break the flow of your creativity. Or if inspiration strikes while reading, or after going for a walk, quickly add it to a note so you don’t forget! Then, use sections to sort the different kinds of note.
And thanks to the World Anvil Notebook, you can very easily reference and write down quick notes! As Nulcheck, creator of Legends of the Dragonguard, put it:
The new notebook is great, not just for the organization you can do, but also because it seamlessly slides over the page you’re on, rather than interrupting you with a new page, which is just amazing!
Pro-tip: As in the screenshot, you can use note metadata to display quick data about them. Note metadata is also useful to find notes quicker, which is great for this style of notetaking! Learn how to use notebook metadata.
3. TTRPG game notes
While we recommend using Session Report articles for taking notes about your game, using the Notebook is also an option! Create a note for each new session and use Sections to sort them by game or story arc. MrBauta, author and GM of the Florenic Worlds, keeps track of player-related developments in the Notebook, while planned content stays in Plot articles. Sounds like a great way to keep your prep materials separate and easy to find!
Pro-tip: The Notebook is private, so if you want your players to read your session summaries, you can move your notes to a Session Report article, which can then be linked with the sessions you set up on World Anvil. Learn more about Session Reports.
4. BBCode & CSS reference
BBCode is the basic building block for for any complex layout in an article, but there are so many options it’s easy to forget some! While the Guide to BBCode has a list of all BBCode tags with examples, having the tags you use the most in a note can really speed things up! Here’s TheDoctor292’s set-up:
And for a more advanced example, Mochimanoban, author of the Yonderverse, keeps their complex BBCode and custom CSS containers in a note for easy reference. When a single element in an article relies on many BBCode tags and custom containers, this is much quicker than trying to remember:
5. Keep a creative journal
Keeping a journal ABOUT creative work can be a great way of brainstorming through writers block and issues as well as tracking what you’ve been working on day by day! It can also help you remember what you intended to work on in your next session, especially when you have limited creative time.
Organizing each entry by date (like YYYY-MM-DD) ensures that they’ll remain in the right order. If you’re working regularly, you can even create sections to organize by month, and use a different notebook each year.
Here’s Janet’s journal for one of her in-progress novels during NaNoWriMo 2022. You could use a similar journal to keep track of your current To Be Read list!
What about you? How do YOU use Notebooks? Let us know in the comments!
