Character/Place/Notes management across multi-projects

[cstackpole]

Using latest supporter edition (It's awesome! Thank you!)

Idea:
Tag a project as a reference project for multiple projects. All the things in common can go there to be updated across all projects; such as - main characters, places, notes, objects, ect. Things only relevant to the immediate project are in the project itself. This way in sequels the entire history and story of the main characters/notes/places can be tracked/updated/verified across projects.

Short background reasoning:
Working on a project, got feedback that it would be better as a collection of short stories vs one story. That worked for this series - which has continued to grow past the first set of three planned stories (not to mention personal goals have grown since then too!). None have been released and I'm still getting feedback on changes to keep continuity. Which means I'm REALLY struggling to find notes and information and which story I updated which character information - which has lead to me keeping EXTENSIVE notes in an external text file as I bounce between the short story projects. I've attempted a "create a new project with multiple parts and migrate projects into one massive project" and while that works for the overall project, A) its quickly becoming very very large B) all my writing goals are merged and don't make as much sense C) the secondary characters are overwhelming when they appear only in specific parts. I even attempted multiple Bibisco installs each with it's own project and that "worked" but required a LOT of copy-paste as I moved/updated information (and it was slower then one massive external text file).

I WANT to keep all the information inside Bibisco, but when I need to make a change I have to use external tools to remind myself to update each individual project plus keep track of any information common to all.

My ideal approach:
A project would be tagged as a "Reference Project". It wouldn't have chapters/scenes/ect. Nor even some of the specific story elements like narratives. Nor writing elements like goals. But it would have all the structure of characters, places, timelines, notes, and objects.

Thus for example using a popular series, if I was going to recreate all of Discworld (or any other multi-story world), I could have a "Reference Project" called "Discworld" in which every character, city, state, nation, object, historical dates(!), ect could be attached. For characters/places that will only ever appear in one story, they could be kept in the story specific project. But if I'm shooting for the stars here, I'd like them all in the "Reference Project" where I can select which characters/city/notes/ect are needed in my project. Thus, Rincewind would appear in "Colour of Magic" and I could update information about his character while keeping all his backstory (and thus verifying accuracy/continuity) when he appears in "Light Fantastic", but "Amazing Maurice" only appears in one book and Rincewind isn't in that book so I wouldn't want Rincewind in that project cluttering the layout. However, since that story is a part of the Discworld, I'd want all the characters/places/notes to be in the "Reference Project". This would also be super helpful for when the Tiffany Aching books start and the dictionary note file is required for the "Nac Mac Feegle's" and needs to be consistent across their books but isn't needed at all in books where they don't appear.

Hopefully my request makes sense. I have a way that I'd like to see it done, but that doesn't mean it's the best way. I'm open to other suggestions to better manage "a world" which has multiple shared bits of information inside Bibisco.
Thanks!

[andreafeccomandi]

Hi!

I understand your need well, but at the moment, it is not possible to do precisely what you ask with bibisco.

If the goal is to create many SHORT stories, an alternative approach could be to use a single bibisco project and the PARTS mechanism to divide the stories among them.

This way, you could compare the stories in the Analytics section and the Timeline.

Even if it's not optimal, could it work for you?

[cstackpole]

Greetings!

I've attempted a "create a new project with multiple parts and migrate projects into one massive project" and while that works for the overall project, A) its quickly becoming very very large B) all my writing goals are merged and don't make as much sense C) the secondary characters are overwhelming when they appear only in specific parts.

The problem for me is that while my finished-goal is to be in the 15K-20K range, while I'm outlining/building/refining some of them balloon up pretty high. I can take another attempt at the one-massive project. There's a lot of little things that bothered me - such as trying to find something and searching over the whole project, or having a big cast of characters that aren't relevant - but it might be this is the best way of doing it right now. And while the writing goals are nice, they are an extra for me so I can drop them for now.

Thanks for the feed back! And thanks for considering this idea!