Let’s be real—this wasn’t some genius masterplan. I built the Storyteller OS because I was tired of my ideas playing hide and seek.
You ever try to rewrite a chapter but forget where you wrote down the details of your world’s moon calendar? Yeah. That.
The Storyteller OS is a Notion-based workspace that gives your story ideas, characters, worldbuilding, research, and outlines a single home. No more tab overload. No more “Where did I put that note about dragons wearing robes?”
This article walks through how the OS came to be, why it’s different, and what’s inside. If you’re looking for a system that keeps up with your brain—and your ever-expanding fantasy lore—you’re in the right place.
Let’s dig in.
Why I built the Storyteller OS
My Story Organization Journey (a.k.a. The Great Chaos)
I’ve been been trying to write my story for years. And for just as long, I’ve been trying to wrangle my story notes into something that didn’t look like digital spaghetti.
First it was notebooks and binders. Then came the endless Google Docs, each one confidently titled something like “worldbuilding notes FINAL FINAL 2.”
Then Evernote. Promising, but still a mess. Some characters were in one note, their hometowns in another, and I’d lose important plot threads between apps. Basically, my brain had a million tabs open, and they were all crashing.
Then in 2019, I found Notion. Cue the choir of angels.
Notion let me build databases. Connect ideas. Turn each character, plotline, and setting into its own page. I could finally see the shape of my story without duct taping everything together.
After weeks of migrating all my notes into Notion, I finally had something that worked. Really worked. I’d built a digital brain for my novel.
That system became the bones of what you now know as the Storyteller OS.
Turns Out, I Wasn’t the Only One
When StoryFlint launched, I started asking subscribers what kind of Notion templates they wanted.
Here’s what topped the list:
- A “Write a Novel” all-in-one workspace
- Plot and subplot visual tools
- A storyworld builder
- Templates for building scenes
- Something to make sense of theme, motifs, and symbolism
So I thought… why not build something that does all of that?
Thus, the Storyteller OS was born—not just from my own writing needs, but from yours too.
From My Chaos to Your Clarity
I’ll be honest: my personal Notion setup is a bit much. If I handed it over to you raw, you’d probably back away slowly.
So I simplified it. I streamlined everything, trimmed the weird edges, and focused on making it intuitive for any kind of writer.
The result is what I call the flagship StoryFlint template: a one-stop shop for building your world, developing characters, plotting scenes, and writing your actual draft—all in one place.
Inside the Storyteller OS, you’ll find:
- Fictional History Timeline
- World Building Bible
- Ultimate Character Builder
- Character Profile
- Premise Builder
- Basic Plot Outliner
All of these tools talk to each other. You update one character? Boom—it’s reflected in their associated scenes, world info, and themes.
It’s like having a really smart assistant who actually knows where your notes are.
What Makes a Good Story System?
Writing a story isn’t just writing. It’s managing a thousand connected ideas without accidentally blowing up your plot halfway through.
If you’ve ever changed something in chapter 7 and then realized it ruined a scene in chapter 2, you get it.
I built the Storyteller OS to solve those exact problems. Here’s what a strong story system needs to do:
Capture Ideas Instantly
You need to save the idea now, not two hours later after you’ve forgotten it. That’s what the Quick Capture dashboard is for.
I’ve used it on my phone while waiting in line at the grocery store. No fancy formatting. Just get it down and sort it later.
Link Every Detail
One scene can tie into five different characters, locations, and themes. This system lets all those connections happen automatically through relation properties.
So if you change a location or rewrite a backstory, every connected piece gets the update too.
Store Research Where It Matters
When you find a great quote, cultural reference, or inspiration for a magic system, it shouldn’t disappear into a black hole.
Every Storyteller OS project includes a Research Library. And because it connects to the rest of your project, you can link research notes to the exact story elements they support.
Make Notes Easy to Find
Instead of digging through a giant doc labeled “stuff,” you’ll find your notes right where you need them.
Linked views let you display the same note in different places. That one idea about Dumbledore founding the Order of the Phoenix? It shows up in his character profile, in the group’s page, in the timeline, and in any scene where it’s relevant. Automatically.
Keep Your Story Consistent
Nothing breaks a story like inconsistencies. Especially when you’re 50,000 words in and forgot you already gave that town a different name.
The OS helps you track all those tiny but important details. Change something in one place, and it shows up everywhere else.
Show You Your Progress
You can’t finish a draft if you don’t know how far you’ve come—or what’s left to do.
The Get Writing Done dashboard gives you real-time updates on word count, deadlines, and what scenes are still waiting for your magic.
The structure of the Storyteller OS
The Storyteller OS is really just three different components – a Projects database, a Knowledge Base, and a Reflection Journal.
Projects database
This is where you generate your story’s command center. Load a new project temaplte and get 23 interconnected databases and 11 dashboards. It's not bloated—it’s just ready.
Knowledge Base
This is where you store writing tips, craft techniques, or insights from that brilliant podcast you listened to but forgot the name of.
Reflection Journal
Your creative brain needs a little therapy sometimes. This journal helps you process your weekly progress, blocks, and breakthroughs.
It sounds fluffy, but it’s not. It’s where you turn stuck weeks into learning moments.
How a Storyteller OS project is structured: Databases
Databases are what power the connectivity of your story notes within a Storyteller OS project. For every project you create in the Storyteller OS, 23 databases are generated for storing your notes, ideas, and elements:
- Books database – By default, the project template breaks your story into Books. If your project is a standalone book, you only have to create one book. You can easily repurpose “Books” to be whatever medium your story is. (i.e. Movies, TV Seasons, etc.) – just relabel them as such.
- Chapters database – Chapters are used as subsets of books. You can easily repurpose "Chapters" to be whatever medium your story is (i.e. Episodes, Acts, Sequences, etc.) – just relabel them as such.
- Scenes database – house all your notes for each scene for your story and even write out your scenes within it.
- Plot Lines database – keep track of various plot lines in your story and what scenes are in them.
- Characters database – house all your character notes and build characters with a built-in guide.
- Archetypes database – a pre-filled database of sample character archetypes for you to use for character building.
- Enneagrams database – a pre-filled database of sample personality Enneagrams for you to use for character building.
- Values database – a pre-filled database of sample values for you to use for character building.
- Needs database – a pre-filled database of sample needs for you to use for character building.
- Positive Traits database – a pre-filled database of sample positive character traits for you to use for character building.
- Negative Traits database – a pre-filled database of sample negative character traits for you to use for character building.
- Emotions database – a pre-filled database of frequent emotions a character would have based on the positive and negative traits you select for them.
- Character Goals database – store all your characters' goals/motivations in your story. Used for character building.
- Lies database – store all your characters' Lies they believe about themselves or the world. Used for character building.
- Ghost/Wounds database – store all your characters' traumas. Used for character building.
- Groups/Races database – house all your notes about the different gangs, groups, cults, and races of your story's world.
- Locations database – house all your notes about the different locations of your story's world.
- Events database – house all your notes about the historical events that happen in your story's world that happen before, during, or after you story takes place.
- World Elements database – house all your notes about all the other things about your world like religions, fauna, flora, foods, professions, etc.
- Research Library database – House all your notes from the research and inspiration you collect for your story.
- Themes database – keep track of and house your notes on the various themes you want to use in your story.
- Motifs database – keep track of the various motifs you want to use in your story.
- Symbols/Details database – house all your individual story notes and symbols you use in your story. Also referred to as "Details database".
These aren’t just lists. They’re fully-connected databases that talk to each other. So when you update a location, any characters or events linked to that location update too.
Pages for every element in a database
Whenever you create a new record in a Notion database, that record automatically gets its own designated page to store whatever you like in it. With the Storyteller OS's databases, you essentially create a new document for every new character, scene, location, etc.; using the databases above you're creating a file directory for every story element type.
Linked views of databases
The great thing about Notion's database capabilities is you can display a particular database in a certain format on one page in your workspace, and on another page, you can display the same database in a different format with different layouts and filtering/sorting based on their properties.
Those two instances are still the same database and you can make changes to the data in one of those instances and the changes will be reflected in other instances. These instances of databases are called "linked views" or "views". You can label each linked view with its own name to distinguish them by their purpose.
For instance, in the main page of a Storyteller OS project, there are 5 different linked views displaying the books of your project:
- Currently Working On – a linked view of the Books database filtered to only show books with their Status property set to "In progress". Displayed as a gallery layout.
- Backlog – a linked view of the Books database filtered to only show books with their Status property set to "Not started". Displayed as a gallery layout.
- Completed – a linked view of the Books database filtered to only show books with their Status property set to "Completed". Displayed as a gallery layout.
- Reorder Books – a linked view of the Books database showing all the books in the project sorted by their Order in Series property. Displayed as a board layout to allow you to drag-n-drop scenes to their respective place easily.
- All Books – a linked view of the Books database showing all the books in the project sorted by their Order in Series property. Displayed as a gallery layout.
A Storyteller OS project features a multitude of interconnected database views integrated into its templates, dashboards, and pages. With just 23 databases per project, there are over 100 linked views of these databases distributed throughout to help you tackle your story in different ways.
The Details Database = Game Changer
This is the heartbeat of the Storyteller OS.
It’s where you drop all the random ideas, bits of exposition, lore crumbs, or “wait, that would be cool!” moments.
Then you tag it with what it connects to—characters, locations, events—and boom, it shows up everywhere it needs to.
The Details database is connected via relation properties to the following databases:
- Characters database
- Events database
- Groups/Races database
- Location database
- World Elements database
- Scenes database
- Motif database
- Research Library database
That one idea about Dumbledore founding the Order of the Phoenix?
In other systems, you’d copy/paste it into five docs. In the OS, it shows up in all the right places with one click.
No more losing ideas. No more plot holes. No more “I swear I wrote that down somewhere.”
How a Storyteller OS project is used: Dashboards
The great thing about Notion's database capabilities is you can display a particular database in a certain format on one page in your workspace, and on another page, you can display it in a different format with different filtering, sorting, layout, and visible properties.
Along with the 23 databases that are generated with every blank project, 11 dashboards are also generated to fit different workflows for working on your story.
Dashboards are pretty much pages that contain different linked views of the various databases within the project that are displayed in different ways for different mindsets.
Get Writing Done dashboard
Like I mentioned earlier, keeping track of your progress is an important part of any story organization system.
The Get Writing Done dashboard is designed to provide a quick snapshot of where you are at in your story writing process and what needs to be done next. It allows you to filter through databases based on fields such as status, deadline, priority, etc., so you can see which tasks you need to focus on.
View the Get Writing Done dashboard in the Storyteller OS live demo.
Character Work dashboard
The Character Work dashboard in Storyteller OS is a vital dashboard for creating dynamic characters. You can use it to create characters as well as discover insights into character relationships based on the groups they belong to and the shared values, strengths, weaknesses and Enneagrams they have.
View the Character Work dashboard in the Storyteller OS live demo.
World Building Bible dashboard
The World Building Bible dashboard is your hub of all your characters, historical events, groups, races, world elements, and locations in one place. Whenever you're looking to build out or easily access parts of your story's world, this dashboard is your first stop.
View the World Building Bible dashboard in the Storyteller OS live demo.
Quick Capture dashboard
Have an idea you need to jot down really quick? You can bookmark the Quick Capture dashboard to your workspace's sidebar for adding your ideas quickly. With the click of a button, you can add your ideas to your project's databases and organize them later.
View the Quick Capture dashboard in the Storyteller OS live demo.
Theme Builder dashboard
The Theme Builder dashboard is where you make meaning for your story. It comes with a guide to help you build the themes, motifs, and symbolism you’ll use throughout your project.
View the Theme Builder dashboard in the Storyteller OS live demo.
More dashboards
- Series Plot Outline
See overall outline of all the scenes in this project in order. - Historical Timeline
Keep track of every individual event in your fictional world, whether the event takes place in the past or occurs during the plot. - Research Organizer
Organize your research notes for this project’s fictional world. - Recently Worked On
Forgot what you were working on recently? See the different aspects of this project by when they were last edited.
Templates and guides galore
Plot line and scene templates
When going through the built-in Book Outline guide in the Storyteller OS, you can easily load a plot line template with all the necessary scenes populated into your book with just the click of a button. You can choose to load:
- Hero's Journey
- Freytag's Pyramid
- Fichtean Curve
- Dan Harmon's Story Circle
- 7-point plot structure
Also, on each individual scene page in your Scenes database, you can load a scene roadmap to help you write with just the click of a button. Choose from:
- Proactive Scene Roadmap
- Reactive Scene Roadmap
- Goal, Motivation, Conflict Roadmap
- Three Story Method
- W Plot Method
Page templates for every story element
Every element you create in your project's databases comes with its own page to store notes and view connected details to other elements. A template is generated automatically that displays all the necessary linked views of related databases to that element so you don't have to build stuff from scratch.
Take a look at how your notes and ideas could be organized through the different types of page templates available:
- Book page: The Sorcerer’s Stone
- Scene page: Prologue - Placing Harry on doorstep
- Character page: Harry Potter
- Group/Race page: The Order of the Phoenix
- Location page: Hogwarts
- World Element page: Sorcerer's Stone
- Historical Event page: The murder of Lily and James Potter
- Themes page: Death
Premise Builder
With every book you create in your project's Books database, this 9-step guide is generated inside of the book to help you build a strong premise for that book.
Check out a free version of the Premise Builder.
Book Outline Guide
With every book you create in a Storyteller OS Project, a step-by-step guide to building your book's outline is generated inside of the book's page. With it you'll be able to build out the chapters, scenes, and plot lines of said book and tie in other elements of your story like characters and details.
Ultimate Character Builder
Every time you create a character in your project's Characters database, a built-in 9-step character-building guide is generated on the character's page. This guide helps you develop engaging characters while effectively utilizing the hundreds of character attributes available to you.
Learn more about the Ultimate Character Builder template.
How to write your manuscript with the Storyteller OS
How writers have benefitted from the Storyteller OS
You Don’t Have to Build This From Scratch
I did. For years.
I tested it on real stories. I adapted it based on what worked and what didn’t. I added dashboards when I realized “Oh wow, I need to see that info too.”
And then I rebuilt it so you wouldn’t have to.
Grab the Storyteller OS and stop trying to build a second brain in Google Docs.
Because your ideas deserve more than a pile of scattered notes.
They deserve a home that’s built for storytelling.
