How do you keep your world notes useful while drafting?

[kush_core_39]

Hi everyone. I’m exploring how fantasy writers turn their worldbuilding ideas into a reference they can actually use while writing. I’m considering building a tool in this area, but I’d like to understand how people work first.

What do you refer to while drafting—paper notes, a document, a wiki, or something else? And when you change an established fact halfway through a story, how do you find and update the other parts of your world that it affects?

I’d especially appreciate a real example of the last time this happened. If your current approach works well, I’d love to hear about that too. I’ll be here to read and respond to replies.

 

[pmmg]

My notes are pretty sparse. Mostly just bullet points. It might look like:


Places:

Midgarl
Worf's Howl
Gateskeep


Languages:
Tieran
Marish
Durish

Currency:
Tolents
Crowns
Pearls


Nothing more fancy than that. I keep it all in scrivener and rarely look at it.

I have one character I named Ginoux, but I am often forgetting if it was Ginoux or Giroux, so I am constantly looking up the spelling.

 

[casval]

I use Obsidian, which is a markdown editor with 'vaults' to organize and store notes. I like to have a lot of folders so I can hide information I don't need.

Here's an example - I use little icons for everything because it helps me find the notes faster, and I have it on dark mode because I get migraines.

One thing I like about using Obsidian is that it auto-updates if I change the name of anything, so for instance here is a small section of Dill's bio.

But if I go to Sorrel's page and change her name...

it will automatically change it to her new name in Dill's note, and every other note where I mention her.

This is especially useful for minor characters and places when I haven't really settled on a name yet. I can still write my first draft or work on my outlines with a placeholder like [[oliver cromwell-aragorn hybrid ruler]] and when I've settled on a name for him, I just have to change it once and not have to CTRL+F my way through all of my notes to fix it. My second draft I am probably writing in another program, but by then I don't usually need to change things like that.