I’m exploring ways to effectively structure long-form writing (articles, books, etc.) in Supernotes and would love to hear how others tackle this.
I appreciate Supernotes’ concise note format, flexible linking (parent-child and sibling relationships), and graph visualization, but I sometimes struggle when dealing with longer, deeply structured texts.
My Challenge
For longer content, I break it into smaller notes (e.g., Chapter → Sections → Paragraphs → Subparagraphs).
While Supernotes allows me to view multiple levels of children, navigating through deeply nested structures sometimes feels overwhelming.
I’m unsure whether to structure content vertically (parent-child relationships) or horizontally (siblings) when breaking down complex ideas.
Exporting and Formatting Considerations
One of the features I love about Supernotes is its WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) approach—it seamlessly integrates markdown, LaTeX, and Mermaid diagrams, making drafting intuitive and distraction-free.
However, while PDF export produces great drafts, at a certain point, I need to transition to a different editor for precise formatting (fonts, sizes, line spacing, etc.).
So, I’d also love to hear:
What’s your preferred workflow for exporting structured notes into an external editor?
Which destination software do you use for final formatting?
Are there export tools or scripts that help streamline this process?
Looking for Advice
For those who write long-form content in Supernotes:
How do you structure longer pieces efficiently without getting lost?
Do you favor parent-child hierarchies, horizontal sibling linking, or a hybrid approach?
What’s your best method for exporting and finalizing documents outside Supernotes?
I’d love to hear your insights before committing to a structure that might not be the most optimal. Thanks in advance!
I am a huge fan of the atomic data model in Supernotes, and find value in adherence. That being said, there is a situation where I deliberately break that paradigm, which is long form articles. I could host those somewhere else, actually, but they sit within the Supernotes hierarchy quite nicely, so I just leave them here.
My approach which can be seen in action in my paradigm article, for instance, follows the following scheme.
The How
Hierarchy
Create a top-level (this card may contain an abstract, for instance)
Structure the article in chapters with chapter numbers as a prefix in the title (1., 2., …), each of which is represented by a dedicated card with the top level as a parent
Structure the chapters in subchapters with subchapter numbers as a prefix in the title (1.1, 1.2, …), again represented in a dedicated card with the superordinate chapter as a parent.
Linking
The top-level card contains a complete list of contents, linking each card of the article
Each (sub) chapter links to the next (sub)
Each chapter contains a list of links to its immediate children
The Why
I kinda like this scheme, for the following reasons.
Numbering the chapters allows for having them in order in the noteboard
Using the depth feature I can decide how many chapter levels of the article I want to see
The tree-like hierarchy allows to dive into parts of the article when needed.
The top-level card can itself be though of atomic, which lets the article blend in with other contents of my database.
Well, this answer is getting longer than I intended. You better just have a look of this in action and see if you like it or not.
This is a great topic! I really enjoy @freisatz approach, and view it as a new sort of hyper textual form, and I’m going to attempt something similar myself…someday!
At the moment, when it comes to long form writing, I mostly use supernotes as an outliner/notebook and write the actual piece elsewhere. If I have an idea for a piece, I create a card for it that summarizes the rough idea, then I’ll add children of various kinds as I think more about it—brief snippets of text I want to use, relevant quotes, potential section descriptions—outside of the shared parent, it’s fairly hodge podge and messy, like a tornado stricken desk, but it works well enough for me. Using the singular parent keeps the chaos contained.
I may not awnser your specific questions, but maybe i can still help.
One common mistake of note taking apps is the idea that one app can do everything. You will still need to use different apps for different things. For instance, i wouldnt use Supernotes to make complex mind-maps.
IMO Supernotes is not meant for big heavy text such as essay, thesis, article, writing a book and etc. When writing big hevy stuffs Supernotes will be VERY helpful for brainstorming, connect, collect information, writing main ideas, share with other people and much more. But once you distill all of you cards and start doing the heavy work (i.e, writing the article it self for the project) you may want to use a proper tool such as Google Docs (or anything of your preference). I suggest apps that can interact with Supernotes. For instance, Google Docs have URL links, therefore you can store your link in a Supernote card.
By “heavy text” i mean information that have multiple pages of lenght and need to have some form of structure (for example, you cant sell a book by sharing bunch of cards on SN, since you need a specific format).
I don’t write a lot of long form as I do more drawing than writing day-to-day. I did post a Supernotes workflow here similar to freisatz’s recommendation about a year ago. You can also manually sort the cards the way you like if you prefer not to number them. That could be great for reorganizing sections.
For long form writing, if you run into some friction with the cards workflow, I do know others that use Ulysses and iA Writer for longer form Markdown, LaTeX, etc writing. Both are popular and beautiful apps and either could complement your Supernotes workflow. Apple Notes now has foldable sections which is great for condensing a lot of text, but the use of toolbar wysiwig formatting (for headings and subheads) might get in the way of speed and focus. Apple Pages and Word have focus modes, and while I don’t typically use either, I do know that Pages now has a table of contents area.
For precise formatting after export, have you tried Affinity Publisher or Apple Pages? Uniquely, Affinity Publisher also has a fully capable iPad app, but you may have to download any fonts you want to use from your desktop, if you are not happy with the default options.