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NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

novelwriter.io

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Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#91

Post by michaericalribo »

vikingcaffiene wrote: post #88

This has no word export option (unless I missed it) which makes it infeasible for a lot of writers. Like it or not, docx is the format a lot of folks in mainstream publishing expect. Context: My partner is a published author and I've pitched stuff like this at her on multiple occasions as an alternative to Scrivener. In addition to her laughing at my insistence that markdown is a superior way to write, she cites the…

Just to add here, the question is not “is markdown (or tex or binary strings or...) better”, but “can the person who determines whether I get paid open the file?”

The fiction publishing world is cutthroat competitive. Trying to use nonstandard tools / “breaking the mold” adds even more friction to success.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#92

Post by jonnycomputer »

em-bee wrote: post #78
jonnycomputer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried out and one issue I had was with indented paragraphs. I ended up using LibreWriter's regex search replace to remove all the extraneous newlines.

can you describe the complete process you use to convert your documents?

I only gave it a try for a chapter or two just to get a feel for what might be involved. I first tried pandoc. This mostly worked, except for the indentation of paragraphs. I took care of that by setting up LibreOffice's paragraph indentation, and used LibreOffice's search replace to remove the (now) extraneous new lines.

My recommendation is to grab a decently long markdown document and give it a try.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#93

Post by progx »

vidarh wrote: post #46
jonathanstrange wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Papyrus Autor because I write in German [1,2]. It's expensive but superior to everything else for the German language. They're expanding to English users, but only offer a super-expensive subscription model for them [3]. If I wrote novels in English, I'd probably use Scrivener [4]. I'm very familiar with markdown, pandoc, and LaTeX, but none of these are relevant or important for writing novels. As a noveli…

It's interesting to see differences in desired features here, because I'm currently writing my third novel, and ditched my previous editors because I realised I needed basically no features - I need a clean canvas without distractions, and ability to do some basic tagging for cross-references. That's it. So now I'm writing in my own editor, in windows with nothing but the text - not even a menu or title bar - and lit…

You can use zettlr.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#94

Post by JulianMorrison »

lelag wrote: post #60
dangoor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm close to 60,000 words into my latest novel and I'm writing in Ulysses using Markdown. Novels, in particular, rarely need more than headings and occasional italics or boldface.

I also use Ulysses and very happy with it (except for it being a subscription based product). The feature that I would miss the most by switching to novelWriter or another open source solution would be the following: - auto cloud sync across all devices (I can even write on my phone if I think of something while waiting for the bus) - print quality output in PDF and epub with a single click (and many available themes…

I use Ghostwriter, it's free. I write in a directory that is continuously synced to Dropbox. And I write in pandoc flavored markdown, so a single script can spit out compiled PDF or epub.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#95

Post by progx »

app4soft wrote: post #52
jonathanstrange wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Papyrus Autor because I write in German [1,2]. It's expensive but superior to everything else for the German language. They're expanding to English users, but only offer a super-expensive subscription model for them [3]. If I wrote novels in English, I'd probably use Scrivener [4]. I'm very familiar with markdown, pandoc, and LaTeX, but none of these are relevant or important for writing novels. As a noveli…

> I'm using Papyrus Autor because... Proprietary?!

And?

You know a better tool that does the work?

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#96

Post by falcolas »

dangoor wrote: post #22
chank wrote: post #17

Outside of the more technically inclined; Does anyone who is a long-form (novel) writer actually use markdown? Outside of blogging, which it was invented for and makes total sense for syntax conversion of free formed text to html is there any real use for it? Obviously you don't have to use it if you don't want to, but it sort of feels odd to me that all these developers making writing/notes apps that neglect rich te…

I'm close to 60,000 words into my latest novel and I'm writing in Ulysses using Markdown. Novels, in particular, rarely need more than headings and occasional italics or boldface.

Funnily enough, a lot of the work I've interacted with has been in the Lit RPG genre - which needs a lot more, since they're often including tables of "character data", not to mention "system" fonts. It's surprisingly challenging to typeset and make it broadly readable across devices.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#97

Post by powersnail »

em-bee wrote: post #84
sicher wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m halfway through my second novel. Both in very barebones markdown (using pretty much only headings). Plain text is a blessing. I can keep everything in git, searching in emacs with swiper is fantastic (and good search is a must as the material grows) and any tool I lack I can hack together.

how do you convert from markdown to standard manuscript format which is often required for submissions?

pandoc is pretty handy. It's pretty much plain text anyway, whatever format is used.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#98

Post by jonnycomputer »

vidarh wrote: post #83
chank wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point I am getting at is that if an editor wants to use markdown in place of rtf, fine. But it should hide the syntax just like rtf editors do (unless you want to see it). No editor that supports markdown to date has been able to achieve the quality of editing that rtf editors already have. So in essence outside of markdowns original use case of web publishing, why bother using it?

Here is the grand total of formatting supported by RTF in use in my novels: * headers * italics * maybe 2-3 instances of *bold* through the entire text. I don't need any additional "quality of editing". Hiding the syntax is irrelevant because the needs are so limited. Hiding the user interface on the other hand, matters to me, because it's a distraction (to others it isn't). My editor color-codes the headers and the…

>If you look at interviews with writers, you'll find a whole lot of obsession over the process, and things like how it feels to write with a pen vs. a typewriter vs. a word processor, and very, very little about what their drafts look like. It's far down the list of considerations you'll find novelists care about.

This.

I chose emacs because I'm a programmer who uses emacs frequently. And its just damn text and I don't have to get all fiddly with everything. And like I don't want to have to fiddle around with Word, I don't want to fiddle around with some complicated markup langage like rst either. I just want to write.

I wrote my thesis is Word, I know what it can be like.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#99

Post by em-bee »

vikingcaffiene wrote: post #88

This has no word export option (unless I missed it) which makes it infeasible for a lot of writers. Like it or not, docx is the format a lot of folks in mainstream publishing expect. Context: My partner is a published author and I've pitched stuff like this at her on multiple occasions as an alternative to Scrivener. In addition to her laughing at my insistence that markdown is a superior way to write, she cites the…

it says it can exporting to ODF, but without much formatting requiring additional editing after conversion. instead it recommends exporting to HTML, and then importing that into writer or word for better results.

but i could not tell from the docs how to get the end result into something like standard manuscript format without manual processing.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#100

Post by kevincox »

vikingcaffiene wrote: post #88

This has no word export option (unless I missed it) which makes it infeasible for a lot of writers. Like it or not, docx is the format a lot of folks in mainstream publishing expect. Context: My partner is a published author and I've pitched stuff like this at her on multiple occasions as an alternative to Scrivener. In addition to her laughing at my insistence that markdown is a superior way to write, she cites the…

Infeasible is maybe a stretch. However you will need to have a multi-step "Export for Publish" workflow which is definitely a hurdle. However assuming that 95% of the time is spent writing it may be worth it if you like the tool.
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