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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

#261

Post by Balgair »

prionassembly wrote: post #53
klunger wrote: post #7

I am currently making my way through "The Fantasy Fiction Formula" by Deborah Chester. It's my first stab at this kind of thing, so it has been really eye opening. When I read any kind of fiction now, I can't help but map out all the elements of plot and scene described by Chester. (This has had the unpleasant side effect of making reading fiction less pleasurable. ah well) So, I can see this kind of tool being very…

I bought "Save the cat!" (I'd read some parts of Vogler's "Writer's journey" in film school) hoping to adapt the formula to writing a bad novel. Then I never did. The weird thing about hobby projects is that they don't have an actual audience. So I write a lot about philosophy and social theory and such, but it's ultimately a lot of self-dialog. This doesn't work for fiction, even short stories. (I did write a handfu…

Michael Tucker of the YT channel Lessons From the Screenplay has a very very good list of writing books here:

https://www.lessonsfromthescreenplay.com/reading-list

The list is geared towards film media, but is a great guide on writing in general. I've read and annotated my way through all of them with gusto. I can very much recommend Into the Woods and Anatomy of Story as superb guides that really dig in deep into why we humans fall for the same stories time and time again. They are brass-tacks books and pretty philosophical at the same time, a rare combo.

Michael's list is a great place to continue studying film specifically, but writing in general.

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

#262

Post by codetrotter »

vikingcaffiene wrote: post #260
gabereiser wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you guys are missing the point. The point isn’t “how do we get from markdown to docx” but rather “why doesn’t this tool support the format my publisher expects”. Yes, pandoc is amazing, but the product needs to support exporting to docx for the publisher so that the user of NovelWriter feels supported and empowered to write. TeaDrunk said it best: it’s now significantly more steps the user shouldn’t have to d…

This is the correct take. If it's so easy to do then there should be a button or menu option that does it.

That’s what I am saying. Integrate Pandoc into NovelWriter so that users can export directly to docx.

You and parent commenter seem to think that you are disagreeing with what I said but we are agreeing.

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

#264

Post by unixhero »

andrewflnr wrote: post #73
unixhero wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scrivener is the novelist standard now isn't it?

Depends what you mean by "standard". It is very widely used, but the closest thing to a standard in the sense of something needed for interoperation is docx.

The standard, as in what novelists enjoy writing, a software to enhance the writing experience.

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

#265

Post by youngtaff »

sien wrote: post #224
youngtaff wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it's got better Scrivener is pretty awful though - bought it for my first book and gave up, both books I've written were written with other tools

What did you use instead?

One was in asciidoc (the publisher's tool of choice), the other was in pages (only a 10,000 word book)

Working draft for current one is in Ulysses but I’m not feeling it ATM so might switch

They're technical books rather than novels so although I prefer markdown I find it doesn't quite stretch far enough for me

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

#266

Post by em-bee »

michaericalribo wrote: post #194
em-bee wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wrote my story in plain text in vim. when i was forced to convert to libre office in order to produce the format required for submission, editing became a pain, and i felt blocked from working on the story any further, since i no longer was able to just take any break i had to work on it. not being able to use my preferred editor, i too ended up searching for a better solution...

What a pain! And there don't seem to be any good + easy answers... I'm addicted to my emacs bindings, and not using them trips me up—I might as well draft in plaintext, like you said preferred editor minimizes friction. But then there's the cost of switching tools at different stages of the writing process. Arguably, that's even more difficult!

the editing itself wasn't even the problem, but i realized that i want to track changes as the story evolves, and while i know that libreoffice can do that, there is just no comparison to text based version control systems.

if i had accepted that i would be comfortable enough with libreoffice, that would have been fine, but having to face switching back and forth, and continuously reformatting, made me dread the whole process.

so yes, switching is really the most difficult aspect.

fortunately, as discussed elsewhere here, there is a way to automatically convert from plain text to the format required for submission, so i should be able to continue writing without this roadblock now

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

#267

Post by globular-toast »

chank wrote: post #69
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not rtf, but it is rich text as opposed to plain text.

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?

Should? According to whom? You? Or the author?

When I write markdown, I don't even see the syntax. All I see is bold, heading, code block.

I don't need to see some on screen typeset version of the text because this all subject to change anyway when it comes to typesetting the document and that will change depending on the medium (ie. book, web, email etc.)

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

#268

Post by mb2100 »

evolve2k wrote: post #128
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…

Acknowledge having an inbuilt export would be preferable but for what it’s worth; If you’re a dev it shouldn’t be too hard to leverage pandoc, especially coming from a clean text based format. Something like: $ brew install pandoc (install on macOS) $ pandoc -t docx filename.md -o filename.docx Ref: https://opensource.com/article/19/5/convert-markdown-to-word...

or just use PanWriter: https://panwriter.com/

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

#269

Post by em-bee »

citizenkeen wrote: post #225
socialdemocrat wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just sold everyone on markdown. This is the whole point. All the crap MS Word adds to support formatting and visual styles is in the way. With markdown you focus on the actual text. Exactly what an author should want to. What exactly does MS Word add over markdown which matters to an author? I am talking about the writing experience. You could always export to docx.

Why would I want to write my first draft in a different tool than my subsequent drafts? Nobody cares about visual styles, but my editor sends back their thoughts with inline edits and comments in Word. It's so much easier to edit in Word. I'm a huge Markdown fan, but it raises the question: What does Markdown get me that makes it worth switching to for the first draft only?

i am probably the wrong person to respond because the reason i prefer a plain text editor is that that's what i have been using for all my work until now.

i am not yet there in the process, but i won't be using plain text/markdown just for the first draft.

when i get back that word documents with comments from the editor, i'll look at that like a read-only copy, and actually make the required edits in that same plain text editor.

while it may be easier to make edits right in place in the word document, it is easier (for me at least) to keep a history of changes with plain text documents.

otherwise i'd agree with you. if you are going to end up editing in word, may as well start with editing in word. for me the goal is to avoid using word/libreoffice at all.

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

#270

Post by andrewflnr »

unixhero wrote: post #264
andrewflnr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what you mean by "standard". It is very widely used, but the closest thing to a standard in the sense of something needed for interoperation is docx.

The standard, as in what novelists enjoy writing, a software to enhance the writing experience.

Not really that either, honestly. I know/have heard a lot of writers who just use Word for that, too, Brandon Sanderson for one. Scrivener is widespread and well-loved, but it's very optional.
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