Novel

Novel is a place to draft a book. You write chapters and sections, and Drafter keeps count: the words in each chapter, your progress toward a target, and where every chapter stands. Your book is a plain Markdown file that any app opens.

It sits beside Screenplay and Stage play when you start something new. Choose New novel in the File menu or the command palette (⌘K, Ctrl+K elsewhere), or open Help → Sample scripts → Novel to see a tiny book first. When the book is ready to send out, it exports as a standard manuscript, as a PDF or a Word file (see Sending it out), and like any Markdown document it also prints and exports to HTML or EPUB.

The marks: chapters, sections, and parts

Markdown is plain text with a few marks. For a novel you need only these, and you can type them yourself.

The lines under a heading are the chapter’s text. Leave an empty line between paragraphs. A scene break before the first chapter is ignored: it has no chapter to divide.

# Part One

# Chapter One

The lighthouse had been dark for a week.

## At the Gate

Mara tried the latch.

* * *

Morning came in grey.

Here “Part One” is a part, “Chapter One” is a chapter, “At the Gate” is a section, and the scene break starts another section without a title.

The Outline and Cards

The Outline tab (Show Outline in the Inspector’s row, and on a phone’s bar) lists the book’s parts, chapters, and sections. Each row shows:

• its words, counting everything inside it;
• its progress toward a target, if you set one;
• its status: To do, Draft, Revised, or Done, from a small menu;
• its synopsis, a line or two about what happens, which you edit in place.

Enter on a row goes to the passage in your text. Alt+↑ and Alt+↓ move a chapter or section, with all its text, up or down in the book, and you can drag a row too. A move is one step of Undo. A row’s menu (Shift+F10) has Go to, the moves, Edit synopsis, Status, and Set a target.

Cards show the same book as cards, one for each chapter and section, in the book’s order, with its synopsis, status, words, and target. They move with the same keys, or by dragging on a wide screen. A plain Markdown document has neither: the Outline and Cards are a novel’s.

Focus on one chapter

A long book is hard to see. Focus on this passage (⌘⌥F on a Mac, Ctrl+Alt+F elsewhere) shows only the section where your cursor is, or its chapter when it has no sections. Press it again to widen to the whole chapter, and a third time to narrow back to the section. ⌘⌥⇧F (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F) shows the whole book.

• The rest of the book is only hidden, never removed. Saves, drafts, and every export always hold the whole book.
• The Preview shows the same passage you’re looking at.
• Replace All changes only the matches inside the passage, and says so.
• A bar over the text says what shows, with a button to show the whole book.
• If you delete the passage’s heading, search for something elsewhere, or use Go to for another passage, the whole book comes back.

Words, targets, and statuses

Open Counts (the status bar’s counts, or the palette on a phone) and set a Book target: a whole number of words, such as 90000. It then shows “62,140 of 90,000 words (69%)”. A percentage rounds down, so Drafter never says 100% before you have reached it. Past the target the real figure shows, such as 104%.

A chapter or section has its own target: choose Set a target… from its row’s menu in the Outline, or its card’s menu in Cards. Stats lists the words in each chapter, under its part. Your daily goal and sprints work as they do for any script.

Notes that no longer match

If you rename or remove a heading outside Drafter, the status, synopsis, or target kept for it has nothing to belong to. Problems says so, as advice rather than an error, with a Clear them button that removes only those notes in one undo step.

Is my file still Markdown?

Yes. A novel is an ordinary Markdown file. Open it in any text editor, or any Markdown app, and you read your book. What Drafter keeps beyond the text, the statuses, synopses, and targets, lives in one comment at the very end of the file, <!-- drafter {…} -->, which other apps do not show. That comment also says "template":"novel", which is how Drafter knows it is a novel. It is never part of your book: the Preview, printing, every export, and the word counts leave it out. Choose Markdown (plain text) in the document chooser to take that one note out and keep everything else.

Your book stays on your device. Nothing is sent anywhere, and Drafter for Claude, if you set it up, sees a novel with its parts, chapters, and sections, and each one’s notes (its status, synopsis, and target) and words, and only reads it.

Sending it out

Agents, editors, and contests ask for a standard manuscript: a plain, double-spaced book that is easy to read and easy to mark up. It is not how the book will look in print. Drafter makes one from your Markdown, so you never format it by hand or redo it after a revision. Open Export and choose Manuscript (PDF)… or Manuscript (Word)… (they are also in the Drafter menu and the command palette, and in the desktop app’s File → Export). They appear for a novel only.

What the format is

• One-inch margins, 12 point type, double-spaced, left-aligned (never justified).
• Every paragraph’s first line is indented half an inch, with no extra space between paragraphs.
• A title page with your name and contact lines at the top left, the word count at the top right, and the title centered halfway down with “by” and your byline under it. It has no header.
• On every other page a header at the top right: your surname, a short title, and the page number, such as “Vale / SALT ROAD / 12”. The title page counts as page 1, so the first chapter begins on page 2.
• Each chapter starts on a new page, a third of the way down, with its title centered. A part (# Part One) gets a page of its own.
• A break between sections is a centered # on its own line. A section’s title is not printed: manuscripts don’t title scenes, so the section titles stay your own way around the book.
• The word END, centered, after the last line.

Italic and bold stay italic and bold, and a link prints as its text. A block quote is indented half an inch on both sides. A list prints each item as its own paragraph, and code, in the book’s own font. A footnote becomes an endnote on a page headed “Notes” after END. An image is never fetched: its description prints in brackets, such as “[Image: the lighthouse at dusk]”. Your statuses, synopses, targets, and the comment at the end of the file never print.

The Manuscript details

Before either file is made, a Manuscript details box asks for the words on the title page and in the header. Every field is optional, and a blank one is simply left off the page.

The word count at the top right is counted for you, as “about 87,000 words”: rounded to the nearest thousand from 1,000 up, and to the nearest hundred below that. It counts your prose, the same words the Outline totals.

The details are saved in your book’s file, in the same comment at the end that holds the statuses, so the box opens with them next time and a later export asks nothing new. That also means anyone you give the Markdown file to can read them, your contact lines included, and so can anyone you give an HTML or EPUB export made with “Let Drafter reopen this file”, because that carries the whole book. They stay on your device otherwise: the fonts are in the app, and both files are made on your computer.

The two files

The PDF is the manuscript exactly as it will print, in Liberation Serif (a free font with the same letter widths as Times New Roman) or Courier Prime. The Word file (.docx) is the same manuscript in Times New Roman or Courier New, built with Word’s own styles, so an editor who changes a style changes the whole book. It uses Word’s own Double spacing, which is a little taller than the PDF’s (about 26.6 points a line in Times New Roman, against the PDF’s 24), so the Word file runs to about a tenth more pages and its page breaks fall in different places. Both are named for the book, such as “The Salt Road – manuscript.pdf”.

Page numbers in Word. The header holds one page-number field, which is the only way Word numbers pages by itself. Word and Pages show the right number as soon as the file opens, with no question about updating links. Drafter puts no other field in the file.

Keys at a glance