Veronica Berglyd Olsen
122 lines
6.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
122 lines
6.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
.. _a_intro:
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********
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Overview
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********
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.. _Snowflake: https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/
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.. _Markdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown
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At its core, novelWriter is a multi-document plain text editor. The idea is to let you edit your
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text without having to deal with formatting until you generate a draft document or manuscript.
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Instead, you can focus on the writing right from the start.
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Of course, you probably need *some* formatting for your text. At the very least you need emphasis.
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Most people are familiar with adding emphasis using underscores and asterisks. This formatting
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standard comes from Markdown_ and is supported by novelWriter. It also uses Markdown formatting for
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defining document headings. If you need more specialised formatting, additional formatting options
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are available using a shortcode format. See :ref:`a_fmt_shortcodes` for more details.
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.. admonition:: Limitations
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novelWriter is designed for writing fiction, so the formatting features available are limited to
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those relevant for this purpose. It is **not** suitable for technical writing, and it is **not**
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a full-featured Markdown editor.
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It is also not intended as a tool for organising research for writing, and therefore lacks
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formatting features you may need for this purpose. The notes feature in novelWriter is mainly
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intended for character profiles and plot outlines.
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Your novel project in novelWriter is organised as a collection of separate plain text documents
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instead of a single, large document. The idea is to make it easier to reorganise your project
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structure without having to cut and paste text between chapters and scenes.
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There are two kinds of documents in your project: :term:`Novel Documents` are documents that are
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part of your story. The other kind of documents are :term:`Project Notes`. These are intended for
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your notes about your characters, your world building, and so on.
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You can at any point split the individual documents by their headings up into multiple documents,
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or merge multiple documents into a single document. This makes it easier to use variations of the
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Snowflake_ method for writing. You can start by writing larger structure-focused documents, like
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for instance one document per act, and later effortlessly split these up into chapters or scenes.
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.. _a_intro_features:
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Key Features
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============
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Below are some key features of novelWriter.
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**Focus on writing**
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The aim of the user interface is to let you focus on writing instead of spending time formatting
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text. Formatting is therefore limited to a small set of formatting tags for simple things like
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text emphasis and paragraph alignment. When you really want to focus on just writing, you can
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switch the editor into **Focus Mode** where only the text editor panel itself is visible, and
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the project structure view is hidden away.
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**Keep an eye on your notes**
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The main window can optionally show a document viewer to the right of the editor. The viewer
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is intended for displaying another scene document, your character notes, plot notes, or any
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other document you may need to reference while writing. It is not intended as a preview panel
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for the document you're editing, but if you wish, you can also use it for this purpose.
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**Organise your documents how you like**
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You can split your novel project up into as many individual documents as you want to. When you
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build the project into a manuscript, they are all glued together in the top-to-bottom order in
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which they appear in the project tree. You can use as few text documents as you like, but
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splitting the project up into chapters and scenes means you can easily reorder them using the
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drag-and-drop feature of the project tree. You can also start out with fewer documents and then
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later split them into multiple documents based on chapter and scene headings.
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**Multi-novel project support**
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The main parts of your project is split up into top level special folders called "Root" folders.
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Your main story text lives in the "Novel" root folder. You can have multiple such folders in a
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project. This allows you to keep a series of individual novels with the same characters and
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world building in the same project, and create manuscripts for them individually.
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**Keep track of your story elements**
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All notes in your project can be assigned a :term:`tag` that you can then :term:`reference` from
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any other document or note. In fact, you can add a new tag under each heading of a note if you
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need to be able to reference specific sections of it.
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**Get an overview of your story**
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It is not the documents themselves that define the chapters and scenes of your story, but the
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headings that separate them. In the **Outline View** on the main window you can see an outline
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of all the chapter and scene headings of your project. If they have any references in them, like
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which character is in what chapter and scene, these are listed in additional columns.
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You can also add a synopsis to each chapter or scene, which can be listed here as well. You have
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the option to add or remove columns of information from this outline. A subset of the outline
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information is also available in the **Novel View** as an alternative view to the project tree.
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**Get an overview of your story elements**
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Under the document viewer panel you will find a series of tabs that show the different story
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elements you have created tags for. The tabs are sorted into **Characters**, **Plots**, etc,
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depending on which categories you are using in your story. This panel can be hidden to free up
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space when you don't need it.
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**Assembling your manuscript**
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Whether you want to assemble a manuscript, or export all your notes, or generate an outline of
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your chapters and scenes with a synopsis included, you can use the **Build Manuscript** tool to
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do so. The tool lets you select what information you want to include in the generated document,
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and how it is formatted. You can send the result to a printer, a PDF, or to an Open Document
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file that can be opened by most office type word processors. You can also generate the result
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as HTML, or Markdown, both suitable for further conversion to other formats.
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.. _a_intro_screenshots:
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Screenshots
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===========
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.. figure:: images/screenshot_light.png
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:class: dark-light
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novelWriter with light colour theme
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.. figure:: images/screenshot_dark.png
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:class: dark-light
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novelWriter with dark colour theme
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