Veronica Berglyd Olsen
80 lines
3.8 KiB
ReStructuredText
80 lines
3.8 KiB
ReStructuredText
.. _a_intro:
|
|
|
|
************
|
|
Key Features
|
|
************
|
|
|
|
.. _Snowflake : https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/
|
|
|
|
At the core, novelWriter is a multi-document plain text editor. It uses a markup syntax inspired by
|
|
Markdown to apply simple formatting to the text. It is designed for writing fiction, so the
|
|
formatting features are limited to those relevant for this purpose. It is not suitable for
|
|
technical writing.
|
|
|
|
Your novel project is organised as a collection of separate plain text documents instead of a
|
|
single, large document. The idea here is to make it easier to reorganise your project structure
|
|
without having to cut and paste text.
|
|
|
|
You can at any point split documents by their header, or merge multiple documents into single
|
|
documents. This makes it easier to use variations of the popular Snowflake_ method for writing.
|
|
|
|
Below are some key features of novelWriter.
|
|
|
|
**Focus on writing**
|
|
The aim of the user interface is to let the user focus on writing instead of spending time
|
|
formatting text. Formatting is therefore limited to a small set of formatting tags for simple
|
|
things like text emphasis and paragraph alignment. When you really want to focus on just
|
|
writing, you can switch the editor into :guilabel:`Focus Mode` where only the text editor window
|
|
itself is vissible.
|
|
|
|
**Keep an eye on your notes**
|
|
The main window can optionally show a document viewer to the right of the editor. This view
|
|
panel is intended for displaying another scene document, you character notes, plot notes, or any
|
|
other document you may need to reference while writing.
|
|
|
|
**Organise your documents how you like**
|
|
You can split your novel project up into as many individual documents as you want to. When you
|
|
build the project, they are all glued together in the top-to-bottom order in which they appear
|
|
in the project tree. You can use as few text documents as you like, but splitting the project up
|
|
into chapters and scenes means you can easily reorder them using the drag and drop feature. You
|
|
can start out with a few documents and then later split the document into multiple documents
|
|
based on its headers.
|
|
|
|
**Keep track of your plot elements**
|
|
All notes in your project can be assigned a *tag* you can *reference* from any other document or
|
|
note. In fact, you can add a new tag under each heading of a note if you need to be able to
|
|
reference a specific section. Note tags are organised into categories with specific reference
|
|
keywords.
|
|
|
|
**Get an overview of your plot elements**
|
|
In the :guilabel:`Outline View` on the main window you can see an outline of all the chapters,
|
|
scenes, and sections of your project. If they have any references in them, these are listed in
|
|
additional columns. You can also add a synopsis to each document, which can be listed here as
|
|
well. You have the option to add or remove columns of information from this outline. A subset of
|
|
the outline information is also available in the :guilabel:`Novel View` as a replacement for the
|
|
main project tree.
|
|
|
|
**Building your manuscript**
|
|
Whether you want to compile a manuscript, or export all your notes, or generate an outline of
|
|
your chapters and scenes with a synopsis, you can use the :guilabel:`Build Novel Project` tool.
|
|
The tool lets you select what information you want to include in the generated document, and how
|
|
it is formatted. You can send the result to a printer, a PDF, or to an Open Document file that
|
|
can be opened by most office type word processors. You can also generate the result as HTML, or
|
|
Markdown, both suitable for further conversion to other formats.
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. _a_intro_screenshots:
|
|
|
|
Screenshots
|
|
===========
|
|
|
|
.. figure:: images/screenshot_default.png
|
|
:class: dark-light
|
|
|
|
novelWriter with default theme
|
|
|
|
.. figure:: images/screenshot_dark.png
|
|
:class: dark-light
|
|
|
|
novelWriter with dark theme
|