Draft Writing System¶
When you’re writing something short, a Google Doc or Word file works great. But get beyond a few thousand words and all of a sudden opening that file comes with a sense of dread.
Philosophy¶
- Writing in modules (or ‘scenes’ in Draft lingo) is easier and more fun than working out of a single large document.
- Writing in plaintext is a more pure and distraction-free experience than WYSIWYG word processors.
- Git is too useful a tool to not use in a writing project.
Organization¶
Folders¶
A Draft project is made up of a simple file tree as shown below:
whalebook/
└─project/ Organization:
│ └──Moby Dick Or The Whale/ [Title]
│ └──01-Nantucket/ [Section 1]
│ │ └──01-Meeting Ishmael/ [Chapt 1]
│ │ │ └──01-Loomings/ [Sub-Chapt 1]
│ │ │ │ 01-His Name is Ishmael.md [Scene 1]
│ │ │ │ 02-Habit of Going To Sea.md [Scene 2]
│ │ │ └──02-The Carpet-Bag/ [Sub-Chapter 2]
│ │ │ │ 03-Old Manhatto.md [Scene 3]
│ │ │ │ etc.
│ │ │ └──03-etc.
│ │ └─02-Shoving Off/ [Chapter 2]
│ │ etc.
│ └──02-Whaling/ [Section 2]
│ etc.
└─settings.yml
└─.gitignore
You don’t need to use every ‘level’ of the project – i.e., you could just have the Title and a bunch of scenes, only use sections and scenes, have some scenes in sub-chapters and some scenes in chapters, etc.
The only required elements are the `project/
folder, the title/
folder (here called Moby Dick Or The Whale/
), and scene `.md
files.
Sequencing¶
Prepend 01-
, 02-
, etc. to your folders and files to keep them cleanly sequenced.
As you get to have a lot of folders and files, re-sequencing can get to be a pain (e.g., if you have 50 scenes and decide to split scene 02-
into two separate scenes, you’ll need to re-sequence the original 02-
to be 03-
and so on all the way to 51-
).
Fortunately, just run draft sequence
and Draft will auto-resequence for you.
Compiling¶
Each directory level corresponds to a Markdown heading level.
When the project compiles, the indices (e.g., 01-
) are stripped out and each folder’s title is inserted as a heading (note: Scene titles are ignored).
By running draft compile
, the above folder structure would translate into a Moby Dick, Or The Whale.md
file with the following contents:
# Moby Dick, Or The Whale
## Meeting Ishmael
### Nantucket
#### Loomings
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.
Writing¶
Writing with Draft works best under the following guidelines:
- Use Markdown.
- One sentence on each line.
This isn’t required – it won’t break anything! – it’s just better for tracking changes in Git
- Save hash-based Markdown headings for separating sections.
If you need to use big font for whatever reason, stick to other header conventions (e.g., ========)
- Use Git and Github, and Commit often.
Git is incredibly useful in a writing environment and it’s branching feature is a godsend if you want to try something radical (e.g., what if we switched from first to third person?). Github is a great visualization tool and provides a Cloud storage option for your project. And COMMIT-ing often is just good hygiene.
- Use a text editor with soft-wrapping and Markdown preview.
- Soft-wrapping: Keeps your single-line sentences from running off of the page
- Markdown preview: See how your text translates into Markdown
- Atom has both of these features