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

  1. Writing in modules (or ‘scenes’ in Draft lingo) is easier and more fun than working out of a single large document.
  2. Writing in plaintext is a more pure and distraction-free experience than WYSIWYG word processors.
  3. 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:

  1. Use Markdown.
  2. One sentence on each line.
This isn’t required – it won’t break anything! – it’s just better for tracking changes in Git
  1. 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., ========)
  1. 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.
  1. 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