Git & Markdown to write a novel
This year, I started writing a historical novel about a branch of my family. I quickly realized I needed some tooling to organize my data: what I know about the characters, the places, a general timeline, etc.
Manuskript
I looked for software to do that and found that the reference is Scrivener. However interesting it looked, I’d rather use Open Source software whenever possible, so I started using Manuskript, an Open Source software for writers similar to Scrivener.
I laid out some chapters, characters, plots… then I realized the saving format was binary. It’s actually a Zip archive which contains all the information in flat files:
1 2020-05-09 08:05 MANUSKRIPT
137 2020-05-09 08:05 infos.txt
0 2020-05-09 08:05 summary.txt
46 2020-05-09 08:05 status.txt
147 2020-05-09 08:05 labels.txt
284 2020-05-09 08:05 characters/0-Samuel_L-on.txt
281 2020-05-09 08:05 characters/1-L-on_Grunberg.txt
261 2020-05-09 08:05 characters/2-Adolphe_Grunberg.txt
309 2020-05-09 08:05 characters/3-Elisabeth_Rau.txt
112 2020-05-09 08:05 characters/4-Victor_Grunberg.txt
109 2020-05-09 08:05 characters/5-Maria_Schorr.txt
224 2020-05-09 08:05 characters/6-Fred_Grunberg.txt
125 2020-05-09 08:05 characters/7-Colonel_de_Villebois-Mareuil.txt
107 2020-05-09 08:05 characters/8-Said_Pacha.txt
109 2020-05-09 08:05 characters/9-Isaac_Aghion.txt
92 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/00-Setup.md
322 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/01-Les_joyaux_-gyptiens/folder.txt
3753 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/01-Les_joyaux_-gyptiens/0-Une_rencontre_inattendue.md
1706 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/01-Les_joyaux_-gyptiens/1-Office_de_chabbat.md
715 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/01-Les_joyaux_-gyptiens/2-Un_d-ner_chez_Isaac.md
482 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/01-Les_joyaux_-gyptiens/3-Proc-s_1.md
166 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/01-Les_joyaux_-gyptiens/4-Sc-ne_5.md
83 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/02-Paris/folder.txt
102 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/02-Paris/0-Sc-ne_1.md
97 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/03-Etudes_des_enfants/folder.txt
103 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/03-Etudes_des_enfants/0-Sc-ne_1.md
103 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/03-Etudes_des_enfants/1-Sc-ne_2.md
95 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/04-Premiers_emplois/folder.txt
103 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/04-Premiers_emplois/0-Sc-ne_1.md
96 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/05-Vers_le_Transvaal/folder.txt
103 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/05-Vers_le_Transvaal/0-Sc-ne_1.md
334 2020-05-09 08:05 outline/21-Epilogue.md
40074 2020-05-09 08:05 revisions.xml
275 2020-05-09 08:05 world.opml
1669 2020-05-09 08:05 plots.xml
2499 2020-05-09 08:05 settings.txtThis is rather good news, and there’s ways to automate PDF creation from this within the software, good news again!
However, some things were problematic to me:
- I like to tune my pandoc/LaTeX rendering, and the options in Manuskript were pretty limited for that
- I’d rather not commit a single Zip file in Git, so I would have preferred to have all the files in the current directory
- Manuskript cannot be automated to compile the PDF, you need to go through the GUI and click on buttons. That’s a blocker for me.
Going the full-git way
So I decided I would do everything in Git + Markdown, without the help of a third-party application.
Chapters
I’m currently storing the chapters in their own directories, with numbered Markdown files:
chapitres/
├── 01_les_joyaux_egyptiens
│ ├── 00_titre.md
│ ├── 01_une_rencontre_innatendue.md
│ ├── 02_office_de_chabbat.md
│ ├── 03_brody.md
│ ├── 04_chabbat_2.md
│ ├── 05_diner_chez_isaac.md
│ └── 06_audience.md
├── 02_les_enfants_grunberg
│ ├── 00_titre.md
│ ├── 01_leon.md
│ ├── 02_retour.md
│ ├── 03_coffre.md
│ ├── 04_burtaux.md
│ ├── 05_article.md
│ └── 06_article2.md
├── 03_annees_noires
│ └── 00_titre.md
├── 04_etudes
│ └── 00_titre.md
├── 05_premier_travail
│ └── 00_titre.md
├── 06_le_creusot
│ └── 00_titre.md
└── 21_epilogue.mdCharacters & Places
The characters documentation is stored in Markdown files as well, and links can be made between them when necessary:
personnages/
├── Adolphe_Grunberg.md
├── Charlotte_Grunberg.md
├── Elisabeth_Rau.md
├── Emilie_Grunberg.md
├── Felix_Zottier.md
├── Frederic_Grunberg.md
├── Isaac_Aghion.md
├── Jacques_Grunberg.md
├── Leon_Grunberg.md
├── Lucie_Leon.md
├── Marc_Leon.md
├── Mirel_Schorr.md
├── Paul_Grunberg.md
└── Samuel_Leon.mdSame goes for places:
lieux/
├── Alexandrie.md
├── Brody.md
├── Dubno.md
├── Grunberg_Boulogne.md
├── Paris.md
├── Petite_Jonchere.md
└── Vienne.mdLinks can easily be made between these documentation files:
# Mirel Schorr
## État civil
* Prénoms : Mirel, dite Maria
* Nom : Grünberg
* Nom de naissance : Schorr
## Portrait
Inconnu
## Description physique
Inconnu
## Evénements
* ca 1800 : ° à [Dubno](../lieux/Dubno.md) (Russie)
* Enfance à [Brody](../lieux/Brody.md) (Autriche)
avec ses parents [Schachne](Schachne_Schorr.md)
et [Sarah](Sarah_Bick.md)
et ses frères [Naphtali](Naphtali_Mendel_Schorr.md)
et [Osias](Osias_Heschel_Schorr.md)
* 1821: Mariage à [Brody](../lieux/Brody.md)
* 1870 : habite à [Vienne](../lieux/Vienne.md) (testament [Adolphe](Adolphe_Grunberg.md))
* 1877 : habite à [Paris](../lieux/Paris.md) (+)
* 1877 : + à [Vienne](../lieux/Vienne.md)
## Habillement
Voir sa garde-robe en 1853 dans l'inventaire de [Victor](Victor_Grunberg.md)Section stats
Manuskript provides stats about the number of words in a section. I’ve added a Make target for that:
stats:
find chapitres/ -name "*.md" -not -name '00_titre.md' -print0 | sort -z | xargs -0 wc -wCaveat: it also lists the words in the comments…
Building the project
I’m using Pandoc to build the project with my own LaTeX template.
%.md:
cat meta.md > $@
find chapitres/ -name "*.md" -print0 | sort -z | xargs -0 cat >> $@
%.tex: %.md
pandoc --pdf-engine lualatex --template extended.tex \
--variable numbersections --toc --variable toc-depth=2 \
--variable documentclass=memoir --variable fontsize=12pt \
--filter pandoc-citeproc \
--verbose \
$< -o $@
%.pdf: %.tex
OSFONTDIR=$(FONTSDIR) lualatex $<
makeindex $*.idx
OSFONTDIR=$(FONTSDIR) lualatex $<The novel project can be found in this GitHub repository: