For Writers

Welcome! When I started writing Means and Motive, I wanted to take a disciplined approach. Perhaps that's just the software engineer in me, hoping to take a complex creative process and break it down into a series of steps and milestones. By combining my past experience and a lot of research, I've come up with a system I'm happy with. It combines some non-technical and technical parts. If you just want to learn my non-technical approach, you can bring your own tools. If you want to hear my full process, read on to the technical section.

Non-Technical Tools

I started off by creating a few files:

novel.html: The novel itself: title, chapter headings, and text.
universe.html: Listings of characters, locations, key events, chapters, and background/research references.
guidelines.html: Expected word count, chapter count, and references to writing resources.

I began with universe.html. I listed key events and key characters. I made sure there was enough material for roughly my goal chapter count by making a short description of each chapter.

Then I wrote the chapters in novel.html, mostly in chronological order. I left TBD annotations wherever I knew there was more to be written. The TBDs serve two purposes: I can search for them when writing to flesh out unfinished sections, and EPublish can mark unfinished chapters so it's clear in draft copies what is remaining.

As I went, if I needed guidance or writing tips, I kept track of useful resources in guidelines.html.

Technical Tools

I write and edit with GNU Emacs, using html-helper-mode and flyspell-mode. I keep my HTML very simple, using h1 for the title, h2 for chapter headings, h3 for chapter subheadings, and paragraph tags between each paragraph. I use hr for a section separator, with custom asterism images for a distinctive look.

I use a tool called EPublish to convert the HTML manuscript into an .epub file. It generates all the necessary files and merges them together to form an upload-ready file. It also generates a report listing chapters and completion status (based on length and TBD indicators).

Finally, I use Calibre to convert the .epub file into .pdf for the printed editions. It is possible to use the app to convert to PDF manually. However, I prefer to use the command-line interface, ebook-convert, to have a repeatable, automated process for generating paperback and hardcover editions.

Last modified on 3 May 2026 by AO