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Manuscript export — book & novel formats ​

For writers who use YarnDraft for a book rather than a game: the Story Board exports as a manuscript, not as a game script.

Access:

  • Story Board header: Export manuscript
  • Menu bar: File → Export manuscript

What gets exported ​

The card kind decides the structure, not the indent depth:

CardBecomes
ActA part heading, on its own page
ChapterA chapter heading, on a new page
Scene / BeatA scene inside the chapter it sits under, separated by a * * * scene break
IdeaSkipped, unless you tick Idea cards

A Scene card that does not sit under a Chapter card becomes a chapter of its own, so a flat outline of scenes exports cleanly too.

Only the card's Content is exported — the prose. Titles and summaries stay out unless you ask for them.

Formats ​

FormatPurpose
Word (.docx)Standard manuscript layout: 12pt Times New Roman, double spaced, indented paragraphs, chapters starting on a new page. This is what agents and publishers ask for.
Markdown (.md)Obsidian, iA Writer, Ulysses, GitHub
EPUB (.epub)A draft to read on an e-reader or send to beta readers
Plain text (.txt)Works anywhere; scene breaks marked with #
Fountain (.fountain)Screenplay format — Final Draft, Highland, Scrivener

Print / PDF renders the same manuscript with a title page and prints it through the system dialog, where Save as PDF produces the file.

Options ​

  • Scene titles — print the scene card titles above their prose. Off by default; working titles rarely belong in a manuscript.
  • Summaries — add each card's summary as an italic synopsis line. Useful when the export is an outline or a synopsis rather than the book.
  • Idea cards — include Idea cards as scenes. Off by default, since they are notes.

Notes ​

  • The word count in the dialog counts the exported prose only, so it matches what lands in the file.
  • The author byline comes from the project's authors.
  • The DOCX and EPUB files are written by the app itself with no compression, which every reader and Word accept; the files are a little larger than a zipped equivalent.

YarnDraft — lightweight, cross-platform narrative design tool