Exporting Projects

Export your writing for a submission, a reading copy, or another writing app. The simple format options are still available—you don’t have to use Custom. Exporting leaves your writing in kindling unchanged.

Export Dialog

1. Open your project and choose File → Export.
2. Select a format, such as Word, ePub, or Markdown.
3. Adjust its options, choose a destination, and select Export.

Word, ePub, Markdown, Longform, novelWriter, Scrivener, and Treatment all have direct export options. No saved profile is required.

To export a particular chapter or scene, use Export in its sidebar menu. Check the scope shown in the dialog; some project formats always include the whole project.

Custom Export Workspace

Use Custom when you want saved settings, a live preview, more layout control, or HTML and plain-text manuscript output. Select a profile and Open workspace; Back to export returns to the simple format choices.

Custom remembers your choice and last profile for that project. You can still choose a standard format for an individual export.

See Export Workspace for content selection, typography, book details, live previews, and saving profiles.

Supported Formats

Format	Output	Best For
DOCX	.docx file	Standard Manuscript Format submissions
Treatment	.docx or .txt file	Outline or story summary
Scrivener	.scriv bundle	Roundtrip with Scrivener 3
Markdown	Separate scene files in the standard dialog; one manuscript file in Custom	Text-based writing tools
HTML	One .html document or fragment, through Custom	Websites and publishing tools
Plain text	One .txt manuscript, through Custom	Unformatted text
Longform/Obsidian	Index + scene files	Roundtrip with Obsidian
novelWriter	Project folder	Roundtrip with novelWriter 26.2+
EPUB	.epub file	E-readers and ebook previews

Export Scopes

Scope	What It Includes
Project	All chapters and scenes
Chapter	Only the selected chapter
Scene	Only the selected scene

In Custom, Word, EPUB, HTML, Markdown, and plain text use your manuscript selection. Longform, Scrivener, novelWriter, and treatments use the whole project and their own content rules; manuscript chapter selections and typography settings do not apply to them. See content selection.

Manuscript exports use each scene’s active writing view once: Page prose or Beat prose. Inactive cached prose is excluded; scenes without beats use Page prose. DOCX word counts follow the same rule. Included beat headings for a Page scene follow its prose rather than marking paragraph boundaries.

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DOCX (Standard Manuscript Format)

DOCX exports are designed for manuscript submissions. Formatting options include:

• Title page — Uses app settings and project pen name (see Settings)
• Chapter heading style and page breaks
• Scene break markers
• Font family and line spacing
• Optional beat markers and scene synopses

The output follows Standard Manuscript Format conventions used by literary agents and publishers.

Use Custom for additional control over font size, paragraph spacing and indentation, margins, paper size, running headers, and contents. Save a profile for each recipient’s requirements. See Prepare a submission manuscript.

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Treatment (DOCX)

For screenplay and novel projects, a treatment summarizes the whole project’s outline, synopses, and beats. Choose a level of detail:

• One page · overview — A concise project summary
• Five pages · key scenes — A summary of key scenes
• Full · scenes and beats — The full scene-and-beat treatment

Export as Word or plain text. The one-page and five-page choices describe the level of detail; actual page counts depend on your content.

Treatment export is available from Export → Treatment in the project menu.

In Custom, choose Treatment as the output format, then open Files & format to set the detail level and file type.

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Scrivener (.scriv)

kindling can export to Scrivener 3’s native bundle format, letting you move your outline and prose into Scrivener for further drafting or compilation.

Two export modes:

• New bundle — Creates a fresh .scriv project from your kindling project
• Update existing — Merges changes back into an existing .scriv bundle, with a match preview showing exactly what will change before you confirm

The Custom workspace creates new Scrivener projects only. For scene matching and optional backups when updating an existing project, use Scrivener in the standard export dialog.

What Gets Exported

• Project structure — Chapters and scenes as Scrivener binder items
• Scene titles and synopses — Written to Scrivener’s metadata fields
• Prose content — Written to each scene document
• References — Characters and locations as named notes in dedicated binder sections

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Markdown

Markdown exports create a folder structure like:

My Project/
  01 - Chapter One/
    01 - Scene One.md
    02 - Scene Two.md

• Beat markers can be included as headings
• If you choose to delete an existing export folder, its contents are removed before writing new files. Use a separate destination to keep an earlier copy.

Custom Markdown produces one manuscript file, with headings and supported text formatting. Custom plain text produces one .txt file without rich-text formatting. Both show the generated text in the workspace. See text and project exports.

HTML

Choose Custom → Website chapters → Web / HTML to export selected chapters as one .html file. Choose a complete document or a body fragment for pasting, set the chapter heading level, and include built-in styling or let your website supply it. The Read and HTML tabs show the rendered manuscript and its source.

See Export HTML for a website.

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Longform/Obsidian

Longform exports are optimised for Obsidian + Longform workflows, making it easy to round-trip between kindling and Obsidian.

They retain outline prompts and the active editor mode, without inactive beat prose.

Output layout:

My Project/
  My Project.md          # Longform index
  Scene One.md
  Scene Two.md
  characters/
  locations/
  items/
  objectives/
  organizations/

Scene files include:

• YAML frontmatter (type, project, status, characters, setting, synopsis)
• Scene title heading and synopsis block
• <!-- kindling: ... --> metadata and beats marker

Reference notes are written into subfolders for characters, locations, items, objectives, and organizations.

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novelWriter

novelWriter exports create a complete project folder you can open directly in novelWriter 26.2 or newer, and re-import to establish a sync link.

Output layout:

My Project/
  nwProject.nwx          # project file
  content/
    <handle>.md          # one document per part, chapter and scene

Options:

• Include beat comments (on by default) writes a % Beat: comment before each beat’s prose. Keep it enabled — it preserves beat boundaries so a later Sync can review prose beat by beat rather than as one scene-level change.
• Reference notes are included by default and map to novelWriter’s note roots: Characters → Character, Locations → World, Items → Object, Objectives → Plot, Organizations → Entity, Timelines → Timeline, Notes → Custom.
• Archived chapters and scenes are excluded.

In the standard dialog, choose an empty destination folder. In Custom, choose the parent folder; kindling creates a new named project folder inside it. Screenplay projects cannot be exported to this format.

Exporting does not change the project’s existing sync connection. To work in novelWriter and bring changes back, export to an empty folder, then use Import → novelWriter on that folder — the imported project is linked to it, and Sync will read later edits.

Page-mode scenes have no stored beat boundaries, so they export as whole-scene prose with no beat comments.

Not included: underline, kindling-only planning data, and per-item importance. novelWriter shortcodes, footnotes, alignment and indent codes are not preserved on the way back in. See Importing Projects for the full round-trip notes.

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EPUB

EPUB exports include:

• Metadata — Title, author, description, language
• Theme selection — Classic, Modern, or Minimal
• Optional cover image
• Optional beat markers and scene synopses

Theme descriptions:

Theme	Style
Classic	Serif body text, traditional chapter headings with drop caps
Modern	Clean sans-serif, minimal ornamentation, generous whitespace
Minimal	Body text only — no chapter styling, no decorative elements

EPUB files can be opened in any e-reader app (Apple Books, Kindle, Calibre, etc.) for previewing your manuscript as a finished book.

Use Custom to save book details with your content selection and typography preferences. Readers may override fonts and spacing, so check the exported file in your intended reading app. A selected cover is included in the EPUB but does not appear in the workspace’s manuscript preview. See Prepare an ebook or reading copy.

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Export Settings

Several settings affect export output. See Settings for the full list, but the key ones are:

• Author name and contact info — appears on DOCX title pages
• Pen name (project-level override) — replaces the author name for a specific project
• Genre and description — included in EPUB metadata

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For importing or syncing exported content back into kindling, see Importing Projects and Sync & Reimport.