Exporting Projects from Kindling

Export your writing for a submission, a reading copy, a website, or another writing app. Choose a standard format for a quick export, or use Custom to save your own export profiles and adjust settings beside a live preview.

Exporting leaves your writing in Kindling unchanged. Prose exports use the writing from each scene's selected view—Page View or Beat View—so the same prose is not included twice. Scenes without beats use their Page View prose.

Make an export

1. Open your project and choose File → Export.
2. Select a format, such as Word, ePub, or Markdown.
3. Adjust the options shown for that format and choose a destination.
4. Select Export.

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.

Save custom settings

Select the Custom tile, choose a profile, and select Open workspace. The workspace includes starting profiles for agent submissions, writing groups, and website chapters. You can duplicate a profile, change its settings, and save it for your next export.

Once you choose Custom, it becomes the remembered choice for that project, along with your last selected profile. You can still select another format for an individual export.

See Customize exports with profiles for the full guide to content selection, typography, book details, HTML, and saved settings.

Choose an output format

Format	Output	Useful for
Word	.docx file	Manuscript submissions and word processors
ePub	.epub file	E-readers and reading copies
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, and reference notes	Working in Obsidian with Longform
Scrivener	.scriv project	Moving work to Scrivener or updating an existing project
novelWriter	Project folder	Moving prose projects to novelWriter
Treatment	.docx or .txt file	Sharing an outline or story summary

Word manuscripts

The standard Word export offers manuscript formatting options for a title page, chapter headings, page breaks, scene separators, font, and line spacing. You can also include beat headings and scene synopses.

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 submission requirements.

EPUB reading copies

In the standard dialog, set the book title, author, description, and language, choose a theme, and optionally add a cover image. Beat headings and scene synopses can also be included.

Use Custom to save these book details with your content selection and typography preferences. Ebook readers may override font and spacing settings, so check the export in your intended reading app.

Markdown and plain text

Standard Markdown export creates a folder for the selected chapters and scenes:

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

You can include beat headings. If you select the option to delete an existing export folder, its contents will be removed before the new files are written. Use a separate destination to keep an earlier copy.

Custom Markdown and plain-text exports each produce a single manuscript file. Markdown retains supported formatting such as emphasis and headings; plain text removes rich-text formatting. Both show the generated text in the workspace.

Longform / Obsidian

Longform exports create an index file, individual scene files, and reference notes grouped into folders for characters, locations, items, objectives, and organizations. Scene files include titles, synopses, and details used to preserve your project's structure when you bring changes back into Kindling.

Keep the generated index and scene files together when moving the export. See Sync & Reimport for working with a linked source.

Scrivener and novelWriter

Choose Scrivener to create a new project. To update an existing Scrivener project, use its options in the standard export dialog, review the scene matches, and choose whether to make a backup. The Custom workspace creates new Scrivener projects only.

novelWriter export creates a project folder with options for reference notes and beat comments. Keep beat comments enabled if you want to preserve beat boundaries for later sync. novelWriter export supports prose projects, not screenplays.

Within Custom, Longform, Scrivener, and novelWriter always export the whole project. Manuscript chapter selections and typography settings do not apply to these project formats.

Treatments

A treatment summarizes the whole project's outline, synopses, and beats. Choose an overview, key-scene summary, or full scene-and-beat treatment, then export it as Word or plain text. The one-page and five-page choices describe the level of detail; actual page counts depend on your content.

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

Export folder and filename safety

Markdown and Longform export names must identify a child folder. Dot-directory names such as . and .. are rejected, including when deleting an existing export folder. A project export folder cannot be a symbolic link.

Longform reserves the index filename before naming scene files. Scenes that would collide with the index or another scene receive numbered filenames, and the index points to those files. Comparisons ignore filename case.