I decided to write this article after noticing a gulf between academic and technical writers and creative writers, particularly in their use of technology. My goal is to shed some light on these tools and their applications. Depending on the interest this piece generates, I might expand it into a series. If you find this topic relevant, please share your feedback.

To fully exploit the tools of technology, first and foremost, my recommendation is to maintain documents in plain text or a simple derivative to the extent possible. The reason is simple: plain text is universally compatible, ensuring accessibility across virtually all text-based tools, including those primarily designed for coding rather than writing.

Why should you care about these tools? If you’re an indie author without the backing of a publication house, the publication process is a DIY project, and learning to use every tool effectively can save you from hiring professionals. Unless you’re a bestselling author, you’re probably struggling to break even, so making the most of available technology can be crucial.

A Word about Text Formats

Before diving into some of my favorite tools, let’s briefly talk text formats. As a writer, the last thing you should struggle with during the creative phase is wrestling with formatting. Though I’m not a professional writer—technically, I am since I am publishing a novel and hope to receive money from it (but you know what I mean)—I would counsel writers to focus first on writing your words, not on formatting. Even for something as extensive as a novel, you can handle the formatting later, although there will be a few exceptions to this rule, as we’ll see. For this reason, plain text is a good choice as it forces you to concentrate solely on content.

For most creative works, simple font formatting like italics, bold, and occasionally underlining is enough. I recommend using a format that employs simple markup. This isn’t the place to explore all markup languages, but I’ll mention one: TeX or LaTeX. It will help make formatting painless when the time comes.

It’s important to be competent in converting between your plain text format and Microsoft Word and, to a lesser extent, Google Docs. Most independent editors require manuscripts in Microsoft Word due to its track changes and commenting capabilities. Facilitating your editor’s best work means keeping them comfortable by using their preferred tools, which places the burden of format conversion on you. Although it may sound daunting, the process is quite simple if you keep your formatting limited to italics, bold, and underlining.

Converting between file formats is trivial if your document has no formatting. However, preserving specific formatting requires tools in file format conversion. Using a markup language like LaTeX, which uses minimal markup, allows editors—like the one I hired—to ignore the markup and focus solely on the text. This approach does risk minor oversights, such as missing italics where needed because the editor might not know how to indicate it. But generally, these issues are rare and a diligent editor would simply note the need in comments.

Before we leave the topic of plain text, let’s discuss encodings, which are crucial for working with extended character sets. Encodings are an integral part of plain text. I generally prefer using UTF-8 because it supports a wide range of characters. For example, in the novel I’m currently developing, my protagonist, an Icelander named Mikkel Friðriksson, includes the “eth” character (ð) instead of a ‘d’. Fortunately, most tools respect UTF-8 encoding, allowing you to work comfortably with this extended character set. One exception I found is that LaTeX requires special instructions to handle Greek letters. However, for most writing based only on extending the Latin alphabet, UTF-8 is suitable. The whole area of encodings is a subject in its own right. My expertise in this area extends only as far as my needs have been.

Version Control Systems

Version control systems are a mainstay of software development. I would argue they should be considered just as indispensable for writers. As the name suggests, they provide a framework for managing different versions of your work, allowing users to track changes and revert to previous versions easily. While there are document management systems—I’ve used Box and iManage—that offer rudimentary version control, I would recommend a version control system due to their maturity and comprehensive features, which can be crucial for a writer who revisits and revises content over time.

During my career as a software engineer, I’ve seen the evolution from RCS, CVS dating back nearly 40 years to Mercurial and Subversion in more recent times. The 800-pound gorilla today is Git. Over the past decade, every software project I have been involved with uses Git. It has become the de facto standard in the industry because of its emphasis on version control rather than collaboration conflict.

I know what you are thinking. I have a working draft that is evolving—why complicate things by having more than one version? There are several reasons why you might want to keep track of versions.

Consider this use case: You’ve sent an early draft to your beta readers. If you’re like me, you might not want to put your writing on hold while waiting for their feedback. By tagging your version before distribution, you can easily refer back to the exact draft your beta readers received. This ability can be incredibly useful if you want to continue writing while awaiting feedback.

If you’re more marketing-minded, you might experiment with two different endings, for instance. These can be saved as two distinct versions, what we in the VCS world call branches. You could send these versions to different groups of readers. From there, the versions can evolve independently, be recombined into a master branch, or be pruned depending on your needs. This method allows you to explore different creative directions without losing track of the variations.

Branching and tagging are likely the two most useful features for writers. A third useful feature could be commit comments. When you commit a version to the system, you are required to provide a comment. If you commit daily, the comment might be routine, but you could also note significant changes, such as “Swapped chapter 7 with chapter 10 because it reads better.” This helps you keep a detailed log of when major changes were made, providing a valuable reference for future editing decisions.

Here’s an anecdote to illustrate the value of version control: While drafting a novel, I had a very unpredictable mouse that made me prone to accidentally selecting and deleting sections of text. Normally, I would spot it and perform an undo right away. However, I once discovered a missing section that had gone unnoticed for months. Fortunately, I was able to roll back enough versions to find the missing text. This incident underscores the importance of version control as a safety net.

While Git can be deployed on your own machine and the Git repository—the term for where all versions are stored—can be backed up using your preferred backup method, I highly recommend using GitHub. GitHub not only hosts remote Git repositories but also keeps them securely backed up on its servers, providing automatic disaster recovery. One caveat when using GitHub is that it was originally designed to foster open-source collaboration for software projects. As a result, public repositories are the default for free accounts, meaning anyone (even non-GitHub users) can view the contents. If you’re working on private creative projects, make sure to set your repositories to private to protect your work. This is easy to do but important not to overlook.

GitHub allows users to create private repositories for free, though there are some restrictions—free accounts are currently limited to three collaborators per private repository. For most authors, this limitation won’t be an issue, as creative writing is typically not a collaborative endeavor. However, this could change if editors, proofreaders, or other professionals in the writing space start adopting Git.

On GitHub, several features are available, but perhaps the most useful for writers is the ability to compare different versions of files. This is where my recommendation to use plain text comes into play. Storing your document as plain text allows you to visually track the differences between versions. File formats like Microsoft Word’s DOCX are XML-based, unlike the older binary DOC format. While XML allows GitHub to show differences, it’s a complex markup language, and DOCX even more so. Any difference displayed between two versions of a DOCX file will likely be hidden behind a lot of unintelligible markup, understandable to very few. For this reason, if you want to make the most out of GitHub’s features, I strongly urge you to store your work as plain text.

Typesetting

The final topic of this article is a brief discussion on typesetting. Typesetting and typography are art forms dating back to Gutenberg. There is a lot of subtlety involved in making text look professional and aesthetically pleasing. It is typically the last step in your publication journey. This step remains important even in the digital age for eBooks.

You may ask, “Doesn’t KDP or IngramSpark do all that for me?” Based on feedback from other authors, the short answer is yes. But you may sense a “however” coming, and you’d be right. While these platforms offer convenience, they might not deliver the meticulous care that you would personally provide. Moreover, their toolsets are often limited compared to what a professional typesetter can offer. Especially if your work includes unique formatting features, the standard services may fall short.

If the results are not up to par, you might find yourself needing to hire someone to format your book professionally. Of course, you might now be thinking that typesetting sounds hard; how can you manage it on your own?

The basics of aesthetics aren’t too complex to grasp. There are two key indicators of professional typesetting: justified text—with edges flush on both the right and left—and natural word spacing. In contrast, unprofessional typesetting often results in excessive space between words, creating what is known as “rivers of white,” which contribute to a less polished look.

Fortunately, there is a tandem of software packages, TeX and LaTeX, that have stood the test of time. Unlike word processors like Microsoft Word, these are dedicated typesetting programs. Academic and scientific writers are intimately familiar with these tools, as many conferences and journals only accept submissions in this format. For example, the ACM SIGKDD conference not only requires LaTeX but also insists on submissions using its specific LaTeX style. The SciPy conference requires submissions in a markup format called rst. Still, it ultimately uses a LaTeX engine to prepare the final publication. These packages have been providing camera-ready manuscripts for decades. They are especially valued in the academic and scientific community because, even today, they are practically the only packages that handle equations.

Developed over 40 years ago by Stanford professor and computer science icon Donald Knuth, TeX is renowned for its attention to countless subtleties in typesetting. To fully grasp its intricacies, I recommend reading Knuth’s “The TeXbook.”

The modern incarnation of TeX and LaTeX is available as part of a package called TeXLive. However, it requires a modest level of comfort with computers or command-line operations. Fortunately, for those less inclined towards technical setups, there’s an online service called Overleaf. Similar to GitHub, Overleaf offers a basic service that’s free but has limitations. One such limitation is the compile time—the duration it takes to generate a PDF from your LaTeX files. For example, I have a 200,000-word novel trilogy that pushes this limit but hasn’t yet exceeded it. Another restriction is the number of collaborators allowed. The premium service offers significant advantages, including greater allocation of compile time, an increased number of collaborators, integration with GitHub, and advanced editing features like change tracking. Since using LaTeX from scratch can be daunting, Overleaf provides a gallery of templates for various writing types, from math homework to novels. I used their novel template for my works.

When I received the first iteration of my proof copy of “Femina,” even before reading the content, it garnered compliments on how beautifully it was formatted.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that while not part of Overleaf, there are tools that can generate an ePub file—a common eBook format—from LaTeX documents. This makes LaTeX a versatile tool for anyone interested in publishing in print and electronic formats.

Maps

Ok, I lied. There is one more topic I wanted to touch on. As someone who writes historical fiction and historical fantasies, I’ve found that incorporating maps can enhance the narrative experience. This is particularly true for historical fantasies, where maps can bring the fictitious world to life, adding a layer of depth and immersion that textual narrative alone might not achieve.

Without diving too deeply into the area, I’d like to mention a valuable resource: the open-source program QGIS. This tool is extensively used by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) professionals to create accurate and detailed maps. QGIS’s strength lies in its mapping capabilities and the versatility of the data it produces. This data can be repurposed to enrich your website, providing a vivid backdrop to the universe you’ve crafted. Integrating detailed maps can offer readers visual insights into the world you’ve envisioned, boosting their engagement and deepening their understanding of the setting. Additionally, these maps serve as intriguing supplemental material that can attract readers to explore your work further on your website.

Conclusion

The main objective of this post is to outline some of the tools available in the technology fields that might be oblivious to those in the art and creative communities. These tools, often designed with precision and efficiency in mind, have the potential to complement and elevate the creative process. For example, LaTeX, while widely known and extensively used in the academic world, remains practically unheard of in creative writing circles despite its ability to produce beautifully formatted, professional documents.

Hopefully, this will bring to light some tools well known in other industries that can be used to aid the author. Best of all, every option mentioned is completely free—no strings, no catches. By exploring these resources, authors can uncover new ways to enhance their work without any cost, making them accessible to everyone, from hobbyists to professionals.