Markdown Export in Deckle

Export your whole manuscript as one clean, portable Markdown file, real formatting preserved as markdown syntax, with each chapter as its own heading in your manuscript's actual order.

What You Can Do

• Export your entire manuscript as a single .md file, straight from your project.
• Keep real formatting (bold, italic, block quotes, lists) written as actual markdown syntax, not stripped down to plain text.
• Get each chapter as its own top-level heading, in your manuscript's real order.
• Get a lightweight, dependency-free file you can open in any text editor, import into another writing or notes tool, or track in Git.

How to Export a Markdown File from Deckle

1. Open Compile from your project.
2. On the Format tab, select Markdown.
3. Click Export Markdown, choose where to save, and Deckle writes the file.

There's no target or variant to choose: unlike EPUB or DOCX, Markdown always exports the same way.

How Your Manuscript Is Structured in the File

• Everything exports into one combined file, not one file per chapter.
• Each chapter becomes its own # Heading.
• A chapter that contains scenes has those scenes merged directly underneath that same heading; scenes don't get their own separate headings.
• Both the gap between scenes inside a chapter and the gap between chapters use the same --- horizontal-rule marker, so the # headings are what actually tell you where one chapter ends and the next begins.

A Couple of Things Worth Knowing

💡 The "Include Table of Contents" option doesn't apply here. It's a layout option for PDF, EPUB, and DOCX exports; Markdown always exports your chapters as headings regardless of how it's set.

💡 If you need a truly universal file with no markup at all, use Plain Text export instead. Markdown keeps real formatting syntax, which Plain Text deliberately strips.

💡 Folders and Notes documents are skipped entirely. Only your actual chapters and scenes, your Draft tree's real manuscript content, end up in the file.

💡 Scene breaks and chapter breaks look identical in the file (both are ---); only the # chapter headings distinguish a new chapter from a scene break inside one.