Getting your outline into Word or Scrivener
Plotloft holds the plan; you write the book somewhere else. When you're ready to draft, export the whole outline as a document: in the top bar, or the button on the Outline tab. Three formats, chosen for what actually opens them.
| Format | Opens in | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
Word (.rtf) |
Word, LibreOffice, Pages, Google Docs — double-click and it opens | You draft in a word processor and want the outline beside the manuscript, formatted and ready to print. |
Markdown (.md) |
Any text editor, Obsidian, iA Writer, pandoc | You work in plain text. The heading levels carry the structure — book, act, scene, beat — so tools that read Markdown outlines read yours. |
OPML (.opml) |
Scrivener (File ▸ Import), OmniOutliner, Workflowy | You draft in Scrivener: importing the OPML file recreates your acts, scenes, and beats as the binder, with each beat's summary as its document text. |
What ends up in the file
The same structure you see on the Outline tab's Manuscript view: acts in order, each scene with its number, title, and one-line summary, and under each scene its beats — plotline, beat title, status, the beat's summary text, and who's in it, plus any tags. Empty scenes are marked no beats yet so the gaps in your plan travel with it.
The export is a snapshot, not a link — editing the document doesn't change your board, and Plotloft never touches the file again after writing it. Your project itself isn't in it; for a copy of the whole project use instead.
Scrivener can also import the Markdown file (File ▸ Import ▸ Import and
Split, splitting on #), but OPML is the cleaner route — it
lands in the binder as a tree with no splitting step, which is why it's
the format we label for Scrivener.