Creative writing without indentation

Write fiction where the source reads like the finished page — flat paragraphs, no indentation, scenes and emphasis in the lightest markup.

The whole story

source

(h2 One · The Harbour h2)

The rain had not stopped for three days.

Mara pressed her palm to the cold glass and counted the boats that were
no longer there. _One. Two._ The third had been her father's.

#scenebreak: ✦ ✦ ✦ !!

@scenebreak

"You can't stay," the harbourmaster said.

She said nothing. There was *nothing*, she had learned, that saying could fix.

@hr

And then the tide turned.

result

One · The Harbour

The rain had not stopped for three days.

Mara pressed her palm to the cold glass and counted the boats that were no longer there. One. Two. The third had been her father's.

✦ ✦ ✦

"You can't stay," the harbourmaster said.

She said nothing. There was nothing, she had learned, that saying could fix.

And then the tide turned.

What each piece does

Paragraphs. Type them with a blank line between. No leading spaces, no wrapping node.
Emphasis. _One. Two._ is italic; *nothing* is bold. Arithmetic like 5*6*7 and names like snake_case stay as typed.
A scene heading. (h2 … h2) opens the chapter.
A scene break. Define an ornament once — #scenebreak: ✦ ✦ ✦ !! — and drop it in as @scenebreak. For a plain rule, @hr is core vocabulary and takes no close.

Build

wit build story.wit --fragment

Result.

<h2>One · The Harbour</h2>
<p>The rain had not stopped for three days.</p>
<p>Mara pressed her palm … <em>One. Two.</em> The third had been her father&#39;s.</p>
<p>✦ ✦ ✦</p>
<p>&quot;You can&#39;t stay,&quot; the harbourmaster said.</p>
<p>She said nothing. There was <strong>nothing</strong>, she had learned, …</p>
<hr>
<p>And then the tide turned.</p>

Use -o story.pdf for print.

Pitfalls

There is no break node. Use @hr or a definition of your own for a divider.
Nest emphasis bold-outside. _*x*_ leaves the inner * literal; write *_x_* for bold italics.
Parentheses before a node name. Prose is safe, but (em dash) followed later in the paragraph by em) pairs up as a node. Escape the parenthesis: \(em dash).

Variations

Name an epigraph once and recall it with a bare reference: