Lab notes: LaTeX for Creative Writing - A Fiction Author's Secret Weapon

Systems for Storytellers / 03

Introduction

When writers think about LaTeX, they think about academic papers. Dense research documents filled with equations, citations, and footnotes. They don’t think about fantasy novels, thriller manuscripts, or literary fiction.

That’s a missed opportunity.

LaTeX—the typesetting system beloved by mathematicians and scientists—offers creative writers something word processors can’t match: programmable consistency. The same features that let physicists define custom notation for quantum equations let novelists define custom styling for character dialogue, narrative voices, and recurring textual elements. Once you see what’s possible, you might wonder why more fiction authors haven’t discovered this tool.

What Is LaTeX, Exactly?

If you’re unfamiliar with LaTeX (pronounced “LAH-tek” or “LAY-tek”), here’s a quick orientation. Unlike Microsoft Word or Google Docs, where you see your document as it will appear while you write, LaTeX separates content from presentation. You write in a plain text file with markup commands, then “compile” that file into a beautifully formatted PDF.

Think of it like HTML for print documents. You write \textbf{bold text} instead of clicking a bold button, and \textit{italic text} instead of pressing Ctrl+I. This might sound like extra work—and initially, it is. But the payoff comes from what this approach enables: custom commands that automate repetitive formatting across an entire manuscript.

The PDF files LaTeX produces aren’t just “good enough”—they’re professionally typeset. LaTeX’s algorithms handle kerning, ligatures, and hyphenation with sophistication that consumer word processors can’t match. The difference is subtle but cumulative: text that’s easier to read, margins that feel balanced, typography that signals quality before anyone reads a word.

The Power of Custom Commands

Here’s where LaTeX becomes genuinely exciting for fiction writers: custom commands.

Imagine you’re writing a novel with an omniscient narrator whose voice appears in italics, distinguished from the close third-person perspective of your main chapters. In Word, you’d select each narrator passage and apply italic formatting manually. If you later decide the narrator’s voice should be in a different font rather than italics, you’d need to find every single passage and change it—a tedious, error-prone process in a full-length manuscript.

In LaTeX, you define a command once:

\newcommand{\narrator}[1]{\textit{#1}}

Then throughout your manuscript, you write:

\narrator{The town had seen better days, though no one alive could remember them.}

Every narrator passage uses the same command. If you decide midway through drafting—or during revision, or after feedback from beta readers—that the narrator should use a serif font instead of italics, you change the definition once:

\newcommand{\narrator}[1]{{\fontfamily{ptm}\selectfont #1}}

Recompile, and every narrator passage in your entire manuscript updates instantly. No hunting, no missed instances, no inconsistencies.

Practical Applications for Fiction

Character Names and Spelling Consistency

Fantasy and science fiction authors face a particular challenge: complex character and location names that are easy to misspell. Is it “Vaeloria” or “Vealoria”? “Khal’thros” or “Khalthros”? Across a 100,000-word manuscript, maintaining perfect consistency is exhausting.

LaTeX offers an elegant solution. Define your names as commands:

\newcommand{\elfgirl}{Vaeloria}
\newcommand{\darkfortress}{Khal’thros}
\newcommand{\magicsword}{Dawnbreaker}

Now you write \elfgirl instead of “Vaeloria” throughout your manuscript. You’ll never misspell it because you’re not typing it—the command handles the actual name. If you decide during revision that “Vaeloria” should become “Vaeleryn,” you change the definition once and every instance updates.

This approach also makes find-and-replace operations surgical. Searching for \elfgirl finds only the character references you defined—not fragments of other words that happen to contain the same letters.

Styled Text Elements

Many novels include styled text elements: letters, documents, text messages, dreams, flashbacks, or internal monologue. Each might have distinct formatting. In Word, you’d create paragraph styles—but those styles can’t accept arguments or nest within other content easily.

LaTeX commands can handle complex formatting with parameters:

\newcommand{\textmessage}[2]{\begin{quote}\texttt{\textbf{#1:} #2}\end{quote}}

Use it like this:

\textmessage{Sarah}{Running late. Don’t start without me.}

Every text message in your manuscript will be formatted identically: indented, in monospace font, with the sender’s name bolded. Change the definition, change every text message at once.

Multiple Narrative Voices

Novels with multiple point-of-view characters can use custom commands to maintain distinct formatting for each voice:

\newcommand{\povmarcus}[1]{\section*{Marcus}#1}
\newcommand{\povlena}[1]{\section*{Lena}\textit{#1}}

If Marcus’s chapters are in standard text and Lena’s in italics, the formatting stays consistent automatically—and can be adjusted globally at any time.

Beyond Custom Commands

Custom commands are LaTeX’s most immediately useful feature for creative writers, but other capabilities deserve mention.

Automatic cross-references: Label any chapter, section, or location in your manuscript, then reference it by label. If chapter numbers change during revision, references update automatically.

Superior typography: LaTeX’s typesetting algorithms produce more readable text through intelligent hyphenation, proper kerning, and optimal line breaks. Readers may not consciously notice, but the cumulative effect is text that feels more polished.

Clickable navigation: With the hyperref package, LaTeX generates PDFs with clickable tables of contents, cross-references, and bookmarks—features that require manual setup in word processors.

Plain text source files: Your manuscript exists as plain text, which means it works seamlessly with version control systems like Git. Track every change, create experimental branches, maintain complete revision history—capabilities I discussed in my previous article on developer tools for writers.

AI Makes LaTeX Accessible

Here’s the practical reality: you don’t need to memorize LaTeX syntax to use these features effectively.

Modern AI assistants like Claude or ChatGPT can generate LaTeX custom commands from plain English descriptions. Tell the AI what you want—”I need a command that formats text messages with the sender’s name in bold, the message in a gray box, and a timestamp in small text”—and it will produce working LaTeX code. You copy the command definition into your document, then use it throughout your manuscript.

This dramatically lowers the barrier to entry. You don’t need to understand the intricacies of LaTeX to benefit from its power. You need to understand what you want, describe it clearly, and let AI handle the technical implementation. When something doesn’t work quite right, describe the problem and ask for adjustments.

Honest Limitations

LaTeX isn’t for everyone, and honesty requires acknowledging its drawbacks.

The learning curve is real. Even with AI assistance, you’ll spend time learning basic LaTeX structure, understanding how to compile documents, and troubleshooting when things go wrong. Expect several hours of orientation before you’re comfortable.

Collaboration can be challenging. If your editor or co-author uses Word, you’ll need to convert your LaTeX file for them to review—and their tracked changes won’t automatically flow back into your LaTeX source. This is a workflow friction that traditional word processors don’t impose.

Traditional submission requirements persist. Most literary agents and publishers expect .doc or .docx files. While tools like Pandoc can convert LaTeX to Word format, complex custom commands may require manual adjustment. LaTeX works best for self-publishing workflows or as a drafting environment with conversion at the submission stage.

No real-time formatting preview. You write in plain text, then compile to see the result. Some writers find this separation liberating—it keeps you focused on words rather than fiddling with fonts. Others find it frustrating. Your preference likely depends on how you’re wired.

Getting Started

If you’re curious about trying LaTeX for creative writing, here’s a practical path forward.

First, install a LaTeX distribution. On Windows, MiKTeX is popular. On Mac, MacTeX. On Linux, TeX Live. These are free and include everything you need to compile documents.

Second, choose an editor. TeXstudio provides a dedicated LaTeX environment with syntax highlighting and one-click compilation. Alternatively, Visual Studio Code with the LaTeX Workshop extension works well and integrates with other development tools.

Third, start with a template. Don’t build a manuscript structure from scratch. Find a fiction manuscript template online or use a minimal starting document, then modify it for your needs.

Fourth, define your first custom command. Pick something simple—a character name you use frequently or a basic formatting style. Write a few pages using the command. Experience the workflow before committing to an entire manuscript.

Finally, use AI as your LaTeX tutor. When you want a custom command but don’t know the syntax, ask. When compilation fails, paste the error message and ask for help. The learning curve flattens dramatically when you have an always-available teacher.

Conclusion

LaTeX occupies a strange position in the writer’s toolkit—familiar to academics, invisible to most fiction authors. That invisibility is understandable. The tool’s reputation as technical and specialized discourages exploration. Why would a novelist use software designed for scientific papers?

The answer is custom commands: the ability to define once and apply everywhere, to maintain perfect consistency across hundreds of pages, to change your mind about formatting and implement that change in seconds rather than hours. For writers managing complex manuscripts with multiple voices, intricate naming conventions, or distinctive styled elements, these capabilities solve real problems.

Not every writer needs this. If you’re happy with Word or Scrivener, if your manuscripts don’t involve complex formatting requirements, there’s no reason to switch. The learning investment wouldn’t pay off.

But if you’ve ever lost hours to find-and-replace operations, if you’ve ever struggled to maintain consistent formatting across a long manuscript, if you’ve ever wished you could automate the tedious parts of document preparation—LaTeX might deserve a closer look. The tool doesn’t care that you’re writing fiction instead of physics. It just sees text, and gives you remarkably precise control over how that text appears.

Sometimes the best tools for creative work come from unexpected places.