What is the best way to use Latex for literary documents?

Question

I was wondering, just out of curiosity: what would be the best way to produce literature-related documents in Latex?

I have only ever written technical and scientific documents myself, so I really don't know if there are some famous packages that can help while writing literary documents.

I only know about the Memoir class which can be useful to typeset books, but are there other suggested packages?

Answer 1

A think that the first step is take a look to the related packages in CTAN.

After very little search, you can find, for example (is not an exhaustive list):

Poetry related packages:

• alt­verse – Type­set­ting verse
• gm­verse – A pack­age for type­set­ting (short) po­ems
• po­et­ry­tex – Type­set an­tholo­gie of po­etry
• verse – Aids for type­set­ting sim­ple verse

Screenplay related packages:

• drama – Pro­duc­tion-style stage script in LaTeX

• drama­tist – Type­set dra­mas, both in verse and in prose

• plari – Type­set­ting stage­play scripts

• play - Type­set drama us­ing LaTeX

• sc­mac - Type­set scripts with Plain TeX

• screen­play – A class file to type­set screen­plays

• ScriptTeX – Macros for scripts and screen­plays

• sides – A LaTeX class for type­set­ting stage plays

• stage – A LaTeX class for stage plays

• dialogue (Frankenstein bundle) – Environment for citing short passages of scripted dialogue.

Typeset manuscripts packages

• book and related scrbook, etc. (stating the obvious ... but why not?)

• sffms – Type­set­ting sci­ence fic­tion/fan­tasy manuscripts

• mem­oir – Class is for type­set­ting po­etry, fic­tion, non-fic­tion, and math­e­mat­i­cal works.

• game­book – Type­set game­books and other in­ter­ac­tive nov­els

Also many packages of book-hand or uncial fonts could be on-topic here.