Mastering Scrivener

By Antoni Dol

Discover amazing features of Scrivener you have never used. Much content about Scrivener on the web is obsolete, now Literature and Latte released version 3 for macOS and Windows computers.

In Scrivener, do you know how to…

• hoist the Binder
• calculate your session target
• create chapters and scenes with one click
• compare snapshots
• and use a full screen free flow corkboard?

If you don't, this book will explain these and many other advanced features of Scrivener 3 you didn't know even existed.

 

This book devotes an entire chapter to Compiling and provides several scenarios for getting exactly the results that you want.

 

Mastering Scrivener contains invaluable information for the price of a lunch break meal, filled to the brink with professional information worth the investment of

every experienced writer using Scrivener.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Antoni Dol
• Release date: Dec 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201458775

Antoni Dol

Antoni Dol writes fiction in stories, novels and articles. Also, new educational books were published. Antoni Dol was born in 1963. He graduated as illustrator at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie of Arts in Amsterdam, studied advertising at the Rotterdam Art Academy and was freelance illustrator for three years. From 1996 onwards, he grew as a webdesigner and interaction designer with the internet. He worked for companies like KPMG, NedTrain, Wolters Kluwer, Univé Insurance, Bijenkorf Department Store, The City of The Hague, Rabobank en Microsoft in the Netherlands. He enjoyed a Creative Excellence Award in the Web Page Awards in 2001 and the NedTrain intranet he designed, was one of the 10 best of 2005 according to the Usability expert Jakob Nielsen. Antoni writes articles for internal and external publications and for Dutch magazines. Antoni currently writes science fiction stories, taking place in the near future and on Earth, in which new and failing technology influences people and society. In addition, he writes stories that take place in a future society and about the consequences of problems that may arise there.

Book preview

Table of Contents

In­tro­duc­ing

Pro­logue

So why this book?

A primer for new users

The In­ter­ac­tive Tu­to­rial

Video Tu­to­ri­als

Search Menus

Re­search­ing

Us­ing the Re­search folder

Im­port Au­dio or Video

Notes in the In­box

Us­ing Book­marks

Com­ments as In­ter­nal Links

Man­ag­ing Binder Book­marks

In­spect Book­marks in Quick Ref­er­ence Pan­els

Scratch­pad

Plot­ting

Plotting or Outlining?

Us­ing Char­ac­ter and Setting Sketches

Jump to characters

Im­ages in In­dex Cards

Sketches in Cork­board View

Us­ing Scene Cards

Us­ing Story Grids

Com­pil­ing Out­lines

Writ­ing

Im­port­ing other doc­u­ments

Re­set Para­graph For­mat­ting

Us­ing Doc­u­ment Tem­plates

Some Fold­ers are more spe­cial than oth­ers

Tem­plates for a fly­ing start

Tem­plates for Sub­doc­u­ments

Re­set a De­fault Tem­plate

Con­cen­trat­ing on your writ­ing

Cor­rect as you type

Scrolling as a type­writer does

Deep dive into the Ed­i­tor

Split the Ed­i­tor hor­i­zon­tally

Us­ing Snap­shots

The Snap­shots Man­ager

Editor Styles

Foot and End­notes

Draft, Ses­sion and Doc­u­ment Tar­gets

Spell­ing and Cor­rec­tions

Writ­ing Tools

Draw­ing the line

Us­ing Dic­ta­tion

Your Writ­ing His­tory

Find­ing overused words as you type

Searching with options

Quick Di­a­logue En­tries

Writ­ing Sub­Sub­Scenes

Or­ga­niz­ing

Or­ga­niz­ing com­pared to word pro­ces­sors

Us­ing icons to struc­ture your project

New Text/Folder icons in Binder Footer

Man­ag­ing your Cus­tom Icons

Us­ing col­ors to struc­ture your project

Work­ing with pic­tures

Deep dive into Sec­tion Types

Binder High­lights set­ting Sec­tion Types

Deep dive into La­bels

View La­bel Sta­tus by Icons

Deep dive into Sta­tus

Swap La­bels and Sta­tus

Us­ing Cus­tom Meta­data

A short­cut to Cus­tom Meta­data

Us­ing Key­words

Us­ing Col­lec­tions

Deep Dive into the Binder

Set a ti­tle from ex­ist­ing text

Files to Folders and Fold­ers to Files

New Folder from Binder se­lec­tion

Count doc­u­ments in fold­ers

To in­fin­ity with the Binder

Us­ing En­ti­ties

Deep dive into the Out­liner View

Lock the Group View Mode

Search and Fil­ter Group Views

Show or Hide Syn­op­sis in Out­liner

Deep dive into the Cork­board View

Break free from the Cork­board Grid

Scale In­dex Cards au­to­mat­i­cally

Wrap In­dex Cards to Ed­i­tor width

Edit­ing

An­no­ta­tions and Com­ments

Move a Com­ment Link to an­other phrase

Tidy­ing up you man­u­script

Us­ing Reg­u­lar Ex­pres­sions

Find text by for­mat­ting and color

Find writ­ing on Date

Us­ing Re­vi­sion Modes

Sta­tis­tics and Word Fre­quency

Your most fre­quently used words

Proof­read­ing Tools

Fo­cus­ing on di­a­log

Us­ing ex­ter­nal gram­mar tools

Us­ing Text To Speech

Read your story back to you

Scrivener in the edit­ing process

Shar­ing

Print­ing

Ex­port

No con­ver­sion nec­es­sary

Im­port

Drag files from one Project to an­other

Restor­ing cor­rupted Projects

Sync

Con­fig­ur­ing

Cus­tomiz­ing the Tool­bars

Cus­tomiz­ing Key­board Short­cuts

Func­tion Key for Op­tions

Us­ing Back­ups

Back­ing up man­u­ally

Us­ing Project Tem­plates

Project Tem­plate Cus­tom Icons

Us­ing Lay­outs

Cork­board only Freeform Cork­board

Dual Nav­i­ga­tion Lay­out

Re­nam­ing your Lay­outs

Us­ing Themes

Save your set­tings

Where can I find Themes?

Cre­at­ing a Ta­ble of Con­tents

Com­pil­ing

Deep dive into Com­pile

Sav­ing Com­pile Set­tings

Au­to­matic Num­ber­ing

Us­ing Place­hold­ers

List of all Place­hold­ers

Us­ing Com­pile For­mats

As­sign­ing Sec­tion Lay­outs to Sec­tion Types

Skip the pre­view tiles

Us­ing the Com­pile For­mat De­signer

Se­lect File Types for Com­pile For­mats

Sec­tion Lay­outs

Can't find Com­pile For­mat­ting Set­tings?

Give a para­graph some room

Sep­a­ra­tors

Com­pile Styles

Text Lay­out & Doc­u­ment Ti­tle Links

Trans­for­ma­tions & Re­place­ments

Sta­tis­tics & Ta­bles

Foot­notes & Com­ments

Page Set­tings

Com­pat­i­bil­ity

Con­tents Set­tings

Com­pile only a Col­lec­tion

Com­pile only the Binder Se­lec­tion

Meta­data Set­tings

Com­pile Op­tions

Project Re­place­ments

Cre­at­ing

Cre­at­ing Chap­ter Open­ings

Cre­at­ing a Glos­sary

Cre­ate Front and Back Mat­ter

Cre­at­ing Prints

Cre­at­ing Plain Text doc­u­ments

Cre­at­ing Web Pages

Cre­at­ing Word doc­u­ments

Com­pat­i­bil­ity set­tings for Word

Cre­at­ing PDF doc­u­ments

Cre­at­ing E-books

Cover and ToC for E-books

Con­clud­ing

Epi­logue

The go-to ref­er­ence

The Com­mu­nity Fo­rum

The Knowledge Base

Landmarks

Cover

Title Page

Frontmatter

Table of Contents

Preface

Start of Con­tent

Glossary

Acknowledgments

Backmatter

Mas­ter­ing Scrivener

Ad­vanced Scrivener 3 for Ex­pe­ri­enced Writ­ers

An­toni Dol

2021 Am­s­ter­dam

iologo.png

Mas­ter­ing Scrivener

Ad­vanced Scrivener 3 for Ex­pe­ri­enced Writ­ers

Ver­sion: 2021 - 01.01.00

Au­thor: An­toni Dol

Graphic de­sign: An­toni Dol

Por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy: Yvette Zellerer

https://an­tonidol.nl/studieboeken/mas­ter­ingscrivener/

https://www.facebook.com/AuteurAntoniDol

ISBN 9789083044088

NUR 991

Copy­right © 2021 An­toni Dol

All rights re­served. No part of this book may be re­pro­duced or used in any man­ner with­out the prior writ­ten per­mis­sion of the copy­right owner, ex­cept for the use of brief quo­ta­tions in a book re­view.

For Sabine

for her pa­tience and con­fi­dence.

Pref­ace

When Scrivener first hit the writ­ing scene, as a pub­lic beta in 2006, it cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of writ­ers that came across it in a way few pro­grams have, be­fore or since. Un­like most other writ­ing tools at the time it was care­ful to avoid the pit­falls of soft­ware that aims it­self at a par­tic­u­lar form of writ­ing, or even as was com­monly the case back then, a par­tic­u­lar method of writ­ing within that form. As a re­sult it at­tracted a wide va­ri­ety of au­thors, hail­ing from dis­ci­plines as di­verse as le­gal writ­ing, tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion, po­etry, academia and nov­el­ists alike.

In the years fol­low­ing its ini­tial re­lease, it went from a rel­a­tively un­known tool to a mul­ti­ple award win­ning sys­tem used by no­table au­thors around the globe. It would be dif­fi­cult to pin down pre­cisely which parts of Scrivener con­trib­ute to its broad ap­peal, but of them all, these qual­i­ties stand out to me:

The abil­ity to or­gan­ise your writ­ings freely, into a top­i­cal out­line that can ei­ther grow nat­u­rally as you write, or serve as a scaf­fold­ing for what you in­tend to write. With that sim­ple for­mula one is no longer shack­led by think­ing in strict struc­tural con­cepts such as chap­ters, plot arcs, sub­sec­tions or head­ings, or feel awk­ward when­ever in­spired to write a chunk of text that does not yet fit into the over­all work yet. The over­all work can grow flu­idly and ideas can be scat­tered around the writ­ing area like so many sticky notes on a desk, wait­ing to be filled in.

Gen­eral pur­pose fea­tures, ca­pa­ble of be­ing used to im­ple­ment more spe­cific ways of work­ing, made it pos­si­ble for one com­mon fea­ture set to be used for ev­ery­thing from fan­fic to patent sub­mis­sions. In­stead of hav­ing char­ac­ter track­ing tools, a sim­ple sys­tem of colour-cod­ing or tag­ging your out­line with key­words could pro­vide much of the same ca­pa­bil­i­ties, while also be­ing equally use­ful for track­ing no­table events in a per­son’s life, for a bi­og­ra­phy. Fur­ther­more these tools were de­signed to in­te­grate to­gether, to be­come even more use­ful in com­bi­na­tion with one an­other, cre­at­ing more so­phis­ti­cated ap­proaches to us­ing the soft­ware.

Keep­ing all of the ephemera that a writer needs to sup­port the writ­ing process in one place means dis­pens­ing with nu­mer­ous other tools, such as spread­sheet soft­ware, fold­ers full of PDF files, end­less and con­fus­ing re­vi­sions saved to sep­a­rate files and even pa­per-based meth­ods like boxes of in­dex cards.

While the soft­ware has grown and ma­tured in many ways since its early days, these core el­e­ments of its de­sign re­main the roots from which al­most all of its many fea­tures can be traced. Know­ing and un­der­stand­ing how they fit to­gether will al­most al­ways re­sult in a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of how to use the soft­ware.

Given its freeform na­ture, learn­ing Scrivener can of­ten be a very per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. You may be ac­cus­tomed to fig­ur­ing out how some­thing is sup­posed to be used, so you can con­form to it, rather than first seek­ing out ways to make it com­ple­ment your hard-won meth­ods and pref­er­ences. While the ba­sics of the pro­gram can be learned in a day, and in­deed those ba­sics can be enough to fin­ish a book, learn­ing the soft­ware more deeply can be re­ward­ing the more ef­fort you put into it.

The book you are hold­ing in your hands, prover­bial or oth­er­wise, is in­tended to help you make that leap from us­ing the soft­ware as a first im­pres­sion, to find­ing ways to craft the soft­ware it­self into a per­son­alised tool—one that suits you as much as it may suit any par­tic­u­lar chal­lenges you face from one project to the next. An­toni Dol has helped count­less many users on our fo­rums and oth­er­wise, and is ex­pe­ri­enced in ex­plain­ing how Scrivener’s in­ner work­ings can be tapped to pro­duce the re­sults you’re look­ing for.

Whether you are build­ing a tril­ogy from scratch, or ham­mer­ing through the fi­nal phases of your doc­toral dis­ser­ta­tion, I hope that this ref­er­ence and guide will be use­ful to you in help­ing to re­fine and im­prove the writ­ing method it­self, so that your craft as a writer can shine with the soft­ware.

ioa.png Ioa Pe­tra’ka

aka Am­berVon the Scrivener fo­rums,

and long-time mem­ber of the Lit­er­a­ture & Latte team.

1 - In­tro­duc­ing

In this sec­tion

Pro­logue

So why this book?

A primer for new users

The In­ter­ac­tive Tu­to­rial

Video Tu­to­ri­als

Search Menus

Schema01

1.1 - Pro­logue

As an ex­pe­ri­enced writer you’ve cho­sen the right tool to string words to­gether, and not only words: sen­tences, scenes, sec­tions, se­quences, chap­ters, parts, and se­ries as well. Scrivener helps you or­ga­nize your writ­ing, you know that. But do you know scrivener? This book aims to help you get the most out of your writ­ing soft­ware, to get you writ­ing faster and more ef­fi­ciently, to or­ga­nize your projects bet­ter, to get to pro­fes­sional re­sults quicker and with more sat­is­fac­tion. Quite a goal to reach, isn’t it? Here's an overview of the topics I will be describing in this book:

A primer

I ini­tially thought Scrivener was an easy soft­ware to use. The sheer vol­ume of fea­tures may in­tim­i­date at first, but when you keep to the ba­sics, things are pretty straight­for­ward. In the Primer for be­gin­ners, — the chap­ter I start this book with — you’ll find ev­ery­thing there is to know about us­ing Scrivener as a writer. But you al­ready know that. As an ex­pe­ri­enced writer you know how to col­lect your re­search, or­ga­nize your binder, struc­ture your ed­i­tor and write and edit a man­u­script.

So, skip the first chap­ter if you dare.

Researching

Re­search­ing is a nec­es­sary part of the writ­ing process, whether you’re writ­ing a fic­tion or a non-fic­tion book. Re­search can be­come a big part of your project, fill­ing the Re­search folder with ref­er­ence ma­te­rial like Notes, Links, Files, Im­ages, Web pages and even Scrivener Projects. This chap­ter de­scribes the use of each of these re­sources in Scrivener’s Re­search folder.

The plotting phase

A few fea­tures of Scrivener help you in the plot­ting phase of your project. Char­ac­ter and Set­ting Sketches help in doc­u­ment­ing en­gag­ing char­ac­ters and amaz­ing set­tings. Scene Cards help cre­ate a scene chain from the be­gin­ning to the end of your plot, and Story Grids doc­u­ment de­vel­op­ments in your story as well. A Scene Card Doc­u­ment Tem­plate eases plot­ting your novel or struc­tur­ing your book. Com­pil­ing your Binder struc­ture to a doc­u­ment — in­clud­ing or ex­clud­ing the syn­op­sis en­tries you for­mu­lated — will give you a de­cent over­view of your story.

Just write

Go on and read the next chap­ter on writ­ing your project. Im­port­ing other doc­u­ments, con­cen­trat­ing on your writ­ing, learn­ing the nooks and cran­nies of the Ed­i­tor, us­ing foot and end­notes, cor­rec­tions, and spell­ing, and the var­i­ous writ­ing tools Scrivener of­fers. The soft­ware is able to find overused words as you type them… again. It will check your spell­ing, and even lis­ten to your dic­ta­tion and write it down for you. The Name gen­er­a­tor is there to of­fer op­tions for your char­ac­ter’s first and last names what­ever their na­tion­al­ity may be. And what about all the func­tion­al­ity that keeps track of your work, the Sta­tis­tics with Word fre­quency, Tar­gets for your project, chap­ters, and scenes?

Start organizing

Start or­ga­niz­ing your project us­ing the sec­tions in the next chap­ter. Com­pared to the way you or­ga­nize in your fa­vorite word pro­ces­sor, Scrivener pro­vides am­ple ways to struc­ture your writ­ing. If you have hun­dreds of Word doc­u­ments in dozens of dis­parate fold­ers, this chap­ter is for you. Use Scrivener’s Col­ors, Icons, La­bels and Sta­tus in the Binder, use Meta­data and Key­words. Let Col­lec­tions work for you and keep an over­view of your man­u­script in Binder and the Cork­board or Out­line Views.

Im­prove your man­u­script

And when you’re done writ­ing, Scrivener helps to im­prove your man­u­script. An­no­ta­tions and Com­ments help you and your proof­read­ers doc­u­ment is­sues in your writ­ing. Scrivener can tidy up your text, show you di­a­log, ad­verbs that you may delete, and verbs that you may strengthen. Scrivener will read your text aloud lit­er­ally and re­mem­ber ev­ery writ­ing ses­sion in days and months and crush the num­bers or av­er­ages in your Draft folder and else­where in the project.

Share your work

Be­yond writ­ing and edit­ing, this writ­ing tool has sev­eral spe­cial fea­tures that as­sist an ex­pe­ri­enced writer with shar­ing his work, like im­port­ing, ex­port­ing, and sync­ing doc­u­ments, or just print­ing them for oth­ers to read.

Con­fig­ur­ing Backups, Layouts, Themes

Con­fig­ur­ing helps Scrivener to do the heavy lift­ing in sev­eral cases: Back­ups to en­sure you don’t lose a let­ter, Lay­outs that may help you work more ef­fi­ciently and Themes to cre­ate an in­spir­ing — or per­fectly clean — writ­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

Press one but­ton: Com­pile

Gen­er­at­ing a for­mat­ted doc­u­ment from the build­ing blocks in­side Scrivener is daunt­ing in such a way, that I’ve heard of peo­ple copy­ing their text out of this writ­ing tool and past­ing it in their fa­vorite word pro­ces­sor to share it with the world. You can do this at the press of one but­ton: Com­pile.

But be­fore your manuscript compiles ex­actly the way you want it, dozens of set­tings in the Com­pile Over­view win­dow, the Com­pile For­mat De­signer and Com­pile Set­tings panes need to be ad­dressed. Vari­ables and meta­data may help you in­sert de­fault or your own data in strate­gic places in your man­u­script. The flex­i­bil­ity of the sys­tem makes it com­plex. Choos­ing the right op­tions and sav­ing them for later is the way to pro­duc­ing end-point doc­u­ments like Adobe Ac­ro­bat PDF files, Kin­dle, and Kobo e-books and in­ter­mit­tent doc­u­ments in Mi­cro­soft Word or Open­Office.

Cre­at­ing out­put doc­u­ments

Creating output documents con­cludes the use of Mas­ter­ing Scrivener. When not gen­er­at­ing PDF-files or e-books, the text will flow into graphic soft­ware like Adobe In­De­sign for pro­duc­tion of the hard­cov­ers and pa­per­backs that you’re ea­ger to hold in your hands. Scrivener is a man­u­script writ­ing tool, an Out­liner, not a book pro­duc­tion tool.

Hidden Gems

I mixed the chap­ters with a se­ries of hid­den gems that may or may not sur­prise you. In this way, and some oth­ers I didn’t men­tion or may come up with along the way, Mas­ter­ing Scrivener hopes to point you to fea­tures you hadn’t dis­cov­ered in the soft­ware yet, or it may bet­ter ex­plain com­plex op­er­a­tions you need to know to write and pro­duce a bet­ter man­u­script, faster.

Am­s­ter­dam, June 2021, Ver­sion 1.0

1.2 - So why this book?

Even for an ex­pe­ri­enced writer, Scrivener can help you get there faster, in bet­ter shape. Some fea­tures de­scribed in this book you may know and use daily. I do hope oth­ers are new to you. I’ve also tried to find pro­cesses and pro­ce­dures that are be­yond the soft­ware it­self, but are help­ful in the trenches of writ­ing a book. Any book. These may be hid­den gems, com­plex op­er­a­tions, and edge cases, but I’ll de­scribe each here to help you dis­cover more ways to uti­lize Scrivener.

Since Lit­er­a­ture and Latte re­leased Scrivener 3.0 for Win­dows, much of the in­for­ma­tion on the in­ter­net is well out of date. So much that most of it is to­tally ir­rel­e­vant. De menus have changed, the tool­bar looks com­pletely dif­fer­ent and the func­tion­al­ity of the prod­uct is now up to par with the orig­i­nal Mac ver­sion. Al­most.

Since I aimed this book at ex­pe­ri­enced writ­ers us­ing Scrivener, I won’t go into ob­vi­ous func­tion­al­ity. These work the same in most soft­ware tools and you should have lit­tle trou­ble us­ing menus, read­ing footer bars, zoom­ing in and out and all that. I don’t have to tell you how to do those things any­more.

This book won’t ex­plain the soft­ware de­scrib­ing ev­ery fea­ture of the user in­ter­face or in­form­ing you about ev­ery menu item in the or­der they ap­pear in the menu bar and sub­menus. In­stead, this book will pick cher­ries from func­tion­al­ity that deems more at­ten­tion than you might think in the first place, it will list num­bered sce­nar­ios of work-flows you might need at the first time, and it will point to hid­den gems that of­fers fea­tures you might not have dis­cov­ered yet. The rest you know al­ready.

No op­er­at­ing sys­tem di­vide

I won’t de­scribe Scrivener in terms spe­cific for one op­er­at­ing sys­tem or an­other. Since ver­sion 3.0, fea­tures are more or less on par. Any dif­fer­ence be­tween the plat­forms we will sort out here.

Find­ing stuff out­side Scrivener

The ap­pli­ca­tion to find and se­lect files -The Finder or the File Ex­plorer — I will re­fer to as your file sys­tem or on you hard disk. That should do it. You can deal with it and find your stuff. Tran­sient ap­pli­ca­tions like the Color Picker or the Char­ac­ter Map are dis­tinct on both plat­forms. They will even be called dif­fer­ently.

Find­ing stuff in­side Scrivener

Of course, dif­fer­ences be­tween the macOS and Win­dows plat­forms ex­ist. I will de­scribe things from a nav­i­ga­tional or user in­ter­face per­spec­tive, but won’t men­tion short­cuts from a key­board per­spec­tive, un­less I have to. You can find key­board short­cuts your­self right aligned in menus or in the PDF ap­pear­ing when you choose [Help > List of All Short­cuts]. The Key­board tab in Op­tions/Pref­er­ences will show them for your op­er­at­ing sys­tem. You can even change them. I de­scribe how to in Con­fig­ur­ing, Cus­tomiz­ing Key­board Short­cuts.

Find­ing stuff in­side this book

You may have no­ticed the color green and brown when you read this book in color as an e-book or in a color edi­tion. I've col­ored the links dif­fer­ently, be­cause they are dif­fer­ent. Links come in three col­ors:

Blue and un­der­lined links - Ex­ter­nal hy­per­links in this book are blue and un­der­lined. They are 'nor­mal' hy­per­links to sources on the in­ter­net.

Brown links - The brown hy­per­links are Doc­u­ment Links. When Com­pil­ing to e-book, Scrivener con­verts these in­ter­nal Scrivener links to HTML in­ter­nal links. I use them to link to other parts of the book as in See also links. In a black and white version of this book, these links are darker than the main text.

Green links - The green links are links to the Glos­sary. Mind the Mnemonic: Green for Glos­sary. Click these when you want to know more about a term I use by read­ing a few lines about it in the Glos­sary at the end of the book. In the ex­pla­na­tion is a link back to the sec­tion you clicked the link (mostly, some­times the link goes to a more log­i­cal sec­tion). In a black and white version of this book, these links are lighter than the main text.

Apart from the ToC that your e-read­ers pro­vides, there's a Ta­ble of Con­tents (con­tain­ing brown links) at the front of the book. Ev­ery chap­ter has Sec­tion Links, that drill deeper into the chap­ter. I've added di­a­mond icons to the Hid­den Gems in the ToC and Sec­tion Links, so you can find those back quickly as well.

In the text, I'll di­rect you in var­i­ous ways to the cor­rect User In­ter­face el­e­ments:

Nav­i­ga­tional di­rec­tions - [Project > Project Set­tings > La­bel List] will point to the main menu Project, the sub menu Project Set­tings and the La­bel List tab in the di­a­log win­dow pop­ping up. These nav­i­ga­tional paths have a light gray tint, so you rec­og­nize them and find them quickly.

User in­ter­face di­rec­tions - I will talk about named col­umns, panes, and ar­eas in the UI, like Binder, Ed­i­tor, and In­spec­tor. User In­ter­face con­trols like tool­bars, header bars, text boxes, check boxes and drop-down lists I will men­tion. These should all be sim­i­lar in both ver­sions.

Op­tions vs. Pref­er­ences - I will point to the [File > Op­tions] or [Scrivener > Pref­er­ences] at lot in this book. I will use [File > Op­tions] from now on and not [Scrivener > Pref­er­ences]. They’re syn­ony­mous. You’ll know what I mean.

Us­ing Con­text menus - A con­text menu pops up on Win­dows com­put­ers when you click the right mouse but­ton. If you don’t have a right mouse but­ton on a Mac­in­tosh com­puter, click and hold the mouse but­ton. I’ll point to con­text menus a lot, be­cause we can eas­ily ac­cess them ev­ery­where.

Cog wheel or El­lip­sis menu - Since these are not con­sis­tent be­tween the two ver­sions of Scrivener — or even within one ver­sion of Scrivener — this is a hard one when I want to point you to a menu. So, if I say Cog wheel you might see three dots or the other way around.

Hy­per­links, In­ter­nal links and Glos­sary links - Hy­per­links to ex­ter­nal sources are by de­fault blue and un­der­lined. The con­text makes clear they’re ex­ter­nal, be­cause links to other chap­ters and sec­tions in this book are the de­fault col­ors as well. Links to the Glos­sary are green. Click those when you’d like a short de­scrip­tion of that Glos­sary item. Usu­ally the text around the links does about the same thing.

Not Cov­ered in this ver­sion

Scriptwrit­ing - I won’t go into Scrivener’s fea­tures for scriptwrit­ing. Pro­fes­sional scriptwrit­ers don’t use Scrivener to pro­duce their scripts, but they may start their scripts in it. Scrivener can ex­port to Fi­nal Draft or other pro­fes­sional scriptwrit­ing tools, show­ing the flex­i­bil­ity of the soft­ware in for­mat­ting out­put doc­u­ments.

Markup - In this ver­sion, I won’t cover Mark­down or Multi-markup doc­u­ments. Even though they’re a se­ri­ous part of Scrivener’s Com­pile For­mats, users work­ing with markup doc­u­ments need to be sort of ex­pert in Scrivener in the first place, while for writ­ers of nov­els or ar­ti­cles this func­tion­al­ity is usu­ally of no sig­nif­i­cance.

Scrivener v1 and v2 - Fi­nally, I also won’t ad­dress Scrivener v1 con­ver­sion or Scrivener 2. Ver­sion 3 is the one we’re us­ing nowa­days.

1.3 - A primer for new users

I don’t ex­pect you to read this. You are an ex­pe­ri­enced writer. You’ve got this.

If you haven’t in­stalled Scrivener previously, look stunned when I men­tion Binder, Ed­i­tor, In­spec­tor or talk about Draft, Re­search, and Trash fold­ers; if you raise your shoul­ders when I ref­er­ence Col­lec­tions, Snap­shots, and don’t know what La­bel or Sta­tus lists do; if you’ve never com­piled an out­put doc­u­ment in your life, please read this primer for be­gin­ners. If you do know, I'll see you in the next chap­ter.

When you're reading this, I'd advise you to keep your Scrivener Project close at hand and try out anything of interest to you. Not everything in this book is for everybody. Every writer has different experiences. Exploring subjects of this book in your own projects will generate the most benefit you can have of this book. Just reading it is not that educational, while experiencing it is.

Hid­den Gem 1.3.1

The In­ter­ac­tive Tu­to­rial

gem 1

In the Help menu at the top of your screen you’ll find the In­ter­ac­tive Tu­to­rial. This is a hands-on in­tro­duc­tion to Scrivener, and it is de­signed to help you get started. Just point to a lo­ca­tion on your hard drive to save the Project, start it and work through it. Be­fore you know it, you’ll be writ­ing along.

GemHelpInteractiveTutorial.jpg

Fig­ure 1.3.1 - The in­ter­ac­tive tu­to­rial is a ba­sic Scrivener Project that helps you get started.

InstallationLocation.jpg

Fig­ure 1.3.2 - In­stall the macOS or Win­dows ver­sion from the Lit­er­a­ture and Latte web­site.

In­stal­la­tion

For in­stal­la­tion of Scrivener 3 macOS, iOS and Win­dows ver­sions are avail­able. Find the lat­est ver­sion here:

https://www.lit­er­a­ture­and­latte.com/scrivener/down­load.

Down­load and use the free trial for 30 days, be­fore pay­ing $53 (or $45.05 for an ed­u­ca­tional li­cense). The iOS-ver­sion is $19.99 if you own an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.

Start the in­staller and fol­low in­struc­tions un­til it’s on your hard drive.

Start the in­ter­ac­tive tu­to­rial project, watch the video tu­to­ri­als on­line, or skim the of­fi­cial user man­ual from the Help menu when you want to get a feel for the soft­ware by your­self. Alternatively, start a new project from the File menu: [File > New Project...] to start your first ex­pe­ri­ence with Scrivener.

Hid­den Gem 1.3.2

Video Tu­to­ri­als

Hidden Gem 1

Are you a vis­ual learner with a bit of time on your hand? The video tu­to­ri­als may be the place for you to learn Scrivener. Check out the cat­e­gories of Get­ting Started, Or­ga­niz­ing, Out­lin­ing, and Struc­tur­ing and many more, each con­tain­ing sev­eral videos show­ing you the way to go. Find the link to the Tu­to­rial Videos in the Help menu.

But since you've made it this far, read on for a con­cise treat­ment of the ba­sic fea­tures.

BinderEditorInspector.jpg

Fig­ure 1.3.3 - The Binder, Ed­i­tor, and In­spec­tor panes of the Scrivener User In­ter­face.

Or­ga­niz­ing us­ing the Binder

The left col­umn of the de­fault Lay­out is the Binder. The root level usu­ally con­tains your man­u­script. Cre­ate fold­ers, doc­u­ment groups or sin­gle doc­u­ments with the help of the two icons in the far left cor­ner of the Binder’s footer. These may rep­re­sent parts, chap­ters, se­quences, sec­tions or scenes to your heart’s de­light. Throw your stuff in there. Any­thing goes.

Spe­cial fold­ers are the Draft folder con­tain­ing the ac­tual man­u­script, the Re­search folder for ev­ery­thing that in­forms your writ­ing, Tem­plates con­taining pre-for­mat­ted doc­u­ments and the Trash which con­tains, well any­thing you trash. Despite being special folders, you can re­name them to any­thing you want and change their icons. Deleting the Draft, Research and Trash folder is not supported. Other fold­ers in the cur­rent tem­plate of your project may re­side in the Binder as well, like Ideas, Notes and anything you create yourself.

Ac­cess the Search fea­ture through the look­ing glass icon in the tool­bar. Search Re­sults from the Project Search may cover your Binder. Hit the X at the far left side of the Search Re­sult header to re­move this layer.

Ac­cess Col­lec­tion from the blue View icon in the tool­bar or from the View menu. Col­lec­tions are views of the doc­u­ments in the binder, not the doc­u­ments them­selves. Col­lec­tions sport spe­cific col­ors and have a named bar above the Binder and Search Re­sults bars, act­ing like tabs for the left panel. You can add ran­dom doc­u­ments in an ar­bi­trar­y or­der to Col­lec­tions. Add and re­move Col­lec­tions us­ing the plus and mi­nus icons in the header of the Binder when Col­lec­tions are vis­i­ble.

Writ­ing with the Ed­i­tor

The wide cen­ter pane of the de­fault Scrivener in­ter­face is the Ed­i­tor. This is empty un­til you type text there. In the Binder you should have a doc­u­ment se­lected, even though you can add text to fold­ers as well. The text en­tered will ac­cu­mu­late in the se­lected doc­u­ment. I’d like to point out the abil­ity to split ed­i­tors, ei­ther hor­i­zon­tally or ver­ti­cally. Not only doc­u­ments but also the other Views can re­side in the other ed­i­tor, mak­ing ef­fi­cient lay­outs for ev­ery use of the ed­i­tor space. That’s all there is to it. Oh, wait…

Let’s look closer at the three View Modes. You can find them in the Main Toolbar as a set of three buttons.

Scrivenings View - When your se­lect the left-most View Mode, look­ing like a set of two doc­u­ments, Scrivener will show a group of doc­u­ments in­side a folder or subdocuments of a doc­u­ment as a com­pos­ite of text doc­u­ments called Scriven­ings.

Corkboard View - The sec­ond mode for this cen­ter pane is the Cork­board. This shows the con­tent of the Syn­op­sis pane at the top right as in­dex cards on a cork­board back­ground. The ac­tual back­ground and looks of the cards are highly cus­tom­iz­a­ble us­ing the [File > Op­tions > Ap­pear­ance] menu com­mand, or the Cork­board op­tions at the bot­tom right when in Cork­board View Mode. Scrivener links the cards to fold­ers and subdocuments in the Binder. Drag Index Cards to change the or­der of your doc­u­ments.

Outliner View - The third mode that’s go­ing to ap­pear in the cen­ter pane is the Out­liner. This is a ta­ble of all your scenes or sec­tions with col­umns con­tain­ing their meta­data, like Ti­tle and Syn­op­sis, La­bel, Sta­tus, and Sec­tion Type. Use the ta­ble for a he­li­copter view of your man­u­script. Add and re­move col­umns with the ar­row tucked away in the top right-hand cor­ner of this view. A long list of meta­data ex­ists from which to se­lect ad­di­tional col­umns.

Struc­tur­ing with the In­spec­tor

The col­umn on the right is called the In­spec­tor. Click­ing the blue cir­cle con­tain­ing an i on the tool­bar turns this on or off. By de­fault the In­spec­tor stacks a white Syn­op­sis and a pale yel­low Notes pane.