Hello, when I compile to PDF and one character’s dialogue is spread across multiple pages, how do I get (MORE) to automatically apply itself to the top of the second page of dialogue? People in my screenwriting group are mocking me for my technical ineptitude.
While this is possible to do automatically in the Mac version, I’m afraid Windows doesn’t have this feature yet. It would have to be done manually in another program, after compiling to a rich text format. You could then save as a PDF from Word or whatever WYSIWYG program you’re using to make these changes.
Thank you for your response. It seems like a really odd choice to both not have this be included across platforms, and also deliberately obscure page breaks in the program itself.
Ah well, I guess nobody writes on the windows desktop anymore. Such is the progression of life.
We would love to include the feature in Windows as well, but there are different technical challenges across platforms (the Mac version is built with Apple’s developer tools, for example, whereas Windows had to be coded from scratch). But even with Mac, this tool isn’t perfect, as per section 24.6.5 of the Mac manual:
Please note that we consider this feature to be “proofing quality”, in the sense that it may not match the layout (and thus total page count) of output created by programs designed to create industry standard screenplays.
Ultimately, Scrivener wasn’t designed to be a publishing/layout design tool, and its compile features, while generally pretty robust, aren’t really a match for those of more specialized programs.
As for the obscuring of page breaks, that would be because Scrivener isn’t a WYSIWYG editor. It can give you a rough estimate of page breaks with the View > Text Editing > Page View feature, but the way the output looks is all down to the compile settings. That being said, the “Default” compile format should get pretty close to splitting pages as they appear in Page View.
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I feel your pain. You really need a professional screenwriting app to help Scrivener finish your screenplay. I use Final Draft, but if you need a more economical solution, I recommend WriteSolo which is 100% free.
My workflow is to duplicate my draft folder and merge all the script pages into a single document. Then I Export (not Compile) it to a Final Draft FDX file. I open that with my script processor, clean up the formatting and then export from the screenplay app to PDF.
FWIW, I also use Final Draft to type my screenplay pages, because its more robust at screenplay processing than Scrivener. I write each scene and then paste it into a Scrivener document using Paste Plain Text As Screenplay.
Hope that helps. Good luck.
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Thank you both very much for your input. As versatile as this program is, I’m finding it much more fully-featured than I really need.