Hi
I’m wondering if there’s a way to automate styles in scrivener, so that the first paragraph in any page has a particular style.
I know there’s a way to have the first paragraph export without indent, and stuff, but that compiles to an overwriting of the normal style, which is not ideal.
I’m asking as I’m having problems with my workflow, as I export to doc, and then import to InDesing. And I’m currently manually changing the style of the first paragraph of each chapter.
Thanks.
Can’t you control paragraph indents in InDesign?
If you’re going to end up there anyway, I would think the way to go would be to do only minimal formatting in Scrivener.
I can. Yes. The thing is that now I’m manually changing the style of every first paragraph of every chapter after an import. And that’s not ideal. In a big book it’s easy to miss one or two.
AFAIK That’s the only way to do it. You want to use InDesign Styles anyway. You’ll have to be dilligent. 
For those interested, the workaround I used to solved this was to create a paragraph style in Scrivener called First Paragraph. Very distinct (yellow text with an ugly font). And I apply this style manually to the top of every document.
Then, I have an inDesign style called First Paragraph as well. So when I compile to docx, the style caries over, until I import to inDesign. There, the paragraphs with the first paragraph style get the inDesign style applied.
The thing to keep in mind is that the formatting of the styles in scrivener are thrown away in the process. All you need is for each block of text to have the style name you want, so inDesign can apply the desired formatting itself.
I like this workaround, because If I have to re-import for some reason (maybe I find a typo), I don’t have to re-apply the style in inDesign. It’s a bit cumbersome to set up, but totally worth it in the long run.