Best way to insert more content in overview mode?

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

Hi
Have written two books in Scrivener that I now have combined into one (dokument), Hence there are some story "overlaps"I need to figure out. And I also need to add some more content in different parts of the book, in the form of parallel storylines, hints, more gestures and dramaturgy etc.

I would like to have an “overview” of the hole book in a timeline. And in it be able to insert “notes” where to put the new content along the timeline, so I can get an overview of it. This way it will be easer to see how the new content fit.

Also need to know how to print the Timeline overview correctly to get all the content out (just get parts of the text descriptions / chapter now).

Any suggestions or tips would be greatly appreciated!
Peter :slight_smile:

2

Have you looked at Aeon Timeline? It works in parallell with Scrivener.

3

@lunk
No, since I’m trying to use one tool (Scrivener) for everything, But thanks for the tip anyway :slight_smile:

4

I take it that you haven’t got a timeline yet, and are trying to figure out how to implement on just using Scrivener? I’m also assuming that you have combined the two books into one project for the sole purpose of figuring out your timeline, and not for future submissions/publications/revisions. If either of these are incorrect then the next advice is probably not going to be a good idea to follow.

First, you need to store your “time data” in a way that you can sort. That means you can put the date into the start of the title of each chapter, or you can create a custom metadata column to store this information in. If you are using real-world dates, create a date-type custom metadata column (not a text field). If you are using a non-standard date, then a text field will do–but you must make sure it will sort alphabetically.

Example non-standard dates that will sort:
2019-01-day-01
2019-01-day-19

Year 03,Day 001
Year 10,Day 100

Before proceeding, you probably want to be able to easily distinguish which documents were part of which book. You can create keywords for each book you’re working on, or use Labels (which are useful for some cork board views), or status, or even another metadata column (I sugged the list type, so you can just pick which book it came from, or that it’s a note, or whatever other kinds of documents you plan to create).

Once you’ve populated this data into your metadata, then you can load your books into the outline. The documents must all occupy the same top-level folder (so if you have them in folders for Book 1 and Book 2, you’ll need to drag all the chapter documents out into the Manuscript folder.

Then load everything into outline view, and sort on the date field (after enabling it in the outline view, of course).

Now you can add new documents in the timeline where you want to add new story elements. If they’re just notes, you can mark them as such using metadata as described above.

5

@rdale
Thanks for that great tip, But I think it might be a bit more advanced than I need now. I might use that later when going forward with Scrivener and doing more advanced things.

@all
Maybe I was not clear about what I want (sorry about that). Here’s another try and never mind what I wrote initially in this thread;

I have a story in the Manuscript folder. It’s got about 30 chapters and each chapter contains many scenes. I would like to be able to do a couple of things with it;

  1. Use ONE timeline for the hole story and get a good visual Overview of it all.

  2. Create and insert Notes, dialogs, story “snippets”, things to “fix” etc about scenes along the Timeline.

  3. Se an Overview of every chapter and what it contains (short scene descriptions mostly). This without having to break down every chapter in lots of “mini” chapters, that I can move around in the Timeline more freely.

  4. Being able to move around scenes, chapters, notes etc on the Timeline.

  5. Print the Timeline Overview, with all the above details, so I can put up the hole story on my whiteboard. Then I can move things around until I’m happy with it (yes - analogly moving around physical paper clips). I tried this, but it only printed some of my chapters desriptions. I ended up having to do several screen dumps to print it.

BTW: I have looked through the Scrivener help videos, but I must have missed something. It’s probably very simple to do.

6

Part of our problem with helping you is terminology. There’s no view that’s named “overview”, but there are three Scrivener views that might be considered “overviews,” with some variations. It would help if we were certain which view you mean. It doesn’t help that Scrivener doesn’t support timelines directly as such, so when you keep talking about timelines, we (or at least, I :wink: ) get confused. A screenshot would really help us out here!

Thanks in advance for posting the screenshot.

P.S.:

This may be obvious, but if you don’t know how to post a screenshot on the forum:

  • Look below the area in which you type your post.
  • Past the “submit” button, you’ll see two tabs, Options, and Attachments. Click on “Attachments.”
  • Now click on the “Add Files” button. Select your screenshot file and let it upload.
  • When your screenshot has uploaded, click the “Place Inline” button.
7

@Silverdragon
Meaning the The Cork board and the “coloured lines” (Idea, Note, Chapter etc) that hold the chapters text docs and showing a Description.

If I take a more granular file structure I loose the “overview” and the chapters description. Example of Binder structure;

A) All shows up in Overview in the Cork Board.
Manuscript

  • Chapter 1 text file
  • Chapter 2 textfile
    Etc

B) I only get the folders Overview or the Manuscripts overview but not the content of “Chapter 1”.
Manuscript

  • Chapter 1 (folder)
    – Part 1 text file
    – Part 2 text file
    – Part 3 text file
  • Chapter 2 (folder)
    Etc

Does that help? I can enter a couple of screen shots tomorrow, but have to go to bed now (Sweden, it’s about 11 pm here)…

Maybe I need to see a couple of examples on how others set up there Binder file structure in the Manuscript, to understand what is “best practise” to get this done?

8

Have you looked at the Tutorial project, available from the Help menu? If nothing else, it will help make sure we’re all using the same terminology.

In addition to the Corkboard, you can use Outline mode to see the entire Binder, plus Synopses. Or you can use Scrivenings mode to see all the text of all the documents in the project. At any point, you can insert a new document at any point in the Binder – with Notes and Synopses, if desired – and it will appear at the appropriate place in whatever overview mode you are using.

If the above paragraph is incomprehensible, then you definitely should have a look at the Tutorial.

Katherine

9

@Katherine
Thanks for the tips. Yes, did that many years ago, but it seems I need to do a refresher :wink:

10

You can also see any granularity of stuff in outline or corkboard by explicitly selecting (in the Binder) the documents you want to see represented.

What you are wanting to do is pretty much what Corkboard and Outline views were designed for!

gr

11

@gr
Thank’s. I think I have to play around with it a bit more to figure out how it works for my needs.