Hello all,
When actively writing a novel, my workflow is to create folders in Draft for each chapter (Chapter One, Two, etc.), each with three or four sub-documents beneath–one per scene. The Chapter ‘folder’ has one string of text only, “Chapter One”, for example. My question is this–
I like to keep my chapters to roughly 3,000 words, but the way I work now, I have to add up the word count from each scene to arrive at the chapter count. Is there a way, based on what I’ve described, to arrive at it any other way?
I know I could omit the breakdown, and simply incorporate each scene into a full chapter document, but I work better in smaller chunks. Any help with this would be appreciated, CG
Click the chapter folder in the Binder to see the cork board. Click the cork board. Type Command-A to select all the scene files. Right-click a scene file (index card). The total word count is in the context menu at bottom.
It would be good if this information was in the context menu in the binder, for each folder and documents.
Thanks, Louis, this is exactly what I was looking for. Just one more reason to love Scrivener-the product not only works, it has really smart, resourceful users, that have traveled the road before. Thanks again. Back now to NaNo…
You could set up targets for each of the scenes in your chapters (doesn’t matter what they are, so long as they add up to roughly 3,000 words per chapter), and then monitor your progress via progress bars for each chapter set up in the outliner progress-bar column. You could even write in split screen with the outliner in the alternate screen, to keep your progress constantly monitored.
You also can add “total word count” as a column to the Outliner, so that you can quickly view your entire Draft folder and see not only the word count for each individual scene but the collective word count per each chapter folder.