Please make this possible. I feel it would be an easy fix and would be so useful. It would be really handy to see at a glance that, for example, there are 40,000 words up to and including chapter 10 and, therefore, that is half way through my novel.
Here’s the sort of thing I would like:
Chapter 1 = 5,000 words, Manuscript so far = 5,000 words
Chapter 2 = 2,000 words, Manuscript so far = 7,000 words
Chapter 3 = 1,500 words, Manuscript so far = 8,500 words etc
I pointed out an easy way to check your progress at a glance in your other post on the same topic. Have you tried to do it?
I read your post, but as it’s not what I want to do, I didn’t try it.
When I am writing, I check my progress through Targets. But what I would like is to be able to add a column in Outline view which adds up the word count for the project at each point. Say I have an 80,000 word novel, it’s useful to see where the midpoint is. If I want to add pinch points at a quarter and three quarters of the way through, I can see where the 20,000 and 60,000 points fall. Or, from the above example, when I’m revising and I’ve got as far as Chapter 2, it’s useful to know I’ve completed 7,000 words (not have to manually add up the chapter totals).
I would like to see this as a list in Outline view, just as I see the individual chapter totals.
Easy way to get the same thing is to select the items you want to use Scrivenings view. Select what you want to count, can even collapse chapters and will still count and will see total words in whatever you select with the word targets if you have them. You can select anything you want to count this way.
Also can click statistics and get the word count on the (currently) Selected documents
Thanks for the suggestions of workarounds. But I already have a workaround. Using a workaround is a pain.
What I was looking for was a feature which was so obvious that it should be there that I thought I had missed it. But it seems this feature does not exist. Which is why I have suggested, in the feedback section, that it should be added.
I don’t want to harp on the same thing, but you said you never tried what I suggested.
So, I encourage you to at least give it a go. What could be easier than to swipe your mouse past the Search Bar at the top centre of the Scrivener workspace? The display changes to reveal the total words set to compile, without you needing to click away from your work.
If I read your post correctly, all you need is a general idea of how far you’ve progressed out of 80k words, anything above 10k words would give you an assurance of a ballpark of 1/8th and other figures a similar idea.
Perhaps it’s just me. I couldn’t care how much I write, as long as I enjoy the experience and take care of housekeeping afterwards.
That’s not what I asked. That’s not what I want to do. I don’t understand why this is a problem for you. Let’s just leave it at that.
Do you mean something like this:
Can you work upside down?
This “works”, and is really easy to set up.
You just have to work from the bottom up, or duplicate your working chapters from one way or the other and then reverse them.
People with more knowledge of Scrivener than me could address this, but I think the way the system is set up is to allow for Compiling and output, not data manipulation - although there is much that CAN be manipulated in Scrivener.
Data manipulation should be down in a spreadsheet, or some other program that manipulates data numbers, not words, hence the ability to export an outline to csv which can then be worked on by a host of other programs/apps.
HTH
That is cool, but the quick search bars shows your current overall progress and you select any group of files and view in scrivenings to have the group’s word count. Seems simple to get any statistic you want for a novel. But there is a simple way to see the word count in the Outliner in the classic 3 act Structure.
Click on the Manuscript and the Outliner shows the cumulative count for each Act (see below) and for each chapter in Act 1 which was opened to show the Chapters it contained.
FWIW, I second @Elephant_Fan’s wishlist request. I never understood why the “Words” and “Total Words” columns total are always identical. The “Total Words” column seemingly, by its very title, should reflect the cumulative totals up to that chapter/folder/whatever.
Thus, I only have one column or the other, never both. Seems to be a pointless redundancy.
Have you ever used sub-folders or -documents?
Yes, but not always.
