I use Labels and Keywords to keep track of different story arcs. Is there any way to generate a draft that is limited to document elements that have specific labels/keywords associated with them?
I have discovered I can do it this way:
Use the keyword which designates the story arc as a search term
Select all documents in Search Results
Edit Scrivenings (by Selection)
Print Current Document
Of course, this isn’t really a “draft” – I can’t select whether I want the document text, synopsis, notes, etc. that I can with a draft. Is there a way to do this more directly, and perhaps as an actual draft (I would rather not have to one-by-one include/exclude documents in the Compile Draft dialog)?
The method you describe is probably the best way to go about it, though you could substitute the last step with an Export command, including the desired meta-data and notes if you really needed that (of course this export individual files, not a compiled draft). The compile feature is primarily designed for compiling the draft, and the draft is primarily designed to be a representation of your book. So there really is much support for dynamically selecting scattered non-linear parts of your book and turning them into sub-books.
It is an interesting idea, though, and if you wished to post it on the feature list, I would suggest combining the use of saved searches with the compile feature. In other words, the “Choose” portion at the top of the content list in Compile would allow selection of saved search items, which would execute the search and populate the list with all draft descended items.
Future versions of Scrivener may make this task easier, in that it will better facilitate the ability to adjust search result’s draft inclusion fields en masse.