I am not sure if this is a dumb question or not, it prolly is but I’m gonna ask it anyway. I’ve been writing using the Novel option for my fiction work, and I’ve done a short story as well, both work well and am enjoying the app much. But, my question is, I’m working on a short that is turning into a Novella, and I want to know if I continue doing so will the formatting be different or if I should save it (copy) then open a new “novel” and paste it there? What I’m really trying to ask is if I want to write a Novella is it best to use the Novel format, or the short story format as I started on this one? I did say it was a dumb question, lol. But, I’m a weird when it comes to formatting and if it doesn’t say Novella, then I get a bit freaked, so any assistance or insight would be appreciated, thanks. Hope this reaches you all well, and again, thanks… Roel C.
Hi.
Not a dumb question.
All projects are the same in the sense that you can tweak any of them templates into anything you want.
Those templates are there to make compiling (and perhaps other minor details here and there) more convenient from a beginner’s point of view.
Nothing more.
And they don’t restrict you in any way.
You could not care.
You’d just then have to do a bit more learning at compile, as the associations (Section types to what layout) wouldn’t in this case have been set ahead for you. (A minor thing, really.)
There is a short section in the user manual PDF on this, in §5.4.2, Converting a Project to a Different Template. It’s very short because it basically says what Vincent_Vincent just said above though: don’t fret, they are just starting points and you can go from a Recipe Book to a technical guide on programming if for some reason your okra cooking skills are off the charts. Many Scrivener veterans don’t even use them and just start from Blank every single time.
But this section does have a list of cross-references to other sections of the manual that would pertain to transferring settings between projects. That’s something that might be of interest down the line, if you do want to adopt how Novel works wholesale for some reason—you could very easy just make a little scaffolding project using that template and strip out all of its settings and import them into your main WIP.
I think Novella is probably best thought of as a subclass of Novel. And it is not in any way different in kind from a novel, just on the shorter end as novels go.
What your typical novel has that your typical short story does not is the grouping of text into Chapters. For this reason I would choose the Novel template, since it will have built-in provision for chaptering.
((Disclaimer: I do not use either of the templates you mentioned in my own work.))