I am finding this program extremely difficult to use. I have been through the interactive tutorial several times and have watched hours of tutorials but I find that nothing that I do happens as it is supposed to happen when I have seen it done in the tutorial environment. And when it doesn’t that means you have to start at the beginning and therefore every single thing I do means stopping and going to look at a tutorial.
If I could do the following I might be able to some (any) writing.
When I click on Add new text (I am in screenplay mode) something like a blank page appears, but it is not the three hole page of a scene.
When that happens and I don’t want it to you. How do I delete it.
Somewhere in all of this there was a button at the bottom of the screen that allowed me (I thought) to toggle between CHARACTER, DIALOGUE, ACTION. I have no idea where that has gone, instead there is a bulls eye. Steve Jobs said if you have to read the manual we messed up. All I do is read the manual. That said I would recommend Jason Hough’s tutorial on Scrivener bootcamp because he is the only one able to give you the hierarchy.
All right : Here are the answers for those of you who feel similarly lost in the woods. A “scene” shows up as a blank page UNTIL you write in it, then presto chango it becomes formatted in the binder to look like a scene page.
Number three : just because you began the project using a formatting setting, say, screenplay, doesn’t mean when you open it, you can expect to find it still in use. You must check that is in the right mode by going to formatting, then clicking so that a sub menu opens up and you re-select the format. Then suddenly the format options will re-appear at the bottom of your screen in the footer.
Screenplay mode was tricky for me too, don’t despair! The tutorial is not particularly explanatory and it took me some time to get used to its intricacies.
A rule of thumb that worked for me was remembering that it is just a “mode” which captures your input in a different way that regular mode does.
Documents created on Screenplay mode can co-exist with regular text documents on the same project. If you create a new text document it will inherit the mode of document which has focus at the time. The Ctrl-4 short-cut becomes handy to switch between regular and screenplay mode for any document.