Hi all,
I’m trying to Compile my novel to send to some beta readers and when I do, I get huge amounts of extra white space at the bottom of each page (like 1/3 of a page) and in random places, extra spaces skipped between lines or paragraphs. I’ve tried everything I can think of to correct this but to no avail. I will say this is only happening to the first third or so of the book, which I originally was writing in Word and then copied into Scrivener. The rest of the novel, written directly in Scrivener, is coming out fine. I’ve tried converting that first section to Scrivener’s default format and that didn’t fix the problem. Any suggestions, short of having to copy and retype the first 100 pages?? Thanks!
It could be some “Keep with next” formatting snuck into your text, in Word, and ended up spreading into paragraphs. It’s the kind of thing you’d ordinarily just want on your headings to keep them from sitting on the bottom of a page, but if it gets applied to longer paragraphs, it can cause them to migrate to the next page, leaving an unwanted empty space.
To check, go through the export and look for spots like that, and click into any paragraph on the next page, back in Scrivener, and look at the Format ▸ Paragraph ▸ Keep with Next submenu, making sure it is set to “Off”. If that’s the problem, you can probably safely go through with Scrivenings mode in that whole batch that you imported, select everything, and set them to Off. Of course if you do have headings interspersed, you’ll have to be a little more surgical about it.
If that’s not it, there are some other things I can think to look for.
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I did turn off Keep With Next but I went through and found a few still turned on. But that didn’t fix it. What other ideas do you have? Thanks!!
To what format are you compiling to? Word? PDF? RTF? Using Scrivener Styles? And what app do you use to view the compiled document?
Meantime, in Scrivener turn on “invisibles” and look for extraneous new-lines and pilcrows in the source, format of each paragraph (space before and space after), etc. As @AmberV suggests, Scrivenings view is a good way to do this. Of course, look specifically at the paragraphs above and below the unwanted space.
Edit: My hunch is these document irregularities originates when you brought in content from Microsoft Word. You say you “copied”, and then you should have noted two options to paste: “Paste” which brings in formatting as you set in Word, or “Paste and Match Style” which changes formatting to as specified in the target style in Scrivener–which is usually “No Style”.
To confirm, as I’m a little confused by the phrasing, does this mean you went to a spot that was paginating too early, checked the first paragraph on the next page, found it had Keep With Next turned on, turned it off, and recompiled with no change? That might happen if there are still paragraphs around it set that way.
Did you try setting it to Off on all the paragraphs as suggested, in the entire batch of text imported from Word? The first exercise was merely to determine whether or not that might be the cause, and since you found multiple instances of it, it seems like it might be. The solution is to bulk remove this formatting. You don’t want it anywhere except in very narrow conditions.
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Thank you SO much, that fixed it!
Sorry my wording wasn’t clear. I hope my novel doesn’t suffer from the same affliction.
Unfortunately, turning off Keep With Next in bulk did not correct all the issues. I had to painstakingly go through the entire book, paragraph by paragraph, and turn it off manually wherever it occurred. It took multiple passes and compilations to find and correct them all, which literally took hours, but it’s done and it’s all fixed. No more premature e-pagination. Thanks a million!
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Oh no worries! I doubt there is much overlap in an enjoyable to read novel, versus accurately and exhaustively describing a technical procedure (though certainly a number of sci-fi authors have tried).
That’s too bad it didn’t clear things up as easily for you as it did when I briefly tested bulk fixes. I definitely should have mentioned that in Edit ▸ Find ▸ Find by Formatting..., with the tool set to Character formatting search mode, there is a KWN search. You’d still have to remove them manually, but that would at least help you hunt down strays as it can jump from one document to the next in the binder.
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