Gaps

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

I don’t want to over-simplistic in my explanation, but from closing to opening of the program, I have developed gaps in my story. These gaps are segmented, and I have the same word count, but there are now gaps that I want to remove. How does one do that? I’m hesitant to do anything, so anyone’s help would be appreciated.

Dave

2

Could you describe the “gaps” in more detail or post/link a screenshot?

Is this when viewing a single selected doc in the editor?
Or when viewing a group or collection of docs in the editor in scrivening mode, where it displays them one right after the other, separated by white space and lines, all in the same editor window?
Or in print preview?
Or in compiled output?

3

SpringfieldMH,
I am very, very new to the program, so I don’t know all the lingo. When I view the whole story in one long continuous form, with chapter breaks noted by a single line between, there now appears long blank chapters between a few of the actual chapters. I am deadly scared to do anything (even though I have backups galore. I hope this answers your question.

dave

4

My guess is you’re using “scrivenings” mode (the button to the left of the corkboard button in your main toolbar when viewing multiple documents), and the gaps are scene documents that you have in your binder, but haven’t added any text to. Scrivener acts like they’re scenes, even though there’s nothing in them, so you get “gaps”.

5

This is going to be verbose and may contain errors or oversimplifications. Sorry.

My guess is the same as Sanguinius’s, that you are seeing this while in scrivenings view in the editor. If it turns out to be something else, post back here and we’ll take another stab at it.

Scrivenings view, which might also be described as composite or concatenated view, presents a combined view of the text contents of multiple bindery items with a bit of white space and a horizontal line marking the breaks between the items.

As Sanguinius indicated, text view (single item or scrivenings view of multiple) is selected by clicking the button just to the left of the corkboard button in the center of the main toolbar near the top of the screen (or via View > Scrivenings) in the main menu.
It is toggleable… repeated clicking/use will switch it between single item view and scrivenings view.

When in scrivenings view…

  • Click on the Manuscript folder (that holds the material to be compiled) and you see a scrivenings view of the text contents of everything in it, the entire draft.
  • Click on any other folder within Manuscript and you see a scrivenings view of the folder’s own text contents plus the text contents of all subordinate folders and text documents.
    To be clear, folders have their own text (even if is empty), plus whatever subordinate items are within them.
  • Ctrl+Click on select text documents and youll see a scrivenings view of those documents text.

As Sanguinius indicated, all items within the scope of the scrivenings view will be presented/indicated within the scrivenings view, even if they contain no text, by the presence of some white space and a horizontal line.

If you click through the bindery item by item, you’ll be able to determine which of the items have empty text.

Whether you will ultimately have items with empty text depends partly on how you organize items in the Manuscript area.

  • If Manuscript contains only chapter documents (i.e. each document a full chapter), then presumably there will be no items with empty text.
  • If chapters within Manuscript consist of folders that in turn contain subordinate documents (i.e. each document a scene or some such), then there may or may not be items with empty text, depending on whether you choose to enter text for the folders (perhaps for use as chapter titles?) and whether you have actually entered text in all the documents that you have created (perhaps while outlining).
  • If a multi-level folder structure is used within Manuscript (as for example, chapter folders containing scene folders which in turn contain multiple sub-scene (shot?) documents, then there may or may not be items (the folders) with empty text, depending on whether you choose to enter text for the folders (perhaps for use as chapter or scene titles?).

To be clear, there are just two types of items within the Manuscript area… folders and text documents. “Chapter” and “Scene” are commonly used naming conventions, but can refer to either type of item, depending on just how granular you choose to get, i.e. just how far you go in breaking the work down into sub-pieces and sub-sub-pieces.

And to be clear, Scrivener’s editor is only semi, not full, WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). What you ultimately get is determined by the output of the Compile. So, you won’t necessarily see for sure what things are going to look like until you have compiled the work.

Ultimately, you control whether such empty text appears (as white space) in the final output produced by the Compile. You can set whether a given item’s text should appear in at least two places.

  • In the item’s Inspector settings (big “i” button in upper right hand corner of the screen).
  • In File > Compile > Contents.
    And perhaps in other places or by other ways, such as perhaps File > Compile > Separators.

For more coverage of such, see…

Hope that’s more help than hurt.

6

I have a similar problem of gaps appearing in scrivening mode when I try to look at the whole manuscript. The word count is there but there are several scenes that are large blank spaces. If I view the chapter in scrivenings all the scenes are there, but they text disappears if you go up a level to the whole manuscript. Didn’t use to happen with the earlier versions of scrivener.
Any suggestions as to what I can do?

7

Short version:

With “Manuscript” selected in the binder, click the Scrivenings button just to the left of the Corkboard button in the center of the main toolbar near the top of the screen (or via View > Scrivenings) in the main menu. The empty view (with just a “Draft Folder” graphic displayed) should be replaced by a “scrivenings” view of the contents of the entire manuscript. Click the button again and the view will toggle back to the empty view.

The “gaps” seen in scrivenings view are objects that, themselves, have no text (even though they may contain objects that contain text). You will see them in scrivenings view. Whether you see them in compiled results depends on whether/how you select and deal with them in the compile process (File > Compile > Contents (and/or Separators, etc.)).

They are a deliberate feature, not a bug. :slight_smile:

Long version:

For any item in the binder, there are two text/edit modes… one of which is to show only the text of the selected object, the other of which is to show a “scrivenings” view of the text of the selected object AND the text of all objects within the selected object.

This mode is remembered for each item.

In the special case of “Manuscript”, the object itself has no text and instead of empty white space, an empty screen with a “Draft Folder” graphic is displayed when set to display only the object’s text.

Toggle the mode for the “Manuscript” object, by clicking the Scivenings button just to the left of the corkboard button in the center of the main toolbar near the top of the screen (or via View > Scrivenings) in the main menu. The button’s graphic looks like three sheets of paper overlaying each other somewhat).

So, the “Scrivenings” button doesn’t just mean you want text/edit mode rather than Corkboard or Outline mode… it also serves as a toggle between showing just the text contents of the selected item and showing the text contents of the selected item AND all items within it.

Confusing, but L&L has experimented with various approaches to this and this is the best that they’ve been able to identify.
See the discussion at
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=27497&start=0&hilit=button