Generate Reports - all the scenes a character is in etc.

Hi all,

I make radio plays and love Scrivener.

However is there a way to generate reports like FD and Celtx do? It is very useful to know what scenes a character is in for planning production and also checking scenes have been recorded.

I don’t want to have to leave Scriv to go into another programme to generate a report.

Many thanks

Radiomatt :smiley:

There isn’t a dedicated way to do this, though depending on how you set up your project, you could get a decent feel for this kind of information using meta-data. Some people like to use the colour labels for character POV, or plot thread, and then simply turning on label tinting in the Binder will give you an immediately overview of not only how often, but in what order, various elements of your script are constructed. There are also saved searches which can produce a list of every document which matches a certain criteria, such as the presence of a keyword (since some people like to put character names into keywords).

In short, Scrivener has always supported the notion of keeping this kind of information within Scrivener. There are a variety of ways to work with meta-data, some dependent upon the type of meta-data. It doesn’t really do much in the way of “reports” though, since it is a flexible authoring tool, and really has no concept of characters or locations or plots.

Thanks AmberV for your very quick reply - slightly dissapointing answer, but I guess Scrivener isn’t really built to do that.

I will therefore export to Celtx to generate my reports - have you any tips on how to do that whilst avoiding having to do a lot of reformatting in Celtx - does anyone else have any useful export/import tips?

I checked out the celtx wiki which has some useful info but it still magled character/dialogue in many of my scenes.

many thanks

Matt :slight_smile:

Well, a lot of people get into Scrivener because of its pragmatic approach. The outline is your draft, structure and plot elements can temporarily define content, discrete threads within a woven manuscript can be dynamically and temporarily extracted and spliced together, edited as a single file, things like that—it is a new approach to writing, and once you get into it, few ever go back to the old ways of generating non-connected reports and working in mammoth single file systems. So, while it might be disappointing to hear it doesn’t directly support the existing methods, that rather is kind of the whole point of Scrivener—a writing software that evolved past the old constrictions.

I’m sorry, I really don’t know anything about Celtx or any other scriptwriting software as I’ve never even attempted the format. I do think there are some on the board who use that software, or at least have played with it. You might try creating a new thread in the Software by other Folks area if you want to get more response. Not everyone checks here in the Scrivener tech area.

Thanks again for your very quick response - I can see your point about Scriv. being great for creating and I will continue to use it for that.

At some point I do need to turn what I create into an actual production and will probably slip over into the less pleasant world of Celtx for those tools. (I know Scriv right at the outset never claimed to be able to do those things).

So I will sign off and try the other area.

ta again

Matt