I purchased Scrivener a week ago for a major writing project and I have done the tutorial and I can’t figure anything out. The Help function doesn’t work if you don’t type in the magic words, the manual is completely inaccessible and the way I used the tutorial deleted important parts so it is no help. When I asked for help I was told to trash the tutorial and create a new one but I can’t even figure out how to do that. I can’t figure out how to create research notes. I created a character template and that ate up teh template so i cant’ get a new one or figure out how to copy the old one. I have spent HOURS trying to figure out this thing and I hate hate hate it.
Please, help me find some accessible way to figure this out. I have wasted so much time on this.
Hi,
To get you on the right track, here is a guide for you to find and trash your tutorial file. Given this is posted on the Mac Technical Support, I will assume you are working on a Mac.
Start Scrivener, and choose the Interactive Tutorial from the Project Window. This will open the old tutorial that you have destroyed, but that’s okay.
Once the old tutorial is opened, choose File -> Save As… When the window opens, take note of the folder location where it is stored and its filename. You may want to write this information down. Once you have found the folder location, click cancel.
Quit Scrivener altogether.
Open a Finder window, and navigate to the folder that you wrote down in Step 2. Find the Tutorial file, based on the file name you wrote down in step 2.
Select that file, and press Cmd-Delete to send it to trash.
Re-open Scrivener, choose the interactive tutorial, and it will prompt you to save a new clean version of the Tutorial on your computer.
Once you get the tutorial up and running, I would also strongly recommend you watch the demonstration video here: literatureandlatte.com/video.php
The first video on that page provides a good overview of how to setup and get going in your first project. You should be able to get started writing without worrying about the advanced features of Scrivener at all.
If you need further assistance, and can ask specific questions, there are lots of users around here who will be able to give you a hand.
I sympathise, but be assured, everything will fall into place. I used to have a job teaching people to fly (see picture) and it was a basic principle to start with simple things and get the pupil to master them before allowing them to move on to the next stage. I obviously don’t know exactly what you are trying to do at the moment in Scrivener, and what you are having trouble with, but I would seriously advise you not to try to “set everything up” to start off with. I would recommend just starting with a blank project and writing a little bit before doing anything else. Get used to the most simple and basic operations first. Then build from there. Scrivener is so flexible you can adapt things as you go along. I’ve been using Scrivener for several years off and on, and I doubt that I use a tenth of its features. You may find that you simply don’t need some of the more sophisticated things it can do. it is also worth saying that Scrivener is not really a word-processor. If you have been used to something like MS Word you will find that Scrivener works in a very different way, and some of the paradigms are not really transferable.
People on these forums are usually very generous, so do ask specific questions – someone will try to help.
Martin.
PS: I’m not sure what you mean when you say you can’t work out how to create research notes. Do you mean you can’t create new documents in the Research folder of the Binder? Or are you referring to Project or Document notes?
Matt and Martin gave you excellent advice. Definitely take a cruise through the interactive and watch the video. That will give you a good grounding in the basics. I’ve been using Scrivener for a good number of years; it really is quite compatible with a great variety of writing approaches. As M&M said, good luck.
You could also try enrolling for one of Gwen Hernandez excellent online Scrivener classes. These cover all the essentials in a well structured fashion and are not expensive. Lots of satisfied users on this forum.