I am using a (what I call) project as a writing diary.
in essence, this is where I write down (you could say log) my thoughts, things done on a certain day, things I have seen, or am thinking about on a daily basis.
Within these notes, there are pieces I realize I want to remember as I might be able to use them in a story, column or blog. I know scrivener has tons of functionality, but I wonder how I can mark these bits and pieces with a bit of descriptive text, so I get (or can generate) an overview to enable me to easily find them for later use.
Thanks in advance for replying ans sharing your thoughts.
Hope I made myself clear. If not, let me know and I will try to be more desriptive.
The fastest and easiest way would probably be to put something directly in the text, say WIP Note â widgets. Then you can search for either all instances of âWIP Noteâ or just the ones that also include widgets.
You could also attach a comment, or could duplicate the relevant sections out to a separate folder.
Another idea, make a separate Scrivener which you keep open a lot of the time, in addition to other windows (Scrivenerâs or others) and capture ideas there.
Right. Simple actually isnât it.
If I create an inline note/comment (working in the Dutch translation, so not sure if this is the proper wording in English, anyhow Alt+Shift+F4.
I can put in a text like âBlogideaâ with a few words to describe it.
Makes sense.
Thanks for that.
Right. Since youâll be using Search to find tagged items later, you probably want to use a tag that is unlikely to appear elsewhere, but otherwise this approach is pretty straightforward.
Or bookmark relevant files. Can also create custom metadata with lists of topic categories so can group quickly by search. Adding comments can pinpoint spots in text as well .
Each document has an associated index card, also. The body text of the index card could be a good place to jot down summative phrases for later synoptic viewing or search. You can view this index card text in the Inspector per doc, or in groups in Corkboard View or in a structured list in the Outline View.
I would consider a unique naming convention - say maybe
Ideas: I-plot, I-character, I-theme
Actions (things Iâve done): A-Travel, etc
Viewed (things Iâve seen): V-Movie, etc
*Keywords can be nested, and you can choose multiple keywords. So you could maybe add a keyword for Journal, WIP-name1, WIP-name2.
*You can also apply multiple keywords to any document.
*You can apply any number of keywords to multiple documents in one step by selecting multiple documents from your binder, collection etc.
*Keywords are color-coded, and you can choose to have the color display on your corkboard/index cards.
*Using keywords, you can easily create collections that will only display the documents with the keywords you choose.
Edit- I forgot- you also might find the âdateâ metatag useful in your journal too. It could âcollectâ all the things you did on one day, in date order, and then you could sort by your keywords (actions, viewed, etc.)
Take a look at the manual sections that November-Siera mentioned above for more details.
Keywords donât neccessarily need a unique naming system but need to be organized in the Keyword panel in a way to find what you need. For example, I use keywords to track every character in my novel and add to each document where they appear, so it becomes painless to find a minor character who delivers crucial story info.
You can as mentioned above pick color families for types of keywords as I do for editing in the example below.
The other advantage of keywords is you can search for multiple ones at a time. So search for scenes containing two characters such as Bill and Sally.
On my author website (not published yet) have a series of articles about keywords. If you enjoy please sign up to my email list as adding other articles on a regular basis about Scrivener, Just added a Bookmark series.
The only reason I suggested a unique naming convention was so the OP could distinguish ideas from his journal from any keywords he might use in a writing project, say if he imported them into a WIP or started a WIP in the same project.
See your point. Could do both by having category keywords with letters for particular book attached. Like initials of book title tacked onto generic keywords.
