I like writing in the corkboard view, which will produce a large number of cards and synopsis. After that, I want to switch to scivenings to write, and the content of synopsis needs to be manually copied into text.
You aren’t alone in working that way! Enough so that there is a command for pushing the contents of your index cards into the main writing area—either at the bottom of what is already there, or as wholly new text. The command is Documents ▸ Auto-Fill ▸ Append Synopsis to Main Text. Might as well glance at the other commands in that menu, as some of those can be pretty useful to know about.
Like many commands in the Documents menu, you can select large quantities of items at once. For example, click on your Draft folder, and use the Edit â–¸ Select â–¸ Select with Subdocuments command. This will unfold the entire outline beneath Draft, and select it in entirety.
This won’t delete it from the inspector/synopsis, but remember how I made you click the synopsis checkbox in the compile format’s section layout so that you would get the synopsis word count included in the statistics ? Well, this time just uncheck it, and the synopsis of your documents won’t be compiled.
On the other hand, if you have a mix of documents still using the synopsis tab, and others for which you appended the synopsis, the best thing to do would be to manually delete the synopsis from the inspector once you appended the synopsis to the main text of a document.
When the contents of synopsis and text are repeated.
I feel a little big.
Not because of repeated statistics.
But because the contents of synopsis and text are repeated, so I should stop to check, or delete synopsis manually to avoid becoming a distraction from writing.
Probably because a synopsis is not something usually intended to be part of the finished work. It is more of a pre-first draft thing.
Destined to be developed and rewritten.
I see.
That is actually why myself (among other reasons) don’t use the synopsis tab.
I use a style that is set to a different font, and do my synopsis at the top of my documents. (Therefore having what I write being part of the daily word count.)
Giving my documents a descriptive temporary title and making the binder somewhat wide, I don’t need the corkboard.
(One downside to that method is that, when deleting from the synopsis what you rewrite, what you delete counts as minus in the word count…)
I don’t worry too much about it. I know when I did my best by the end of the day. Some days I write 10k+ first draft words, so, in a way, it makes up for not so good days.
PopClip has a word count extension. Just in case you don’t know this truly amazing little app: You first have to highlight text, then an iOS/iPadOS style bar will pop up where you can pick an action, in your case word count. That’s not the same as a constant display of the word count somewhere in the margins of the text but it will work.
It still would be a workaround. A workaround for you not wanting to use Scrivener’s editor which has all the tools you need. Why not use it? There is a reason why the synopsis is called synopsis and the editor is called editor.
If you don’t assign a synopsis at all, the Corkboard view will autofill one from the body text.
So one alternative would be to use a dual editor, with one pane dedicated to the Corkboard and the other to the Editor. Create a document in the Corkboard, type in the Editor, see the (beginning of) the text appear in the Corkboard view.