I use the Scrivenings view extensively to view all the sections of a given chapter as a single group. (I’m using a Folder to hold all the sections for the Chapter, and each Section is its own text file.)
For any given section, I have multiple note documents. I would like to include all these notes as sub-files of the main text document. However if I do this, all the notes show up in the Scrivenings.
How can I hide the sub-files? This would make life MUCH EASIER. As it is now, I have to keep all my notes in a separate folder, and it is a PITA to create sub-folders within this to hold each group of notes.
If this is NOT possible then @KB or @AmberV is this something you could please add?
It would greatly add to Scrivener’s usefulness and flexibility. I’m writing non-fiction, but I could see fiction writers using this as well. And being able to toggle this on/off would make it even more useful.
I’m wondering why you don’t use the Notes feature of Scrivener, there already? And if your notes are in Documents, put those under the Research folder and then link them into the Notes fields for the files you are writing with?
Even if L&L were to take on this suggestion, unless there is already a way to do that which you haven’t found and I’ve not looked for, it will be a long time in development. Using built-in now features of Scrivener might work better for you now?
Anything part of a hierarchy will show up on screen in Scrivenings view. The only way to exclude a document you use as notes would be to untick their inclusion during compile.
A workaround would be to select the scenes of your chapter and make a Collection. Takes a second or three. Kind of the same difference for what you’re suggesting.
So you’d probably get no further traction with your suggestion.
Agree with rms. Either put the scene notes in the Inspector Notes, though would not see in scrivenings view. I prefer to link the notes if large to the scene by Document Bookmarks so easily available and viewable and out of the way while in Scrivenings view and place the notes in research. You could even duplicate the book and place the copy in the Research Folder and then delete the scenes leaving the notes ready to link or view in Scrivenings view.
Here’s an example of how a Collection might be viewed as a Scrivening.
In this case the Plot Parts are actually spread throughout my Novel, but the same would apply if you need to view an entire chapter of various scenes this way.
All you need to do is highlight the items in the Collection to view as a Scrivening, as Collections don’t show hierarchy, but as individually bundled Binder documents.
With one exception. It’s possible to exclude the contents of a folder document from Scrivenings: the idea is that you might want to put notes about a chapter in the top level document, with the actual scenes in subdocuments. The option for this is in the Scrivener → Settings → Behaviors → Folders & Files pane.
@rms Notes feature is totally inadequate for my needs. My “notes” are countless thousands of research files, many of them running into the thousands of words (pulled from research materials, other books, etc). They often have varying formatting styles depending on their source, etc. And I need to be able to view them in the full size editor. So that won’t work.
@Kevitec57 Making a Collection is a good idea. I could open the Collection in the left editor and then switch to Binder and load my research material into the right editor. A little clunky, but workable. Thank you.
@kewms Putting the notes in a top-level document kind of defeats the purpose. I already have a folder with ALL the notes for ALL the sections of the chapter. That folder is just below the folder with the chapter itself. My goal here was to be able to move the notes to just after each section.
I’ll still request the feature:
Scriverner → Settings → Behaviors → Include subdocuments in screenings mode
This addition would make it easy to toggle the subdocuments on/off. Even better would be a way to toggle this from a menu item or keyboard shortcut.
Even if the other contributors to this thread may not see the need, I could easily see how others could benefit from this addition.
FWIW, this is what the Research folder is for. One alternative would be to use Document Bookmarks to link from your text to appropriate folders/documents in the Research folder.
Yes, I understand the “standard” use of Scrivener’s Research folder.
And yes, I make extensive use of Document Bookmarks and Links.
But as you well know, Scrivener’s greatest strength is its flexibility to adapt to the user’s needs.
I’m writing a massive non-fiction book, which I’ve been working on for 15 years. Within each chapter folder, I have various sub-folders that all relate to that chapter: the draft, captions for photographs, research materials, notes to self about work-to-do, notes about structure, notes to my translator, etc. It’s a system that I’ve developed over the years that works very well for my needs.
I still don’t see the benefit of a hide/unhide toggle.
If I understand your setup, your structure is chapter A folder, sub-document notes for scene 1, sub-sub document for scene 1, sub-document notes for scene 2, sub-sub-document for scene 2, etc. — chapter B as above, etc. Your wish is to hide all sub-document levels, but leave all sub-sub levels unhidden, so that Scrivenings only sees Chapter and the sub-sub levels as a scrivening.
This can still be achieved by keeping your notes elsewhere by placing an internal link in Inspector Notes to notes for a specific scene kept in Research and have them opened on demand and fully editable in a Quick Reference panel. If you move your scene 10, 20 or 100 pages elsewhere, it doesn’t matter because the Inspector Notes link travels along with the scene and its link is not broken.
Right now, you’re doing excessive up and down scrolling to a close proximity document, which is not bad if your scenes are short, but isn’t it rather time consuming towards the end of a longer scene? QRP’s can pop up with a quick click and close with another. Scrivener also remembers the last place you scrolled in what you’re referencing.
You’d now have less of a clutter of notes in the Binder in your writing environment. In this case out of sight is not be out of mind because of the link you’d have in Inspector Notes.
Since you write non-fiction replace the noun scene with section wherever I’ve mentioned it.
Just for the record, you are using Scrivener in a fashion it was designed to be used. We wouldn’t have an Include in Compile checkbox if you weren’t meant to be able to easily store planning, research and notes directly in and around the stuff you are writing.
We wouldn’t have the Navigate ▸ Open ▸ with Compilable Subdocuments menu command if you weren’t supposed to be able to have a mix of compilable and omitted materials in the same area (which I recommend putting a custom shortcut on if you work this way[1]). And I believe that is essentially the feature you are looking for, to solve your problem. This command works with any view mode, including Scrivenings. Sometimes it can be very useful to have all of your notes together with the text you are writing, in Scrivenings view, but this command will help sort out the times when it’s not desired and you just want to focus on the flow of the text itself.
You may also find these notes I’ve written on this way of working to be useful. Depending on how formulaic your outline is, you could even get away with setting up a default subdocument template cascade. For example, create templates for chapter folders, which have a default template of a section, which in turn has a default subdocument template of notes.
The trick to getting that set up is that a text item needs to have a child before you can access the Documents ▸ Default Template for Subdocuments command, so you would temporarily put your “Notes” template in the “Section” template, pick it, and then move it back out to the same level. The reason for moving it back out is that templates also populate subdocuments on use, so you would otherwise get an empty notes subdocument every single time you pressed Enter in a “Chapter” folder (or ⌘N / Ctrl+N, however you make new sections).
Here is a little demonstration project of a setup as describe:
I’m using a trick with the notes template, that has some text already typed in, and selected. Both of these conditions will carry over to newly created notes from this template, meaning you can overtype the starter text easily, and in a different font than the regular text (which helps it stand out in Scrivenings, when you do want them combined).
I did leave the “Section text” template in the “Chapter” template, which means that whenever you make a new chapter in the Draft folder, it will automatically get one new section added to it. As it’s unlikely you’d ever want otherwise, it saves a step.
The easiest way to add notes to a section is to toggle Outliner or Corkboard view on, which will initially come up empty. Any action taken to add a new item will use the Notes template as each new “Section text” item has that set as its default. Once you do have one though, you can make new note sections at the bottom of a Scrivenings section while viewing the text.
By default, clicking on text sections will not automatically go to corkboard, scrivenings or whatever, so appending notes to the view is optional. There is a switch for that, in the Behaviors: Folders & Files settings pane: Treat all documents with subdocuments as folders.
Apologies, at the time of this writing, this menu command has yet to be added to the custom keyboard shortcut list, on Windows, and even more annoyingly, does not have a menu key accelerator. But this command is also available in the right-click contextual menu, which some might find easier anyway. ↩︎
Is the highlighted note (below) something that will be attended to in the next version 3 update for Windows or is it somewhere on the backburner, dependant on the developer’s other priorities?
This is an area that will definitely benefit from a keyboard shortcut, even though it is available from the Binder’s contextual menu as well.
Wow !!! @AmberV - This is brilliant! You never cease to amaze with your crystal clear explanations. Makes me realize how much I do NOT know about Scrivener despite using it for 16 years!
I setup the Compilable Subdocuments keyboard shortcut and, voila! - now I have the toggle I was looking for. THANK YOU !
I also setup the Note template and will use that moving forward.
@Kevitec57 - I do appreciate your response, but my setup is quite different from yours. As Amber wrote in the post she linked to above:
And I believe that is essentially the feature you are looking for, to solve your problem. This command works with any view mode, including Scrivenings. Sometimes it can be very useful to have all of your notes together with the text you are writing, in Scrivenings view, but this command will help sort out the times when it’s not desired and you just want to focus on the flow of the text itself.