I am looking to make a book outline where I can summarize the chapters for the entire book before I start writing them.
I’d like to be able rearrange them on demand. It would also be nice to see a count of the chapters so I can see how many there are.
Please see attached PDF to see the format Im looking to make.
outline-example.pdf (197 KB)
I hope you’re still coming back to see if there’s an answer to this.
What you want to do is actually pretty easy in Scrivener. Open a fresh Novel template and, under the Manuscript section of the Binder, create a bunch of new folders. Each folder represents a chapter. Make as many as you need, just number them 1, 2, 3, etc. Don’t worry about names yet. You can always add more or remove the ones you don’t use. Eventually you’ll create a text file in each folder, one per scene, but don’t worry about that yet.
Now, be sure the Inspector is open, and the Notes view is open in the Inspector. Change your editing screen to the Corkboard and select the Manuscript folder in the Binder. You should see a card for each folder you created. Type your chapter synopsis into each folder’s card; it should also show up in the Synopsis section of the Inspector.
From the Binder it’s easy to move folders around, add new ones in between, etc., making your outline (and eventually your chapter flow) flexible.
If you want to get into a more formalized outline based on beat sheets or classic dramatic structure, you might look at K.M. Weiland’s Scrivener template at helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/resources/ (scroll down to step 9, where she has other Scrivener stuff as well, but read her writing advice to see where she’s coming from) or even pick up Jessica Brody’s book “Save the Cat! Writes A Novel,” Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat! movie beat-sheet outlining method adapted for fiction.
I’ve taken the Save The Cat! beats, created top-level folders for them in Scrivener, and am working on plotting a new story. It seems to fit my outlining style pretty well.
Hope this helps.
Is she the same KM of this forum ?
Anyway, great resources.
For me, why not using simply the Scratch Pad but without aexporting the text, just keeping it there ?
Because the Scratchpad is independent of any particular project.
Project Notes is probably a better choice for something explicitly tied to a single project, but that you don’t want reflected in the Binder.
Katherine