Okay, my first specific question. I have managed to import my entire (non-fiction) book into Scrivener, and divide it into the first eleven chapters. So far, I have no control over where things go, so the entire book is in the Folder entitled Manuscript, and the chapters themselves are in the type of place that the title page and prologue are in. Not sure what they’re called. I tried and tried to get them into folders as well, but was no successful. So-- is this going to be a problem when I, someday, attempt to compile? Thanks.
You will have to customize your layout so that the “front matter” is at a different level from the chapters. Before I or anyone else goes into any great detail on how you might arrange the Manuscript folder, let me ask you this: Are you planning on further dividing the chapters in to scenes?
No, not scenes. But the chapters are already divided into dates (as in journal entries), but I don’t forsee needing to have them divided that way for working on the book… Not sure if that answers your question or not…
Typically, there are two ways to organize a manuscript: chapter folders with scene documents in them, or chapter documents at the top level of the Manuscript folder. Since you’re not going to have to assemble multiple documents into a single chapter at compile-time, then you’re most of the way done.
If you used the Novel template, then the settings will automatically prefix the names of each of the documents in the Manuscript folder with “CHAPTER 1”, or maybe it’s “CHAPTER ONE,” or maybe “Chapter …” you get the picture. This works great, except you also need a title page, and maybe a few other pages before your first chapter starts.
The best way to do that is to create a folder at the same level as all of your current documents. You can call it anything you want; Call it “Front”, or “pre-chapters”, if you like. The create (or move) your title page in that folder. Select the Front folder in the binder, and in the inspector on the right (the big ‘i’ button in the tool bar to the right will open it), and un-check “Include in Compile”. That will only affect the folder, and not the document(s) under it.
To start with the same settings that I’m going to walk through, select File->Compile, and choose Format as: Novel Standard Manuscript Format. (You’re not setting that choice is stone… you can re-configure any compile setting from this starting point).
Now, in the Compile settings click on the blue arrow that’s pointing down to expand the window if it doesn’t show the following), select Formatting. Select the “Level 1+” folder and un-check everything that’s checked. Click the Modify button, then Section Layout button, and erase everything under Prefix and Suffix (if there’s anything). This will prevent the folder for triggering a new "Chapter " + number from being printed where it falls in the manuscript.
Then select the Level 2+ page icon (at the bottom) Make sure that only “Text” is checked.
That should get you about 99% of the way to a decent manuscript compile setting. There’s a lot you can do to customize this, but you don’t have to learn it all at once; on the other hand, tweaking it as you go means that when you’re rushing to finish and get the manuscript out (if you’re working against a hard deadline). Try compiling to PDF or something, and come back to the forums when you’re stumped on how to make changes to the output.
Thanks. This was kind of a fix, and I kind of figured stuff out for myself. It is not a novel, as I said in my original question, so I translated the rest of what you wrote to Non-Fiction, hope that still works. And then in compiler, I didn’t have to uncheck much at all, so. What I DID learn is that you can go into Compiler and see how it’s going to turn out, before the fact, in Preview. That was something useful I did not know.