Hi,
When I am working on the flow of my novel, I find it frustrating to scroll up and down in the list of file/scene names in the Binder, partly because a lot of scene names are off-screen at any one time.
Therefore, it would be useful for me to be able to have a visual of the list of all of the documents/scenes names in the Binder - preferably a scrollable file, although the a list of the file names split into several visual files would probably also suffice.
And/or a visual of the files displayed in the Outliner would also be useful.
Taking and printing screenshots would be a compromise way of doing what I want to do, but it would be even better to be able to do this, with less trouble, from within Scrivener.
To address the question in the title of your post -
It sounds like you want to export an outline of your Binder. To do so, play around with Scrivener’s built-in Enumerated Outline compile format. Here’s an example of using that format to compile the Tutorial project’s binder outline to .docx:
I guess I’m not grasping what the challenge is or the desired outcome. For instance, if scene names are off-screen, then prior to scrolling increase the width of the Binder so that the scene names are visible. Or you can edit in one Editor and keep an Outliner in the other for scrolling purposes.
If you can clarify what you mean, I might be able to suggest something more useful.
Or try collections of scenes based on character(pov), location, or time frame breaking binder into smaller groups of related scenes to go to what your interested in.
Would having both the binder and an outliner (or 2), all scrolled to show different sections of your documents work? With copyholders, you can make them the target of any clicked title for writing/editing the contents.
It seems to me that you did grasp what I am trying to do (from the first part of your message, in which you suggest that I try the Enumerated Outline compile format).
It is just a visual display issue - I want to have some kind of visual display (onscreen or printed out) which provides a complete list, at a glance, of all the scenes in the Binder (or in the Outliner), without having to scroll up or down, or (in the case of a physical, paper print out) to leaf through several pages.
I do not think that changing the width of the Binder will (a) mean that all the scenes will be displayed on screen, and even if they were, that might then (b) prevent other information being displayed on screen.
It would suit my needs much more to have a plain old paper print out of the scenes that I can glance at, and then make changes (e.g., in the Editor in Scrivener) on my computer, informed by my thoughts from the print out.
Hi Antoni,
Thanks for your reply, but that is not what I am talking about at all.
I simply want to have a complete list of the scenes in the Binder (or Outliner) that I can look at in one go / at a glance.
I am talking about needing a literal overview of the Binder or Outliner, so that I can work on my plot structure (deciding to move scenes around, or delete them, or add other scenes to the project), or so that I can do some writing in the Editor.
This list could be on screen, or could be a paper print out - it does not matter; the point is being able to refer to that complete list without having to scroll up or down, or to turn over a couple of pages, so that I can work on the plot.
Or, being able to view all of the ‘plot’ scenes at once might cause me to want to write something in the Editor (for one or several of the scenes).
Regardless, I want to be able to see the scene list all in one go.
Ahh, thanks @gvdv for clarifying. I see now that you meant your list of scenes is vertically longer than your screen, so you need to scroll up or down. For some reason, when you wrote " scene names are off-screen" in your original post, I took that to mean scene names were being truncated horizontally, like so:
Hence my off target suggestion to widen the binder! Oh well, at least I managed to give you a workaround, even if I missed the mark.
I guess it depends on how long your book is and how many scenes you have, but with a small display–or any display, for that matter–with book-length works it’s highly likely you’ll have more scenes than your screen real estate can list. Particularly if your scenes are additionally collected into chapters or some other grouping.
One thing to try, if your scenes are NOT grouped into chapters, is play around with Scrivener’s Corkboard. You might be able to make the cards small enough that you can fit them all or mostly all on one screen. (If your scenes are grouped into chapters or some other structure, the Corkboard won’t work as well for this.)
My scenes are grouped into chapters, so I think the idea/suggestion you first made (of using the Enumerated Outline format) is the one I am going to use.
