Searched L&L Forum, Keyboard Shortcut Guide and then Googled it with no luck…
For screenwriting purposes … Was wondering if anyone knows of a keyboard shortcut or a way to map the Right Click > Transformations > Make Upper Case command? I typically to use the cmd+k function to highlight action elements into upper case/lower case in Final Draft 8, but in Scrivener cmd+k results in a totally different action as it cuts & pastes all text after the cursor insertion point into a new text file which is a command I don’t ever see myself using.
It almost seems like – for the sake of maintaining/streamlining the creative writing process – the feature was purposely made cumbersome to access and rather was left to be done in the final editing process in Final Draft.
To make your own keyboard shortcut, you can go to the Mac’s System Preferences>Keyboard>Keyboard Shortcuts and then add your own, selecting Scrivener as the application.
The cmd+K shortcut in Scrivener breaks a single document into multiple pieces, as you noted–potentially less helpful in the case of starting a new project directly in Scrivener, but extremely useful when importing a long document from elsewhere as it allows you to easily divide it into smaller chunks for chapters, scenes, etc. Likewise, you may have created the entire draft in Scrivener but still decide at various points that you want to break a chunk into smaller bits. You can easily merge them with the Merge command (opt+cmd+M) to make one file and you can view them as a single long document by selecting in the Binder the multiple documents you want to see and clicking “Edit Scrivenings.” And of course when you compile and export, everything comes out as a continuous draft, not as a bunch of separate files.
That was probably more than you wanted to know, but I hope it helped explain the set up a little.
While we are at it, just to make sure of one thing, are using Scrivener’s scriptwriting mode to compose? You can access that mode with Cmd-3, and from there keep an eye on the footer bar. It will proceed with common type cascades with handy alternates that you can access using the tab key. All of these should be outputting things in standard format, such as all-caps where appropriate, already. It’s quite streamlined for most purposes. While you’ll still want to do your final stages in FD, you can get pretty close just using Scrivener. Apologies if you already know this and are just reformatting something from elsewhere.
If it’s because you are using a format that is different than Scrivener’s default, check out the Text/Scripwriting menu. There are a number of popular presets, and if none of those work quite right you can go in and tweak or make your own style from scratch.
If you are using Scrivener’s screenplay template, all the commands for formatting elements are both key-controlled and via a small menu appearing at the bottom right. They set the indent, all caps, or lower-case styling of Scene Heading, Action, Character, Dialogue, and so on. You set them up by typing Cmd-Y and then the letter S, A, C, D, etc. With practice, they are fairly easy to use.
Yup, I am using the screenplay template…actually it is the only template I’ve ever used in Scrivener.
You’re a godsend! A big ol’ Homer Simpson ‘Duh!’ on me for that one! Since I can’t set it to toggle Upper like in Final Draft, I’ve got the next best thing and have mapped Cmd+K for Uppercase & and Cmd+L for lowercase. Sweet!
I’ll agree that cmd+Y is an absolute must in the Scrivener screenwriting workflow…
Now if only I can figure out how to get the Auto-Complete List function to work with Character Names and mimic how Final Draft automatically guesses alternating characters when writing dialogue…
