In all the years I’ve been using scrivener, I’ve never “cleaned up” before. Thank’s to piggy’s latest pseudo NiaD I find myself staring at my scriv files and thinking 'these all need bundled up into … that … but those go there … this pile need split into … fork what what a mess". Some of these are novel templates, some short story and some are blank. Most follow the traditional pattern for the template. Some templates were scriv 2 and others scriv 3. All projects scriv 3
I’m not having issue moving novel → novel. My biggest problem is moving short story to novel and it may be that I’m thinking about it wrong.
I started a fiction novel for short story compilation. Each story in a “chapter” folder, each scene in a file. Pretty standard. But I have some standalone short stories that are using draft (Manuscript) folder then scenes under that. These short stories have compile defs to use the scene titles in the compile (edit the section layout). When I create the “new chapter” in the novel, then send the short story over to the novel project, the files move, but unique compile settings aren’t created. I think this is “by design” and I get that.
My question comes down to … what is the best way to manage this? I don’t think muddying compile layouts is ideal. Although that would allow me to have a “stock” layout for “story with titled section”. But I’m not sure how else to accomplish this.
I’m sure there is some magic that I’ve ignored for the last 17 odd years that I’ve been using scrivener that makes all this go away (Dec 15, 2007 was when I purchased my first license). I freely admit that I am not a power user. Hell, I think I’ve only used compile with the default settings for all but 4 stories! Then the only thing I did was check the “Title” box in the layout editor. KB built one heck of a tool.
This is where keeping in mind the distinction between Section Types and Section Layouts will help you.
Section Types are a feature of the documents themselves, and will travel with the documents between projects. So if you’ve assigned the Section Type “Story” or “Chapter,” it will still be a Story or Chapter after you move it. (Note that automatically assigned “structure-based” Section Types will adopt whatever the new project’s assignments are.)
Section Layouts are a function of the Compile Format, and will travel with it. If you Edit a Format, you’ll have the option to make it available to all of your projects or only the current one.
Type → Layout assignments don’t travel.
So, in the destination project, do this:
Check to make sure the documents in question still have the same Section Type.
Check to make sure the Compile Format you want is available. (If it’s not, go back to the source project and make it available.)
Assign Layouts as needed.
Edit: If you are combining stories and novels in the same project, you may want to create a new Section Type for sub-documents within a Story. But that’s really to avoid confusing yourself, since presumably you won’t be compiling novels and short stories at the same time, using the same Format.
Let me clarify… the “destination project” is a “novel template” where the “chapters” are each a former short story (some were originally written in the project. When I inspect the section type (folder and files) in the destination project it is “structure based”. Same in the short story projects.
Which leads me to thinking I need to:
Start a new “destination project” with distinctly defined “section types” and “section layouts” for each section type. (make this a custom template?)
Use these section type names in the “source projects”.
It’s up to you to define what “structure-based” means. You can use the Project → Project Settings → Section Types tab to define what Section Types exist in the project and what the default structure-based assignments are. (Appendix C.2 in the Mac Scrivener manual walks through this pane in detail.) You can do this in either a new or existing project: I recently redefined the default assignments for a novel manuscript with several hundred sections and north of 70,000 words. It took probably less than 10 minutes, and most of that was skimming through to remove a few manual assignments I’d made.
So you certainly can define all this in a new project before you add material to it, but it’s not necessary.
This is illuminating! The writing corner under my rock is getting much much brighter.
Should we continue a “Jaysen is doing it wrong” philosophical Scrivener usage conversation in this thread or elsewhere? It was the need to merge differing compile outputs that drove this thread so it might be of value to keep it here. I freely admit I’m often wrong.
Here is fine. If we get too deep into the technical weeds, we might want to split off into a Mac (iirc?) support thread. But “how to set up a project” is definitely a “Newcomer” topic.
I tend to write (terribly) on the fly with little pre-planning. I sometimes find my stories need “section titles” but not always. I always stick to the standard model of
When a story is just “spur of the moment” or not intentionally part of my “thing” I have been sticking it in the short story template. The top level folder in these is “manuscript”. The “thing” is a the novel template so the “top level” would be a “chapter” folder (with compile placeholders).
To muddy things up, when I’m in a story, I tend to make a LOT of content files… one per paragraph. This allows me to word vomit then move things around later in the edit process for style/sanity/removal to the refuse heap (exception being cohesive short dialog). This might result in 40+ files in a 3k word story.
Unless I feel the need to put in a section title to provide a clear break for the reader. In that case, I will condense the files to a single scene, then turn on the “title” in the “Section Layout” for “scene”, and compile.
And walking through that I think I just figure out the “right way” to do this in my “master project” using the novel template.
Daft
- Chapter (standard)
-- Scene
-- Scene
-- Scene
- Chapter ( w/ scene titles)
-- Prologue
-- Folder with title compile placeholder as txt
--- Scene
--- Scene
--- Scene
-- Folder with title compile placeholder as txt
--- Scene
--- Scene
--- Scene
-- Folder with title compile placeholder as txt
--- Scene
--- Scene
--- Scene
This makes no changes to to the compile settings/formats, allows me to use a DOCUMENT/CHAPTER template and allows me to use my stupid “million files”* method for writing.
Does this seem correct?
* I actually tend to make a file per SENTENCE or even phrase when I’m editing to help me focus. Then I recombine things later. I have no idea how scriv tracks the number of files I might make, but at one point I had over 150 files to cover a 1500 word story (final state is 10 including wrapper files). It is how I think and scriv manages it. If it wasn’t for KB I would have given up on this a long time ago.
Have to do what works but can use scrivener’s split and merge functions to change a longer file later. You can combine scenes any way you want as well. A scene for every 1-2 sentences wouldn’t work for me as can’t tell in that short of a space. I tend to when writing , just right the scene as a cmpľ
I think you missed the workflow a bit. I tend to pile a lot on the page splitting at paragraphs in real time. Then, when editing, use split and merge to help with isolation and focus. It’s not a “good” method, but it’s my method. And since this is just a thing I do around the edges of my world, I don’t need to be really good at the method. Some things though, like these stupid titles and my organization, are becoming problems that need to be solved.
The fundamental point to remember is that Scrivener doesn’t care. Some approaches are easier and more easily automated than others, but Scrivener is by design able to accommodate pretty much any approach that works for you.
Personally, I don’t (usually) split documents down to the paragraph or sentence level, but I’m an extremely non-linear writer. So a first draft of a book-length work might include several hundred chunks, not necessarily in plot order, with multiple takes on many of the scenes. There’s a lot of grouping and rearranging and merging and splitting that goes on.
