Possibly I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m working through the Tutorial and am up to “Compile.”
Right now I’m working on two different manuscripts. Both are very dependent on Styles (at least the way I have them set up in Libre Office thus far.
For example, I have one style for “singing” and one for “court documents.” Both styles might occur within the same chapter. Do I need to create a separate section for each style? One of the books timetravels between “now” and “the past story” - that one of the main characters is writing, based on the life of the other main character (different chapters) so it’s important (at least in my head) that they each have different style/font formats, so the reader can differentiate between.
Is this something I set up in Sections or in Compile ? Or Somewhere else? Does one overrule the other?
I’ve held off from this, as it seemed that Ioa (@AmberV) was in the process of answering, however he hasn’t posted, so… my ½p worth.
First off, I’m (a) a Mac-user, and (b) I don’t have much experience of LibreOffice. However, that said:
You say “dependent on styles”. I presume you mean you have separate styles set up for your “singing” and “court documents” which differ from the “Normal” style of the bulk of the text.
How do they differ? Do you use a different font? Or do you simply use Italics for one, andif so, what for the other?
Something fundamental to be aware of: Scrivener is different from Word/LibreOffice/other WYSIWYG word processors, in that creating a “Normal” style potentially creates problems when it comes to compiling, as those who take that route suddenly find they lose any Italics and Bold for a start.
All basic, body text in Scrivener should be “No Style”, which will be given the style “Normal” or “Body” on compiling as necessary dependent on the output target. This allows you, (a) to write an edit in a font and size that works best for you with the compiler producing the output formatted as needed, which means (b) that the same project can be output to formats with different requirements, DOCX/ODT or ePub or whatever, without having to mess with the text in Scrivener, as that is handled by the compiler. The default, “No Style” is set in the File > Options > Editing > Formatting, or in Project > Project settings… > Formatting (for that project only).
To that end, only text that needs to differ in some way from the basic body should be given a ‘style’.
The less features you apply to a style, the less issues you may encounter on compiling. For instance, if you want a “Block Quote” slyle with the paragraph set in ½ an inch from left and right rulers, but that it should have the same font, size etc. as the main body text, you need to pay attention to the dropdown in the style dialog to set it to “Save Paragraph Style” and leave the “Include font family” and “Include font size” unticked.
So for your “court documents” style, on the assumption that you want it in a different font, set up a paragraph how you want it to look, then with your cursor in that paragraph, use Format > Styles > New style from selection…, but still set it to “Save Paragraph Style”, but tick “Include font family” on (as well as “Include font size” if that is important too). That way, if you have any italics or bold in any of those paragraphs, they will be preserved.
You won’t need to put them in separate section types if you use styles like that, though Scrivener works best when you split things up into smaller chunks. So if such stretches are of any length, putting each into its own binder document (though using styles, they should have whatever section type is appropriate, presumably the same as surrounding text) could well be a good idea.
Get your “Section types” set and clear in your mind, as you will need to assign an appropriate “Section layout” to each "Section Type in the compiler.
Finally, don’t leave setting up the compiler to the last minute, close to a deadline. Once you’ve got a chapter or two sorted, find a little time to work on setting up the compiler… and come back here to ask for help whenever you need it.
They way you describe what you want to achieve I would definitely go for sections… and document templates.
The sections will make the Compiling to the preferred output format for each type of text easier.
And document templates are available under the Green Plus Icon (Add), so you can easily switch between the types of text. Also document templates hold a lot of information: For example, the styles you want while writing (not necessarily the same as the in the compiled output), the section, and a colour Label which allows you to easily see in the Binder which part is “now” and which is “past”.
And you will love the Collections feature: You do a search for “now” (with, say, a red label) and one for “past” (with maybe a green label) and save these searches as collections. By clicking on them you will be able to see either all “now” or all “past” documents consecutively—which is great for keeping an eye on the continuity of each timeline. Without breaking the actual order of the documents in the Draft.
Just remember with the document templates to include a few words with the correct styles of “now” and “past” in the correct document. Then type over the placeholder words which preserve the style in the document. If the documents are blank then the default (no style) format will be seen.
The whole post is excellent, but this is the single most important tip. You do not want to be the person writing the support email that begins “I need to turn in my manuscript tomorrow and the formatting is a mess…”
Wow, so much information and so much to consider! Thank you!
To give you an idea of what I’m doing, and a few of the styles I have set up presently:
Date: Especially since I jog between past/present in one of my books, every chapter starts with a date (and usually location). Presently this is set off in italics and left justified and set to the edge of the page border.
Singing is presently in italics and indented at the first (paragraph) indent.
Court Docs is presently in Times Roman and is an indented and underlined block.
Past and Now are in two different fonts. (Currently Courier and Times Roman respectively, though I am considering changing Times to another font because in Times, the letters R and N seem to blend and look like an M and I’m finding this annoying) I wonder if this is going to be problematic. I want it to be easy for the reader to distinguish between past and now very easily. The problem here is that “past” takes up at least half of the manuscript, (and includes italics here and there) so if Scivener is happiest in “No Style” is this going to create a problem?
Back To Contents I’ve been formatting my book as an E-book as (when last seen - though they may have changed, since being acquired by Draft2Digital --I really DO need to check up on this!) is what is required for Smashwords, so every chapter ends with a Back to Contents link, which is in Bold, again justified all the way to the left. Maybe since Scrivener creates it’s own ebook format this isn’t needed?
I’m very confused about Section Types/Section Layout. I read/worked through the tutorial, but this confused the hell out of me. If there is a post that makes it clearer, I’d very much appreciate being sent in that direction.
Okay I don’t recall reading about document templates in the tutorial. This sounds like it might be useful for keeping past/now clear. Where can I find info on document templates. Can I use more than one template in a single project?
Hold my style ( with the style you want for the document), then if you highlight the words and start typing, then the style you used with the placeholder words will be kept rather then default no style
Once you designate a folder as the template folder in your project, then any document with any style becomes a template. You can have as many as you want so one for each of your styles need formatted the way you want with replaceable placeholder text
Obviously, either “Past” or “Now” is going to have to be a style, so which one really might depend on which your “Court docs” appear in. Basically, it will be easier if they only appear in one of those time periods; if that is the case make that time period “No Style”, and the “Court docs” style would just need to be set to “Save Paragraph style” with no font information needed.
The other time period would then be a style, saved with “Save paragraph style” but with “Include font family” ticked. The point of this is that as long as the font family includes an Italic variant, your italics will be preserved. If you set your style with “Save all formatting” it will include the specific font variant of the selection, not the font family, so in all likelihood the style will be whatever-font-regular and that will override italics on compiling.
But, if it happens that you have “Court docs” in both “Past” and “Now”, you’ll just need to make a version for the time period that you use a style for and create it also with “Save paragraph style” and tick “Include font family” on, giving it the name “court-docs-now/past” depending on which it is.
A couple of further thoughts:
Don’t get bogged down in fonts at this point; just choose a serif and a sans-serif that you are comfortable working in.
But do bear in mind, if your publishing target is ePub, that most devices allow the reader to set the font, size and justification that suits them. So going for fonts that are common on e-readers, like Avenir and Georgia, may make it easier to ensure your intended marking gets across. Note: I have never published to ePub, so others here with experience will I hope come in with better advice.
When it comes to Document templates, I do make some use of them, but if I were writing a book like yours, I would personally simply use styles, as: (a) they can be given keyboard shortcuts whereas different templates might [1] require use of the mouse… relying on styles, a new document is Cmd-N and then your keyboard shortcut if necessary; and (b) it would keep the number of Section Types needing a corresponding Section Layout to a minimum.
Get some writing done! Worrying about Section Types and Section Layouts doesn’t help this early on. And it’s much easier to get to grips with it when you have a chapter or two of your own to work on.
Mark
[1] As I don’t use Document Templates in most of my work, I don’t know about assigning specific templates as default for given folders. I understand it can be done, but it seems to me a complexity that I can do without.
Smashwords doesn’t accept new stories any more. D2D can publish pockets from Word or PDF, e-books from ePub3 files. Scrivener compiles to all of these file formats…
