The late Ross Thomas, one of the world’s best crime writers, once told me each chapter should have a minimum of 5 pages and a maximum of 10. I agree with his advice and wish I could set two targets for each chapter in Scrivener: the first would be, say, 1,750 words (5 pages at 350 words per page) and the maximum would be 3,500 (same math).
This would also work quite well in an academic environment, where one must often write papers with a minimum and maximum word count requisite.
I wonder if this might not be better served by a feature that also takes editing into a higher role. You can currently use the word target feature when cutting a section down, and it works okay for that, but it could be made a little nicer. If there were an editing target mode that work on top of the existing “counting up” mode, it could perhaps double as a min/max indicator too.
I’m thinking less of a separate feature here, and more additional displays to make working down, easier. For example, when you set a goal right now, the statistics display changes to “Words: 5,286/5,300”. Once you break over that, the format retains. What if, instead, if you were over it said “Words: 5,345/5,300 (+45)” with the latter part showing up in your preferred progress bar end colour?
That’s just one idea, and maybe it’s not “the one”, but perhaps describes the angle I’m going for: embedding useful tools into the existing interface, rather than cluttering the interface with more interface.
I would like to add my voice to the request for an option of word targets as a range rather than single number.
So long as your in the range, your bar stays one colour. Moving either side of the range signals a notification.
+1 on adding maximum to the project target fields. The current field works like a minimum, and will stay green even if your 4 times over your ‘target’. Once implemented, one could set only minimum, only maximum, or both fields as their circumstance warrants. Although by setting only a minimum target in one and only a maximum in another, you might get some odd effects with overall project targets.
I would also like to have the ability to set a maximum word count! I use Scrivener for research writing and this feature would be very helpful for editing down to meet journal requirements.