I am currently trial using Scrivener and very frustrated so far.
I spent two hours tonight trying to find a way to create a page view like one would have in a word document. This is absolutely necessary for the novel I’m writing as the narrator is a rather strange person who uses footnotes. By that I mean assigns a number to a sentence and then digresses at length in a footnote that will be in small print at the bottom of the page. I will need the footnotes at the bottom of the page when I submit the novel as that is how will look if it ever published.
How do I create this in a Scrivener document?
Thank you.
Inside Scrivener, you won’t be able to get it to display your footnotes at the bottom of pages, or even get numbers for each footnote as you write. Try compiling to a docx format first, and see if it handles your footnotes properly when you open that output to Word.
But do keep in mind that Scrivener has its limitations when it comes to formatting. Some people can get it to output everything perfectly for their needs, but footnotes, citations, tables, text flowing around images… these are things that often have to be tweaked in a program devoted to layout (like Word, or Indesign).
Getting them to appear at the bottom of the page when you submit the novel to a publisher is no problem but you won’t see that until you compile to the format in which you are to submit the manuscript. While writing you can see the footnotes in the Inspector.
Scrivener is not a word processor or layout program like MS Word. It’s an authoring software, focusing on the text, not the layout.
If you haven’t done the tutorial, do it. It’ll show you how Scrivener might help you while creating the text, the content of your novel.