Questions about Keywords and about Synopsis

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

Hello–
I have a trial copy of Scrivener for windows and am trying to decide whether to buy or not.

I noticed in the (Mac) video on keywords, one is supposed to see colored tabs on the side of the cards on the cork board, but I don’t see any colored tabs on my cards on the cork board. Is that a functionality only for the Mac version, and is it planned for the new windows version?

Also, are there any plans for just being able to check a tag rather than drag and drop it? I’m using tags to keep track of clues for a mystery, and so I have quite a few nested lists, and each clue has numerous tags (place, character, thing or experience etc.) it would be so much easier to just check mark which ones I want rather than drag and drop.

Lastly, I was hoping that there is a way for the first sentence of a clue to be the synopsis. I imported 30 clues into Scrivener as a test, and instead it made the first two words the title, which isn’t useful. I don’t mind writing a quick new title for each, but going through every clue to cut and paste the first sentence to the synopsis is annoying. Is there any way I can format my text in word so it imports with the title and synopsis I choose?

Thank you in advance for your help. I do think Scrivener is a unique product and reasonably priced, too. I’m grateful for the trial period and am just trying to figure out if it’s my lack of experience that is the problem, or if I’m trying to use it in a way it isn’t intended.

Kind regards–

2

You’re looking for a setting that’s in the “View->Corkboard Options” menu. There’s a separate menu nearby: “View->Use Label Color In” which makes use of the colors for Labels. That menu has two options that will affect the cork board (and other views in some cases): Icons, and Index Cards.

Using label colors in icons will lightly tint the icons in the binder, the outliner, and the corkboard. Using Label colors in Index Cards will tint the entire card on the cork board, and in the inspector with the Label color.

These settings only take effect in the project you set them in.

3

Thanks so much for the information about the tabs in corkboard mode! I really appreciate it.

Do you know if I there is an easier way to assign keywords besides drag-n-drop? Or to format the text when importing documents so one can designate the title and synopsis–if this is an option that is available?

4

There are other ways… whether they’re easier is a matter of opinion. If you have a document/index card/outline row selected in the editor (depending on the view mode you’re using), the keywords inspector panel lets you add keywords by clicking the + sign above that section of the panel. But you have to type the keywords exactly the same every time, or you’ll end up with a plethora of similar keywords.

You can select several documents via the binder, or on the cork board or outline views, and drag a keyword to one of the selected docs; that will assign the keyword to all of those documents at once.

In Scrivener version 3, you’ll have an outline column for keywords that allows you to enter (and see) the keywords assigned to many documents at once.

The title part is easy. When I drag a document outside of Scrivener into the binder, the name of the file becomes the title. But internal to the file… I don’t think that’s possible. The is a menu item (Documents->Set selected text as title) and its keyboard shortcut.

If you’re importing a long document with many chapters into Scrivener, you can use “Import and split” to set the titles… Start by editing your document like this:

[code]###
The Real Chapter Title for Chapter 1

Synopsis for Chapter 1. Blah, blah…

Herein is the text of the chapter.

Chapter 2’s title

Synopsis goes here.

Chapter 2’s text[/code]

When you tell Scrivener to import and split (file->Import->Import and Split) your document, tell it to split on “###”.

It should use the first (short) line as the title, and the remainder as the text of the chapter.

Then you’d visit each document, select the text of the synopsis, and in the inspector, click the little icon above the index card there to set the synopsis to the selected text. Then hit the Delete key to get the synopsis out of your chapter text.

I don’t know if there’s an easier way to do this, but luckily, now that you have Scrivener, you’ll be able to start composing all of these elements directly in a new project. Moving in-progress work to Scrivener is always going to be more tedious than using it from the start.