Hi, this is my first post in this forum. I’m very new to Scrivener, using the trial version at the moment, and thinking about purchasing it. I’m coming over from the old Celtx Studio, which for me was a complete writing studio for developing screenplays, as I was able to have a complete folder structure where I could keep all my research in one project file, all drafts, all supporting materials, other document etc. In addition to that, the Index Cards in Celtx Studio was a great way of plotting a storyline before actually writing a first draft. Now however, as the desktop standalone version of Celtx Studio has been discontinued it has become obsolete for me. I have no interest in a subscription-based online service for developing and writing. I’m still using the legacy version but know I need to move on eventually. Scrivener has so far come closest in terms of features that I would want to have in a writing software. I know Scrivener isn’t designed to be a fully fledged screenwriting software, on the other hand, from what I’ve seen so far it covers all areas (and so much more beyond that) that I would ask for in a writing studio. I’m trying to get my head around a few things, such as understanding exactly how “Scrivenings” works when viewing an entire script, and a few other things. But I’m sure I can manage that.
My reason for posting here is about two questions I have and I’m not sure if they’ve been covered in this forum to give me the answers I would need.
The first question is: why there isn’t any automatic scene numbering, either in the Binder or in the Outliner. Some form of numbering is very helpful and almost essential in the process of writing a screenplay, as you often end up with 70-90+ scenes, and individually naming them becomes harder and harder as you go. It’s not about having scene numbers for a shooting script, it’s just for your own clarity when you’re in the writing process.
The second question is, if there is a Plot or Storyline View feature planned for the Corkboard? This was a great and very useful feature in the Celtx Index cards. The Plot view in Celtx shows all index cards on their respective strands, depending on how they’re labeled. So if you’re labelling POVs for example, giving each card a different label, clicking on the Plot View button would rearrange them so they would all appear in one timeline and you could instantly see the layout of the story and when which POVs are being used. I’m either not seeing an equivalent to this feature in Scrivener or it’s simply missing. So I’m wondering if something like this will be implemented in the future, as I’m sure it’s not only helpful for screenwriters but similarly for novelists and other writers.
The main reason for this is that the sections of a text in Scrivener are very fluid, and not at all fixed in place until you compile. So Scrivener has no way of knowing the numbers of the scenes until you compile the text. You can tell Scrivener to omit individual scenes, or you can set up Compile to filter what gets compiled, and so on. You can show the numbers of the cards in the current corkboard, though, by going to View > Corkboard Options > Show Card Numbers. These numbers are not fixed in place to specific scenes or parts, though; they just show numbers for what is on the corkboard at any given time, always starting at 1.
This comes up from time to time, but the answer is no, I’m afraid; such a feature just would not fit into Scrivener. For a feature like that to work well, it would have to be divorced from pretty much every other feature in Scrivener, whereas the corkboard and outliner are built to be integrated into the whole; each provide a drilled-down view of the binder structure. There is no way to map that on to a two-dimensional story grid. The big difference here is that Scrivener uses a hierarchical structure, not a flat list of scenes. For a fuller explanation of why this doesn’t fit Scrivener, please see the section on “A Timeline” a little way down this post I wrote back in 2010:
There are lots of other tools you can use, though. For instance, you could use collections to keep track of which scenes relate to particular characters (creating collections from keywords or POV labels). Or you could use custom meta-data to add some sort of time-stamp to your scenes, and then sort the outliner by that stamp.
Also, if you work in folder, you might find it useful to have all of your acts in a different folder, then select each act folder in the binder; this way, the contents of each act will be loaded in the corkboard with divider lines between them, and you can choose (via the footer options) whether to view them in columns or rows (or the regular grid). And you can colour the cards with labels, of course.
thank you so much for your reply! Okay that all makes sense. Thank you for pointing out the View feature for the Corkboard to display the numbers. That’s really all it needs to be, just a rigid numbering from 1 to x, just for orientation. I was wondering about something similar, just a rigid numbering column, in the outliner. That should be an easy feature to add I would imagine? Anyway I won’t tell anybody how to do their job! Just thought it would be great to have a running number on the left hand side (or as a column) in the outliner as well as the corkboard.
As for the storyline or plot view, it’s a shame it wouldn’t work that way but thanks for explaining workarounds. And apologies, I realise now that this question comes up very frequently and you must be bored by it. I’m personally not fussy about a two-dimensional layout as such, as long as there’s a quick way to get an overview over the structure of a plot, that’s all I would need. And what you’re explaining seems to be a workable alternative. I think when it comes to having or wanting a timeline as a feature, for many this isn’t needed to make structural changes, it’s just to change the view quickly to get a quick overview (i.e. all blue labels in one strand, all red labels in another, etc.) and then to go back to the normal corkboard view after. After all, stories are most often told through the passage of time, so it’s really helpful to know where you are. But I get that it’s just not how Scrivener works. Thanks for explaining. And thanks for the link, I’ll look into it!
Hi Keith,
sorry for yet another message. I just read the part about the Timeline in the post you linked to. As far as I understand you’re referring to the timeline in the story world, i.e. when certain events happen in the story. That may be of particular interest to some, especially if you’re telling a non-chronological story. Unless I’m misunderstanding you. But that’s not what I mean and it’s something I wouldn’t be interested in so much at all (even though being able to add dates in the medadata is great). All I would be interested in is just a view that shows the plot outline, the order of the cards if you will, grouped by labels. So, as I said earlier, all the red ones would be in one line, all the blue ones would be in one line, all the green ones would be in one line, etc. And as the rigid numbering in the corkboard exists already, and as the coloured labels (or “Plotline Pins”) exist already, I can’t for the life of me imagine why it would be so foreign to Scrivener to combine those two and show an overview. It’s really just a different way of displaying information that’s already there. Or maybe I’m still simply not getting it.
You’re saying in your post that drawings help. Well okay, I made an Excel sheet. The top layout, called “Corkboard” is a very simplified representation of how I believe the corkboard works. In this example, let’s say we clicked on a binder folder called “1st Draft” and inside this folder are the scenes that you see here, as individual texts. The colours of the cards represent the labels (or “Plotlines Pins” as they are called in Scrivener). The numbers below the cards represent the view you pointed out to me (when “Show Card Numbers” is enabled).
The layout below, I called it “Plot View”, uses that same information, i.e., the card numbers and the Plotlines Pins, or labels as I call them in the Excel sheet as well, and just displays them differently. Surely, the corkboard cards are essentially a long string of cards from A to Z and as such exist on a line of some sort, even in the dynamic world of Scrivener. I’m sure you’ve been through all this so please don’t worry about writing an elaborate reply, a simple “Scrivener just doesn’t work this way” will suffice. I’m just trying to get my head around it. But you say in your post you have no interest in such a feature, and so I won’t pursue it any further than this It’s just such a curious little thing! Corkboard.pdf (22.2 KB)
I wonder if you might be able to achieve something like what you are looking for with a combination of color-coded custom metadata fields and the outliner view. Something like this:
What you are seeing here is the outliner view of a set of documents showing their “plot line” categories in seperate color-coded columns.
Setting up this Scrivener project to make this possible was done like this: three custom metadata fields are defined in the project. Each is assigned a unique color. Documents in the project were tagged by placing three bullets in one of those fields (or whatever you like really). I also set up the outline view to show document titles and synopses and to show the three metadata fields as columns. Done.
I have not found any way to have the scenes numbered while working on them in Scrivener, and for reasons that Keith has given it doesn’t seem very practical, as the would change all the time as you add, delete and shift scenes.
Something I’ve found practical, though, is to have scenes numbered for reference when i send the script to someone else for comments. The way I’ve solved this is to precede every slugline with a placeholder (<$N>. ), before compiling it to e.g. Fountain or PDF.
Ha, thanks for that! You know, there might be some possibilities in that idea. Suggestions in the past have always wanted something more like a proper timeline, and the ability to have concurrent events and such. I have played with the idea of having a sort of “label view” that allows you to view cards arranged by label. Let me ponder upon it - I can promise nothing, of course, and certainly I have a whole heap of features and updates I need to implement that are going to take up the next several months.
Outline numbering is a little more difficult, actually, for a couple of reasons. For a start, you can hide and show items in the outline using the disclosure triangles, so working out how to generate the numbers is a little more awkward. But also, whereas the corkboard is entirely my own code, the outliner is a customised version of Apple’s standard outline view, and it’s more difficult to inject numbers into it, because you need the numbers to disappear when you start editing a title (otherwise they become part of the title). But, that said, I have actually implemented outline numbering for a future version, although it won’t see the light of day for some time.
matsgz - The next major update will also feature scene numbering (as an option) for PDF, print and FDX export.
Hi gr, matsgz and Keith! Sorry, been away for a few days and I’m only now reading the posts.
Gr, thank you so much for that suggestion and for mapping it out in so much detail! Yes, that’s a good workaround. It does the job of colour coding the index cards and gives an overview over the structure. If that could be combined with some form of numbering, that would certainly do the trick. It’s definitely a great way of achieving something similar to what I was looking for. Cheers!
And thank you matsgz for the trick with the scene numbering. I’ll try that. Sounds like adding a placeholder at least simplifies adding scene numbers for when you send a script to someone.
And Keith, thanks for your message. Yes, that’s exactly right. I can imagine having a “real” story timeline feature would create all sorts of problems on so many other levels. So yes, “Label View” might be a more appropriate term for it, rather than storyline view. If that does see the light of day in a future version that would be absolutely fantastic! In the meantime, Gr’s workaround in the outliner is a good alternative. As for outline numbering, thanks for explaining the implications and difficulties with it. That makes sense. But it’s very good to know that outline numbering might be implemented in a future version!
Thanks everyone for your help and support! Really great!
Further to this, I agree it would be very useful to have some sort of automated scene numbering option in Outliner, as well as the one which is already there in Corkboard. I do all my plotting and planning in outliner, using the flexible, customisable metadata columns. At present, I have a column in metadata for scene numbers, which can run up to over 100, but I need to maintain these numbers manually at present. Is it possible to build this in so it can be automated, then as the scenes are moved around, deleted, added to, the numbers change too? Many thanks. Andrew
I don’t know if this was mentioned in this thread, but for keeping up with how many scenes you have (but not which one is scene 33, 34, etc…), you can show “subdocument counts in binder” by going to the menu Scrivener->Preferences->Appearance.
It’s just such a curious little thing!