I’m a bit of a Luddite when it comes to Scrivener use, and tend to use one folder for one chapter. As in, I write CHAPTER XX at the start, and write the whole chapter as a single folder. I start a second folder for the next chapter, etc. So I don’t have each scene as a separate side-by-side scrivening.
This has worked fine for six novels now, but I’ve been playing with .epub and .mobi exports of the partially finished books.
Is there a way - that I’m missing - to convert manuscript scene separators (I use the # as a scene break) into blank lines for .epubs on export, without having to globally replace them in the text? I know I can replace them in text, but at the moment the text is also being exported for submission and the # are necessary.
Yes, you can do this. If you had things separated down into individual scenes, you’d tweak this in the Separators compile option pane, but since you’ve got them right in the text itself, I’d recommending using the Replacements compile pane. This will take any string of text and replace it with another—just like search and replace—the only difference is it doesn’t impact the editor text, it only takes place in the compiler. In the Replace column, type in #, and in the With column, just leave it blank. Neither of the other two options will be of use to you in this case.
The drawback to this method is that if you use a hash anywhere else they’ll disappear, too. To get around that, you could use Opt-Return to add carriage returns to the Replace field as well as the hash. So RETURN#RETURN would then only match those hashes which are on their own paragraph.
You’ll probably want to save your e-book settings as a compile preset, as well as your submission settings (unless you’re just sticking with one of the defaults). That way you can switch back and forth as needed, without having to muck about in the Replacements pane every time you switch—or worse, forget to.
Thank you so much! (I was actually trying to figure out the RETURN in place of the #, but could not remember how to enter it – the straight replacement works perfectly, though!)
(I often break chapters down while revising - but I find it so visual messy, I tend to paste everything into one document again when it’s in its final form >.>)