Scrivener as the main screenwriting program

Scrivener
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18

I would not phrase it way, nor would I say a number of the things in that original list (I wasn’t sure if it was entirely serious or not, as it also stated things like being unable to use standard fonts (why not?) or that it is unable to set elements like action and dialogue).

But specifically to this one, there are two reasons for why the statement isn’t accurate, at least as generally put as it is:

  1. Scrivener can number “scenes”, or whatever you want to call the chunks of outline that are listed in the sidebar. It’s been able to do that for a very long time.

    However, as you will note in that thread, there is a very strong opinion being expressed, and not uniquely to this individual, that providing scene numbers for your own editorial process is only ever validly done if it perfectly mimics the standard formatting for a printed screenplay. That is what we can’t do, as noted in that thread, and all I meant to refer to in my original comment in this thread.

  2. More recently on the Mac, it is able to number scenes in its PDF output (and toggle the metadata for doing so in FDX):

    Scene numbering in Scrivener...

    25242707-Scriv-scene_numbering-and_final_draft_cf

    (Right-click and load image in a tab if it’s too small here.) Of note:

    1. Scenes are numbered in the outliner with the View ▸ Outliner Options ▸ Title ▸ With Numbers setting (there is a similar setting for corkboard).
    2. The two pages below that show PDF output from Scrivener (left) and PDF output from Final Draft (right).
    3. The third is a composite of the two pages overlapping, with the transparency dropped so that the text layout differences can be examined. Scrivener is off by one line on the very first page, so none of this contradicts what I’ve already said about it being unable to produce an industry standard page count.
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