So what it sounds like to me is that you want to have a particular type of document that has it’s own default formatting, separate from what you use to write “manuscript” content as. This is something I do as well, and it sounds like you also work the way I do, keeping notes threaded right into the Draft folder itself, around the things I will be writing. If notes have a distinctive font and formatting, it is easy to keep things straight when looking at them all together in Scrivenings mode.
This is what has worked best for me over the years:
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Set yourself up with a document templates folder in this project. If you’ve never done that before, it’s really easy. Just make a folder anywhere in the binder (except Draft and Trash), you can call it “Templates” if you want, but it doesn’t really matter. In
Project ▸ Project Settings...under Special Folders, select this folder as the “Templates Folder”, and click OK. -
Now whatever you put into this folder will be made available from the
Project ▸ New From Templatesubmenu—and the first entry will even get its own dedicated shortcut. They will also be easily available from the green “Add” button in the toolbar. -
Create a document called “New Note”, and maybe give it a special custom icon so it looks distinct (I use the Yellow Notepad icon).
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Type in some dummy text, like “New note…” into the main editor. Format it the way you want note text to appear. You could use a style here, but there is little need to.
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Lastly, select the text in the editor. Scrivener duplicates almost everything about an item when you use it as a template to create new items—including the fact that text within the editor is selected.
Optional: for those using this tip to create notes in the Draft, you will also want to set the default state for these notes items to be excluded from compile. Click the little page icon in the lower right corner of the editor, so that the checkmark turns into an “X”.
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Try it. Click where you’d like to add a new note file, use the menu command, shortcut or toolbar button, and select “New Note”. Now you can see why leaving the text selected is useful, you can just start typing over the dummy text immediately—and since we saved dummy text that is formatted the way we want, that is how all text typed into this document will appear.
Now what you might want to consider is creating your own starter project template that has this set up as well, so that whenever you create a new project, you’ll have formatted notes ready to go with your preferred font.