Would love to find or know if there are any Scrivener Tutors around?
And go on Amazon > Kindle bookstore and do a search on “scrivener”. There are several books dealing with it.
What are the issues you want help with?
This is all good, thank you. I will follow-through with each and every suggestion.
My reasoning for tutorial is that I have read much of the various books and videos, though I must admit, I most probably should give everything a 2nd and 3rd read.
My largest issue is there a variety of tweaks and features that exist which I am not finding until “whenever” and it might have gone a lot faster for the learning and discovery process.
I am certain being able to speak with someone or simply a more direct manner of support, rather hoping to my a solution to my issues or lack of information.
thank you again. I have already started reviewing these.
As pigfender is implying, this forum is a tremendous learning resource - someone here will almost certainly already have made your mistake or felt your confusion and will be able to give advice. It’s free and it’s never closed.
Actually I was just hoping he had an easy problem and a pocket full of cash. 
But yeah, tremendous learning resource. Free and never closed. That too. 
You guys are so funny. and the best!
Okay here is one work flow issue - maybe off topic - the title of the file (and sub-files?) is printed or not printed in compiled draft (or view mode, not displayed) version/printable version.
Therein if I wanted to do so, I could literally make every file with a title (for example, outline, timelines and so on/and even synopsis) and just one paragraph in a file (or even a half a paragraph) and when compiled the entire document looks like a real manuscript [NOT a manuscript with a bunch of three-to-eight word titles placed at the beginning of the compiled file/paragraph.]
I hope I explained this accurately or clearly. and I am still going to look for a tutor - lots of money - woooooooooooooo. 
Gwen (as mentioned by Briar Kit, in an earlier post) is the only person I’m aware of that gives paid Scrivener tuition / coaching on a regular basis. There are probably others, I’m just not aware of them. I’m led to believe that she is very good.
But, to come back to your example questions… let me play that back to you to make sure I’ve understood the request correctly!
You want to set up your Scrivener project and compile formats such that:
- You can have individual documents in the binder for individual paragraphs, and perhaps even individual sentences.
- You want each of those documents to have descriptive information (such as a title, synopsis, etc).
- You want to be able to quickly and easily compile that project into either of two outputs:
. 1) The text, with all the titles and additional descriptive information; and
. 2) The text, without all that information, such that it already looks like a manuscript. Ie, those paragraphs are re-assembled without gaps, paragraphs flow nicely into neat chapters, etc.
Assuming that I’ve got that right, can I ask you a couple more questions?
- How do you intend to structure your manuscript? For example, is this a novel with Chapters broken up into Scenes? Or perhaps it has Parts, Chapters and Scenes?
- Do you have any preferences for the formats at this stage? Eg are you looking for your clean manuscript output (the one in option “2”, above) to be ready for self-publishing, or do you want it to be something similar to the standard format for submitting to agents, etc?
- Do you just need PDF / Word compile, or are you also looking for eBook options?
Assuming all of that is as you intended, then what you are looking for is possible with a bit of planning. I’ll give two caveats, though.
- If you have ‘sub-paragraphs’ as documents, instead of having individual paragraphs as the smallest unit then having a completely clean manuscript may require more than one step. I’ll need to play in WinScriv to confirm. Certainly, it will be cleaner if you can keep yourself to documents being whole paragraphs.
- You mention wanting timeline information - Scrivener doesn’t have a timeline function in the application itself. Some people have been using Aeon Timeline and integrating that with Scrivener, but that requires the use of custom meta-data fields which are a Mac-only feature at the moment. In the meantime you may need to come up with another way to hold this information (using a date/time code at the start of the title or synopsis is a good way to achieve this, and you can use labels to define different arcs).
Correct is NOT the word for it, try uncanny, you explained better than I can, and it’s my dealy-bob-issues. That being said, yes, everything you said.
I am using Aeon Timeline (a little-yes I bought it), and, I am waiting on v2 Windows Scrivener.
So as I understand I have the option to print or not print as a manuscript without the titles and so on, just the manuscript text and by using ‘original’ compiling with one line break but not a new extra line I will have normal looking manuscript.
The titles are excellent teasers, reminders, outline points or twists and turns, but are not required or default when for printing from a properly compiled document, (translation, understand compiling inside and out also).
No matter how much I think I thought I knew, I discover another feature that makes my writing life easier; and exactly is the feature I was hoping Scrivener is used for to make writing (or the work flow) easier.
Thank you again.
john
Oh least I forget, I have the full gamut. Individual Short Stories, Collected Short Stories, Novellas, Novels with Parts and plans for a serial novel with more than two authors. (and some history book/booklets). thanks again.
Okay!
Well, it certainly seems like your ongoing needs will be varied enough to make it more important to teach you to fish than to just give you a fish!
I would say that anything less than a paragraph for a document in the binder is likely to cause more of a pause in your workflow than it is worth. Unless I’m mistaken you’d have to compile with a custom separator and then do a search and replace in the compiled document to remove those separators and the line breaks that surround them.
You’ll likely end up with a highly unwieldy binder in no time at all. This is probably true of paragraphs = documents as well.
I’m also concerned that between your titles, synopsis and meta-data you’ll have two or three times more text in notes than in the book itself!
Finally, I’d caveat that - if I was writing in this way, at least - it would slow down the flow in my prose, and mean I had to take a lot of extra care in keeping everything working as a whole.
If you haven’t already, I’d try writing on that basis for a while. Don’t worry too much about it being the perfect set up for your envisaged compile straight away - you can always change things slightly in the Binder later, and switch documents for folders and vice versa. Make absolutely sure that this is the structure that works best for you. You might find that the more traditional ‘scenes as documents’ works just as well (if not better) for your writing.
That all said, if you’re convinced that this is the way you want to go, then it should be doable - especially if you stick to paragraphs as your minimum unit in the binder.
First and foremost thank you for the time and labor to reply and share your brilliance.
You are correct on the less than a paragraph for a file/document could become extremely unwieldy. I do have a few good individual and multiple sentences that can be a part of sub-document, until the paragraph is finalized and it becomes yes to merge those sentences into the paragraph. If I understand this correctly. And what Godly use would have for such a thing? Have you ever been sitting in cafe or with friends, and either you or a friend says some sentence that is one of those quotable sentences? And you know it will fit somewhere in your work, and so on occasion, certain items lead directly into the sentence.
Thanks for your concern, you are correct and in some cases this absolutely true, but so did Albert Einstein’s paper on “Brownian Movement” and “The Theory of Relativity”. For example, there are some historical documents I am working on, which require massive amounts references and cross-references, and all that other academic “STUFF”. Now you know why I am in love with Scrivener.
This being said, I totally agree with your insight and guidance of
I am going through this with “all due deliberate speed”.
Thank you,
John
I love this thread.
Don’t write, just become
a Scrivener tutor.
It reminds me of the fact that
in every single gold rush
The guy who made the most $$
did not go prospecting for gold.
Instead, he sold all
of the prospectors
their shovels.