I’m new to using Scrivener and almost have everything setup the way I want. I write an ongoing fantasy series and I wanted to have all my books within one project. I know there are pros and cons to this approach but it just works so much better with my flow to have all my notes in one place and be able to refer back to previous books easily. I figured out most of my compile issues and the last thing I have to figure out is word counts and targets. I am so confused by word counts, total words counts, targets, and total targets.
The way my project is organized I have the top folder, Manuscripts, and then each book is a folder underneath that. Each book has a title page and then folders for each chapter. The chapter folders have scenes within them. I don’t actually care about the target for the overall project, I care about the targets for each Book folder. I’ve played around in the Outline view and it seems like I can set targets here for each book and sort of use this view to track that. But I’m super confused by what “Target” is vs “Total Target” and where the number for the latter is coming from. For example, on Book 1 I set a target of 20,000 words. The total target for it is 24,5000 words. Why?
The Total Target number is accumulated from the Targets within the Draft/Manuscript folder. To get what you are looking for, you will want to have the current book/WIP in the Draft/Manuscript folder by its self.
I.E.,
Draft
Book 1
Research
Trash
Book 2
Book 3
You can set the Total targets for the other works, just move them out from the Draft folder.
I’m still not super clear on how the Total Target number comes from the Targets number because the math doesn’t add up. I tried to attach a screenshot from my outlines view but I get an error saying the forum doesn’t allow embedded images. I might play around with moving the previous books out of the Draft folder like you suggested. I’m paranoid about moving too much around in Scrivener because I always end up breaking something and having to start the project over again.
The other way to get accurate word count is make a collection for each book. As write a scene right click to add to collection. Then click Ctrl+A to select all files in collection . Then choose statistics and selected documents and will have count for current book.
Your trust level has been increased; try posting a screenshot now.
The Total Target is the sum of all the individual Targets, including the Target for the top level document.
Making a backup before you try reorganizing something is never a bad idea. Use the File → Backup → Backup Now command to put it with Scrivener’s automatic backups, → Backup To to put it in the location of your choice.
Since you’re not interested in Project Targets and Session Targets, focus on Document Targets. Those are set in the footer of the Editor or in the Outliner.
No such thing exists as “Chapter Targets”. A Folder is just another document. So, if you set a target for a folder of 20,000 and a target for documents in that folder of 4,500, the Total Target for the folder is 24,500.
You cannot set a target for a Chapter. It’s always calculated from the documents inside the folder, including any target you’ve set on the folder itself, like @kewms said.
As Antoni said. Remember going forward-Must set targets for individual documents. However, if duplicate document/scene the target settings for that scene will also be duplicated. So for each book set target for scenes inside it and will have targets for every document by just duplicating and rename as go.
Click the triangles to the left of the individual Books to see whether there are any secondary targets assigned. Judging from the difference between the Target and Total Target columns, there probably are.
Thanks so much everyone! I finally get it. Previously I’d checked a couple chapters and didn’t see any targets set on those, but I hadn’t gone far enough. I found where the targets were set on some documents further down that were adding to the total target amount. I’ll go through and remove those since I don’t really care about chapter/folder targets.
It would actually be nice to be able to set those and have it not impact the total target for a book. I usually have a word count target for a book and a general range I target for chapters. But this will work well enough for tracking my goals.
I Agree. It Implies that you collect scenes in a “Chapter”-folder. When you don’t set Targets on the scenes, you can set a Target on the Chapter folder. But only when you set Targets on the scenes, the Total Target represents the sum of the Targets of the scenes.
One alternative would be to set a target for the book (folder), and then compare it to the Total Words column. Turn off or simply ignore the Total Target column. Then you can set Chapter targets to your heart’s content.
Doing it this way will break the nifty Total Progress bar, but you can get around that by using the Project Statistics to track progress on the current book.
