Sharing Feedback: book writers, how many docs, how long they are each (and manuscript wordcount)

Scrivener
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There’s already a pool about the structure ( Feedback Wanted: How do you structure your Scriv projects?), but I’m curious about how Scrivener users are splitting their docs into smaller bits.

So, here is what I have after migrating my project into Scrivener (project is still on-going):
(manuscript statistics)
Project Novel
Word count 109000
Documents count 119
Documents max length 3000

Additional non-draft documents I wrote (notes): 26 docs, 11k words total (plus others elsewhere)

What about you?
I wonder if you like to work with bigger and fewer docs or if you split them even more.

Edit:
Also, for a few documents that have two scenes, with a section separator (text * * * ), I added a custom metadata: ticked “With sections”

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Hi.
I work with my chapters in small subdivisions as I am in the creation process.
This makes it easier to swing things around, and makes it less overwhelming as you can then use the binder as an outliner and have the titles reflect what happens in this or that scene/document. (I never quite use the synopsis panel.)

But, the closer I get to completion, the more I merge my documents into complete chapters.
This proves to be more convenient, since at this stage I use more and more sync with external folder (Antidote doesn’t integrate in Scrivener under Windows, so I use LibreOffice as a host ; I also use LO to mark/highlight adverbs in bulk, etc), and therefor don’t end up handling 100+ files.

(I don’t do sub-chapters like Stephen King often does, otherwise I’d keep my scenes apart from each other, for compile to handle the numbering etc.)

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In my novel series, I structure it like this:

Novel > Chapter > Scene > Passage

This gives me all the granularity I need. Indeed, I rarely go to the passage level. When I do, it’s because I am uncertain if the passage would work better elsewhere. I usually make that decision in the revision stage.

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4

For fiction, one scene per document. I generally start splitting a scene into sub-docs once it goes above 3,000 words.

I group scenes together, usually by character arc, and arrange those groupings into some sort of temporal order, if possible.

I don’t use chapters till I’m done. I think of chapters as a courtesy to the reader. I first arrange the finished scenes in the order I want them, and then split them into chapters, adding any necessary glue.

Non-fiction is a completely different process.

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5

Scrivener’s ability to split things up is one of my most-loved features. In the early stages, most chunks are 1000 words or less, because that’s about how much I write in a single session. As the structure emerges, I’ll merge things down, eventually ending up with one document per scene.

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Quick technical note:
Moving text via the Binder is slightly safer than copying and pasting, because the text isn’t in clipboard limbo at any point, and because there’s no risk of mis-pasting into the wrong location. So if you’re still at a stage where you’re moving large chunks around, there are advantages to a Split/Move/Merge workflow.

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