I run several writing communities for people who write fanfiction. I’ve been wondering, if I were to make a list of keywords that people might want to use for their work in a Scrivener project, is there a way to share it in a format where other users would be able to import it into a project safely - particularly one that already exists?
Ideally, whatever method chosen would create the keywords with the hierarchy and colors in tact. I saw a few methods mentioned on the board that only worked for colors, but the hierarchy is super important for what I have planned as well.
I do know a bit of coding of various languages, so if there is a way to do this with coding without potentially messing up their projects, I’d be willing to look into that too. I’m more worried about it being simple on the USER end than on the CREATOR end, if that makes sense.
Thanks in advance for any ideas you have.
As you suggest, Drag and Drop works only for names and colours, not hierarchy (as far as my limited testing goes. I also can’t find a dedicated keywords file in the project bundle which you could copy, which suggests the data is held in the .scrivx file, which you you probably don’t want to play with.
A possible workaround:
- In your host project, create the keywords as a numbered outline e.g.
1. Theme
1.1 Death
1.2 Life
1.3 Biscuits
2. POV
2.1 Hero
2.2 Villain
etc
Whether you indent them or not in this project is irrelevant at this stage.
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Your users then open their target project and your example project and open the keyword HUD on both, then select and drag your keywords to the new project HUD.
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Then they click on the click to sort button at the top of the HUD in their project to get the keywords in the right order.
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Finally, they simply indent the keywords manually (for each main category, highlight the sub-keywords and drag them onto the parent, which will indent them).
It’s bit messy, but it’s easier than typing them out all again, because at least the keywords are in a sensible order to start with. Yes, your keywords will be numbered from now on, but that has its advantages anyway, for example, for display in the outliner.
Obviously, someone will come along in a minute and provide a much easier way, but perhaps this may be worth experimenting with in the meantime?
I would try creating a template which included all the keywords plus anything else that you think would be of use to them and distribute that. They could then install the template, use it to create a new project and import their existing project into that.
Mind you, as I have never needed to use keywords, I don’t for certain know that keywords would be saved in one, but I would imagine so.
Mark
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