I’m in the middle of my project, and want to change the POV.
Is there a shortcut to doing this? I’ve tried a search and find/replace option, but it only highlights the words, not replacing.
Is Edit->Search->Project Replace what you’re looking for? I’m not sure what you mean by ‘changing POV’, as that could mean a lot of things, but it sounds like you want to change a name throughout your text, so Project Replace is probably the tool for you. Be super careful though; you don’t want to change every instance of “Ed” to “Marcus”, so that a dialogue about education becomes a debate about Marcusucation.
Thanks for this.
I mean changing from third person to first person. Example: I want to change the “Emma” and she/her to I/my/we etc.
I’m a little nervous to try this…anyone else have any full-proof methods for using the Project Replace function?
There’s no fool-proof method for doing such as wide-scale change. What you may want to do (and what I would do/have done) is use labels on each of your documents to track whether it’s been converted or not, and work through them each one by one to update the POV. By breaking it up like this, it shouldn’t take TOO long, especially if you can limit yourself to only the edits necessary for the POV change.
Thanks, that’s what I was afraid of, and probably the only fool proof method is to go through it myself.
When you say “middle of my project,” I’m assuming you mean you haven’t yet finished the first draft, correct? If so, I personally wouldn’t worry about changing anything on the stuff you’ve already written, yet. You’ll have to go back through and revise anyway, once you have a completed manuscript, so it can (and maybe should) just wait until then. Just change it in the stuff you write from here on and fix the previous stuff when you get to it in revision. It’s much more difficult when you continually edit what you’ve already written before finishing the entire work. If you change something now, but change your mind later, do you change it again? What about a third time, or a fourth? You might decide sometime down the line you want to change back to 1st person. Do you then go back and re-fix what you’ve already “fixed”? The less time you spend messing with what you’ve already written, the more time you have to write forward.
I know that this doesn’t technically answer your question, but I think it’s something to think about.
One thing I would definitely recommend is to expand all the folders/nested documents in your binder, select them all, and take a named snapshot of the whole bunch before you change the POV. Name this set of snapshots “3rd Person POV” or something similar. That way, you can do a comparison before and after the change, to verify that you changed what you meant to, and nothing else. A File->Back Up->Back Up to… copy wouldn’t be a bad idea either.