Sneaking in additional displayed doc info

Scrivener
1

(I apologize for putting my previous thread in this forum. I hadn’t read the rules, sorry!)

Right now there are only two ways to display meta info about your doc file in the cork board: labels (by pin or patch, and possibly card color) and the status stamp.

My current project involves a long series of skirmishes between two sides, sometimes set in a ‘mundane’ reality and sometimes in ‘magicial’ realty. In addition, I am using six POV characters. Oh, and there are a fair number of sex scenes. 8)

So I wanted to be able to display all this information visually on the cork board so I could more easily see the pattern of four aspects: POV character, presence or absence of sex, Magical vs. mundane setting, and which ‘side’ is in ascendance at the end of each chapter.

What I settled on was using ‘chapter’ level cards to display the Magic/Mundane info (via labels/card color) and using the status stamp to show the currently winning side.

Then the ‘scene’ level cards (where all my text is) have the POV character shown by label/card color and a big “sex” status stamp when appropriate.

It’s a great help to me in keeping the story balanced.

Suggestion for future: why not add a few more displayed fields to the cards? You could have colored pins at left, center, and right on the cards without affecting much the display.

2

Actually, three ways. You can also opt to show keyword colours on index cards. They will be “taped” to the right-hand side of the card using the colour that they are provided with in the project keyword list. This mode isn’t on by default since some find it to be too much clutter—but you can turn it on with the View/Corkboard Options/Show Keyword Colors command.

I think this would really help out with what you are trying to track here. Keywords are great for multiple types of things, like seeing when a narrative mode collides with a certain POV or topic.

Keywords really are meant to be the “I need a bit more” feature.

3

Oooh! I did not know that about keywords displaying.

Thanks! Off to play…

4

You can also make specific status stamps for all the combinations, like “POV1/Sex/Magic”, “POV2/NoSex/Mundane” and so on, allowing you to see all the information with one status stamp. I’ve done similar things with my own writing, and it works pretty well.

5

Poor, poor POV2.

6

I know. Imagine being Mundane. :neutral_face: