Hi - I’m a relative newbie to Scrivener so gently feeling my way round the edges.
I’ve created my WIP for a 6 book series and I’m using the template ‘Novel with Parts’ - each part representing one of the six books. I’ve written the synopsis for each book - as obviously it all follows one story arc - which I’ve put into each card on the Corkboard. Characters, settings and timelines are all also done. So far, so good.
My question is this: if I want to write a single synopsis (of 100 words or so) to describe the whole series in one go, where/how do I enter that into the synopsis for the manuscript (the top folder of the folder tree)?
Currently, when I select the manuscript, I see the cork boards for each of the six books, and in the inspector is the synopsis for book 1, but there is nowhere I can see for the synopsis of the overarching story… What am I missing?
The “Manuscript” (actually this is referred to as the Draft folder, but you can rename it to whatever you want—might as well rename it to your series, rather than using the generic form) is just a container. It doesn’t itself have any metadata like a synopsis, nor is it something you’d ever do anything with directly. It merely holds all of the things you do do stuff with. You can almost kind of think of it like the binder itself—we can’t even see the binder as a thing to click on, because it is the ultimate container. The draft is a bit like that, more a feature of the program than a folder.
What is the purpose you have in mind for this overall synopsis? If it’s just for your own benefit, you can throw a file anywhere you want. Try clicking in the background of the binder to deselect everything, and press ⌘N to make a new file. Type the book synopsis into the file and drag it wherever you want—maybe up to the top of the list where the template help file is (or was)? You could also put it at the top of the draft folder, before book 1. That way you’d see it at the top of the corkboard. If you do that though, you might want to open the Inspector (click the blue ‘i’ button in the toolbar), then the Metadata tab, and in the top section, deselect Include in Compile. With that disabled, it won’t export with the rest (assuming you ever intend to compile all six books at once into an omnibus or something). Use that checkbox for any document that is “meta” to the book itself; chapter notes, ideas, etc.