I want to spend more time writing and not working on a template for my fiction project in windows.
Can someone throw one to me so that I can focus on writing and not the
There is a fiction template available but it’s only showing one act and is in chapters. I did find the page view width but I’m still a bit confused.
I can build one in the future with the right compile features. I just want to use the software and not really spend more time learning today in particular crafting a template.
Have you done the interactive tutorial you find in the Help menu? As you’re new to Scrivener, that will help you understand how it works.
But the answer is, select the Chapter folder in the binder and then menu Project > New Folder—there is a shortcut, but I’m a Mac user and don’t know the Windows ones—then select your new folder, give it a name then menu Project > New Text—again there’s a shortcut—and you have a new chapter with a first scene. To create a new scene within a chapter you’re working on, just use the New Text shortcut.
There is a plus sign at the bottom of the Binder. You can create new binder documents by clicking on it.
But as Xiamenese says, do the interactic´ve tutorial found under help. It will teach you all the basics and it doesn’t take very long.
The other trick is to copy a chapter/ scene structure you like and duplicate multiple groups of file at once. Highlight groups of files to copy and quickly build a structure. But spend some time thinking about metadata and what keywords you would like to follow- characters, locations, themes etc
Templates are much less important in Scrivener than in other applications.
In Word, for instance, life becomes much easier if your starting document includes all the styles and other formatting details that you will ultimately want to use. If you don’t start with a good template, trying to retrofit one in after the fact can be extremely painful.
Scrivener is not like that. Essentially all formatting decisions can be deferred to the output stage. Not only do you not need to define a full stylesheet at the beginning, we recommend that you don’t, at least not if you’re writing something (like a novel) with relatively simple formatting requirements. Scrivener’s supplied templates are best thought of as sample projects demonstrating various capabilities of the software. Like @lunk, I use the Blank template almost exclusively.
For your own sanity, you will probably want to define default formatting that doesn’t make your eyes hurt. To do that, simply use the commands from the Format menu to format some sample text. Once you have one paragraph working the way you want, you can use the Project → Project Settings → Formatting pane to make it the default for this project, or Scrivener → Scrivener Preferences → Editing → Formatting to make it the default Scrivener-wide. (Those are the Mac commands. I don’t have a Windows system handy to check the equivalents.)
But that’s really all you need to worry about at the beginning.
I’d also recommend taking a look at our Interactive Tutorial, available from the Help menu. It’s a good overview of how Scrivener works.
I’ve seen this advice repeated in the forums by various folks, and I wanted to point out that the compile settings for novels (with formats, separators, etc…) appropriate to various novel layouts is not available outside of the novel template.
A new person to Scrivener (or anyone who isn’t an expert with customizing compile settings) will benefit from having those compile settings to choose from, whether to use as-is, or to copy & modify.
This is not accurate. The “Manuscript” and “Paperback” Compile formats are universally available.
It’s also trivial to extract a project-specific Compile format. Open (or create) a project that uses it. Open the Compile command. Right-click on the desired format, and choose the Export Format option.
If you have a particular writing method/beat sheet you like to use, you can give it a Google to see if someone has already created and shared a template (i.e. “Save the Cat! Writes a Novel Scrivener template” or “Hero’s Journey Scrivener template”). There are plenty of templates out there for common storytelling formats and it saves you some time and frustration getting the document set up yourself. Otherwise, you can just add folders and documents as you go or take an hour to build out the binder and set up your Preferences and then get to writing.
