Hi there. Please help with a maddening problem! I originally wrote my play script in Word, and then pasted it into Scrivener Stage Play, so no formatting, but I got all the other perks. Now I’m trying to format everything according to Scrivener’s default Stage Play template to send to directors. But I can’t seem to do it with character name and dialogue. I try Format - Change Element To - Character and Dialogue. But it all appears in capitals, and doesn’t tab across the page properly. So let’s say I write:
Edward: Don’t say that. It’s not true.
If I highlight only “Edward” and hit Change Element To - Character and Dialogue, the whole line capitalises. I get:
EDWARD: DON’T SAY THAT. IT’S NOT TRUE.
I’ve tried highlighting the whole line and doing the same change - the same thing happens. I’ve tried highlighting only the dialogue and selecting Change Element To - Dialogue (cont) and the same thing happens.
Does anyone have any tips? Or am I doomed to retype the whole thing out in Scrivener to get the right style???!
I presume “Character and Dialogue” is a Style? If so I suspect you made it Paragraph Style but from what you explain you actually want, it should be a Character Style. Or perhaps I’m misunderstanding.
Also when copy/pasting from Word (or anywhere) you are reliant on the source to not send you junk text in the clipboard but they often do. You can filter all that out if in Scrivener you use Menu: Edit → Paste and Match Style.
It appears to me that Scrivener expects a tab after the character name and before the dialogue. Does your imported text include that tab? You may have to search and replace in Word to get the format the way Scrivener wants. I tried a simple import with a tab, and the conversion worked fine.
Bonus points if you know how I can select and change elements a of section of the play, rather than line by line. For example, turn all of the below into the correct formatting at the same time.
Marianne: Well, welcome. Okay, onto -
Annalise: I’ve prepared something to say, if that’s okay.
Marianne: Oh! Well of course, go ahead.
At the moment, I don’t get the standard capitalised character names etc, I just get the first character name in bold and nothing else changes. Would save lots of time to do lots of lines at a time - any ideas?!
Strange, that didn’t work for me. I selected contiguous lines with the tabs correctly placed as above, pasted into Scrivener, selected all and then did Format - Change Element To -Character and Dialogue, but nothing happens apart from the first character name changing to Bold (remaining lower case). Hmm…