Understanding Scriptwriting Mode and Transcripts

Scrivener
1

I am a bit perplexed by a feature in Scrivener: Srciptwriting mode. I have read the tutorial project and watched the tutorial video but I feel like I’m missing something in my understanding of it.

I am interested in this because I have several interviews of relatives, many of whom have passed away, that I would like to transcribe. I sort of like the Transcript style, but would like to tweak it. However, I’m also confused by what happens when you tab or return. I just have a disconnect as that what I should expect to happen when I hit those keys, so much so that it feels like black magic to me because the results seem unpredictable.

I wonder if I am confused because I have no experience with any other scriptwriting software, so I have no base knowledge as a starting point. I would appreciate it if someone would help me fill in the gaps. I think this feature has promise for what I want to accomplish, but am totally missing the design philosophy behind the feature and it’s workflow.

2

I don’t use the template myself, but having read the manual, this is my best guess of how it’s supposed to work.

First things first: it’s designed to be used when Scrivener is in Split Editor mode, with the transcript document in one editor and a media file (video or sound clip) in the other. The transcript is set up to automatically add the time stamp from the media at the relevant point.

Each of the things you’re likely to want to do in the transcript have an ‘element’ attached — they’re actually just special formats applied (e.g… bold, centred, hanging indents). To stop you having to explicitly choose an element each time, you can use Enter or Tab to automatically apply a specific format (the most common one) to the next element. In normal Scriptwriting, this could take the following form: you start off in Scene Heading. The most common next format is Action, so Scrivener allows you choose Action by pressing Enter. After the Action you either want to add another Action paragraph, or Character, and Scrivener allows you to choose Character with a simple Enter. After the character name, Enter will move to Dialogue. Pressing Tab will give you the second most common option – eg Parenthetical instead of Dialogue. In other words, Tab and Enter help you to move quickly through a script choosing the next element you want. But they can also add information automatically — such as Scene Numbers—when you press Tab.

In the Transcript format, it looks like the Speaker, Time and Text format works this way, once you have selected that element for a line:

You type in the Speaker name and press tab. It will automatically add the current time stamp from the media clip in the other editor, and adds a space. You then add the text by simply typing it—it will be formatted with a large left indent and hanging tab.

When you’ve finished with that entry, you press Enter. The element will still be Speaker / Time / Text and you can just add another Speaker Time Stamp, Text as before.

Or you can press Tab, which changes the current element to Time / Text (no Speaker), presumably to record the speech of the same speaker. Press Tab a second time and the current media timestamp will be added. If you don’t want either of those, Press enter to select a new element.

I think that’s what’s going on, anyway. Hope this helps you figure it out…

3

Thank you, Brookter. You have described what I think is happening, but when I try to customize the transcript style to make it look more like I want it to look and experiment with it I start getting unexpected results. That’s why I’m wondering if I’m missing something.

4

How are you trying to customise it? If you outline what you want it to look like, what steps you have taken and what the results were, perhaps someone can help?

5

Sorry, meant to reply last night, but got into another project that took the whole evening after I had gotten home from work. I think I have figured this out. Will type up something when I get a moment and post it here so as to be helpful to someone who is struggling like me.

6

Here is the write up I promised. This may not help anyone but writing it up was a good way to reinforce learning for me. Also attached is the custom style I created.

I think one of the things that threw me was that I was adopting a previously typed up transcript rather than transcribing directly in Scrivener and the lack of timestamps was throwing me off.
Custom Interview Transcript.xml.zip (1.34 KB)
Understanding Scriptwriting Styles.pdf (252 KB)

7

That’s very helpful, Joe. Thank you!