And how do I change it?
Welcome to Scrivener and the Scrivener Forum.
What is the “MS Standard”. Please provide a URL to that “standard”.
You are given the ability in Scrivener change the format in the compile settings.
Because Scrivener doesn’t know what the “first line” will be until you Compile the draft. Which is why the setting you’re looking for is part of the Compile format.
The entire point of Scrivener’s approach is that you can break your manuscript into scenes or even smaller chunks and rearrange them at will. By the time you’re done, what is the “first line” now could be buried in the middle of Chapter 3 or might be deleted entirely.
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Because the Novel Template follows the industry standard of indenting the Paragraphs not after a heading, illustration or Table. This is so readers can easily find the beginning of the next Paragraph.
What MS does is not a standard, but used frequently in business and Non-Fiction documents.
In the Editor, change the Ruler in File > Options Editing > Formatting.
In the Compiler, set the setting in the Settings tab in the Title Options pane of the Section Layouts screen in the Compile Format Designer.
Hope this helps
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Thank you, it does! I was using MS for manuscipt.
I meant to write “first line of a first paragraph” so any paragraph after a break.
I would test compiling with default settings, before going too much deeper into trying to change anything or force the software to work another way. You may be pleasantly surprised. As noted above, one big point of Scrivener is that writers shouldn’t have to be wasting their time thinking about things like whether or not their paragraphs are indented properly. Let software handle that kind of procedural, mundane stuff for you. It also adheres to the concept that you should be able to write in an environment that is comfortable to you, rather than having to stare at MS formatting all day long. Maybe you don’t even like indents, and prefer paragraph spacing? That’s fine! You’ll get indents when you compile.
All you need to do to test it is paste three or so paragraphs into the starter “scene” section, and then maybe click back on “Scene” in the binder sidebar, to the left, and use Documents ▸ Duplicate ▸ with Subdocuments and Unique Title, to simulate having a second scene in this chapter.
Now open File ▸ Compile..., and maybe change the Compile For dropdown at the top to “Microsoft Word (.docx)” so you can see how it will look in a submission file. No need to mess with any settings, the Novel template is already set up to do a typical TNR 12pt double-spaced manuscript (but if you want Courier you’ll find that choice on the left).
Is that doing what you need? You should find no indent after the chapter heading, and as well no indent after the standard scene break marker that got inserted between the two “scene” items in your binder.
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