In the directions for the Novel Format template, there are steps you can take if you don’t want a folder for each chapter, and just want each chapter to be a single text document. Below are the complete directions. The problem comes when you get to step 7; there’s no obvious way to change the setting for “Root files” to “Chapter” because there’s nothing called “Root files.” (There’s a similar post about this dating back to 2019, so it seems like an unresolved issue.) Does anyone know the correct steps to be taken? Thanks!
Working with chapters instead of scenes: By default, this project is set up so that you write each scene as a separate text document. If you don’t like to break things up quite that much and would prefer to write an entire chapter in each text document, make the following changes:
Rename the “Scene” document to use your chapter title and move it so that it is on the same level as the “Chapter” folder rather than being inside it.
Move the “Chapter” folder to the Trash.
Create a new text document for each chapter.
Go to Project > Project Settings and select “Section Types”.
Select the “Default Types by Structure” tab.
Delete “Level 1 files” and “Level 2 files and deeper”.
In the “Section Type” column, change the setting for “Root files” to “Chapter”, then hit “OK”. This tells Scrivener that all your files contain chapter text, not scenes. Compile has already been set up to apply the right formatting to the section types defined here.
Thanks! It looks like this was fixed in the Windows template, but not the Mac one. You may note that when you first load that tab it does indeed list a “Root Files” entry, as there are multiple levels for text items declared. Once you follow the instructions to delete these levels though, in step 6, the entry renames itself to “All Files”, as there is no longer a reason to distinguish between levels. It’s the same thing of course, and what you would apply the setting to as described in step 7, just a cosmetically different label.
Thank you! I found that I could do step 7 before deleting “Level 1 files” and “Level 2 files and deeper,” before “Root Files” changed itself to “All Files.” A test compile shows the results seem to work as desired. That said, this setting is all a bit opaque and I’m not sure what the remaining “All file groups/Section” line means, or the “Level 1 folders and deeper/Chapter Heading” line. (I’d attach a screenshot but since I just signed up for the forum, I can’t embed images.)
Yeah, that’s true, you can apply that setting at any point really. Like I say, it’s the exact same thing, it just that these entries modify their labels in accordance with their surroundings. The trickiest part about them, in my opinion, is knowing that the lowest, or the most indented rule, is inclusive to everything hypothetically indented more than it, too, which is why the labels change. Once you remove all the level rules, then your settings simply just apply to everything in the binder with that icon type.
If that’s still a bit muddy, check out §7.6.1, Overview of Section Types in Practice, in the user manual PDF. The tutorial and template help documents are necessarily brief in these regards. The user manual has the space to go into the concept with depth, and shows how you can experiment with settings using Scrivener’s Outliner view mode, with the Section Type column showing.