Wrap to Page / Make Pages

Scrivener Wish List
1

Hello!

I’ve been using Scriverner since about a year ago. I loved/love everything of what it does have. But there’s something I feel it’s lacking. I’m sorry if this is a feature it already has (and I don’t know if the Mac version has this - I know you said not to mention that you should bring a Mac feature to this, because you know very well what the Windows version doesn’t have and that you intend to bring the features in, but I have no idea what the difference is between the two, so…), but I read through the tutorial multiple times. And I also used “Search” for “wrap to page” and “making pages” but found nothing except formatting the doc into .odt, .docx, etc. I also searched on Google multiple times and nothing came up.

I’d love to use Scriverner more, but I can’t really use it as a writing place, exactly, In Scrivener, when you write, it just goes on and on and there’s no breaks, because there’s no pages. LibreOffice, Word, OpenOffice, the word processors have pages, and I really love it like that because it feels a little more like a story/book that I’m doing, and it’s not just one huuuuuuge long stream of text with 300+ paragraphs. It just helps for it to be cut up into pages. It also lets me know how many pages I have, and how well I’m doing with distancing certain events from each other. Usually when people criticize how there’s “too much going on too soon”, they don’t say “So how many words were there before this event happened? 5,000 words?”, they say, “How many pages before this event came up? 5? It’s just too close and it doesn’t give the reader time to breathe.”. It really helps to think in pages. Even if the font is big, and you know from that, that the page is “short” because there’s not many words on it, there’s something psychological about the fact that it’s still a page. Because Scrivener doesn’t have pages, however, I just end up using it for story notes and nothing else.

I mean, I guess I could use it for writing a story, too, and maybe I’m just being really picky. I know many others use it for writing, so I could be alone in this, but, just to put the idea out there. If Scrivener had the ability to create pages I would love it to death and beyond and I wouldn’t need to use any other word processor (as I’m currently using LibreOffice).

Thank you for your time and consideration!

2

Hi,

The Windows version doesn’t have a page view yet. The Mac version does, although it only came with version 2.x, five years after it was first released. Page view isn’t something I use much myself, and because Scrivener wasn’t built for layout, but for focussing on the words, it didn’t initially seem to make much sense to me to include a page view that wouldn’t actually show you work would look on the page when you printed or exported it anyway (because of how Compile works).

However, feedback from users made me realise that many people, just like you, like having a page view just as a writing environment, for a getting a feel of their words on the page even if it never looks exactly like that on the actual page. Thus, I added a page view to 2.x for Mac. Adding a page view is actually quite a complicated task, even though it’s common in word processors, so we decided not to make it a priority for Windows 1.x, just as it wasn’t for Mac 1.x. However, the next major (paid) update of Scrivener for Windows will add a page view. We hope to have more information about that next year.

Thanks for your feedback and all the best,
Keith

3

I made an account specifically to come in here and voice my desire to have this feature. I think that the lack of a page view is one of the major reasons I have trouble using Scrivener for all of my writing needs.

Additionally, I would like the ability to copy/paste or add Scapple connections to my cork-board in Scrivener. Ideally, I would be able to map out a chapter of my story and paste that in the Scrivener folder where it would be easier to reference, store, and navigate. Currently, I am wary to using Scapple for anything larger than small concepts as I figure it could very quickly get large, out of hand, and hard to read. Additionally, I don’t like the idea of having to flop back and forth between two apps, or having to open a new app just to view the connections.

4

It would be nice to have it in the windows version. I write legal documents and i would like to avoid writing using scrivener and then export it to word and do the layout thing, if i can save this step it will be nice.

Thank you

Saludos!

5

The reason why the Wrap Function is so vital for screenplays is that pages help divide our storytelling into beats and minutes.

In many a screenwriting class, I’ve been taught that a page can be thought of as roughly a minute.

In the world of writing for television, and even theatrical, minutes really count, where scripts are divided into half-hour comedies and 1-hour dramas. Page numbers and thinking in terms of time help you structure your acts with greater focus.

Currently I have to export into .doc, and then count pages, and then go back to Scrivener.

I really, really don’t want to be pressed to get Final Draft, but this issue with no page breaks really breaks the creative flow of writing screenplays.

Is there an ETA as to when we might expect a paid Scrivener update for Windows that includes Page View? I’ve literally spent all morning and part of last night trying to figure out how to do it (because the Mac people seem to be view page breaks just fine), only to be super crushed when I realized that I’d been writing a screenplay in a software that doesn’t even allow for page breaks and doesn’t have a set time table as to when that might even happen.

6

I think the critical word here is “roughly”. Yes division into pages is a nice crutch. But so is dividing the word count with 200 (a give-or-take average word count per page) or 1000 (the average character count). No software can actually translate pages/words/characters into minutes, but it gives you an indication. So, I’m totally with you—of course whomever you give your screenplay to, will initially judge its length from its page count. But it’s important to realize that the page count is very much dependent on a lot of factors like genre (lots of action or lots of dialogue) and your writing style: are you over- or underwriting?

So, sure, it’s fine to ask for “wrap to page”. It’s a good crutch and gives you a ball park idea—but never imagine that your page count will give an accurate lengths of the final movie.