r/scrivener

My novel has a subplot about a missing brother. It's meant to run quietly beneath the main story and pay off emotionally in the final act. My beta readers kept telling me the same thing in different words: it felt "thin." One said it felt like I'd forgotten about it. I couldn't see why. Each scene that touched the subplot seemed fine on its own, and I'd read them all closely.

Then I tried something I'd never used properly in Scrivener. I created a Collection and added every scene that touches the brother subplot. The moment I looked at the list, the problem was obvious. There were nine scenes in total, but seven of them were in the first half of the book. After that, the brother basically vanished. For fifteen chapters there wasn't a single mention of him, and then he reappeared in the climax as if nothing had happened.

The subplot wasn't thin. It was absent for most of the book. Because I'd read the manuscript in order, I'd always felt the brother was "in there somewhere", but the Collection showed the real shape of it in one glance. That's a pattern you almost can't see when you're reading scene by scene, because every individual scene looks fine.

I added three short scenes in the second half and moved one earlier, so the thread now runs more evenly through the book. When I sent the revised version to the same readers, one of them said the ending "finally paid off." Collections aren't flashy, but they show you the shape of something that is otherwise spread across the whole manuscript.

Today I had a font problem when transferring a Scrivener project from a mac onto a pc. This got the me thinking about what fonts other people use for actually writing, not for the final print or ebook file. I'm curious what everyone likes and why. At the moment I'm using Courier New

For two years I had a project target set up in Scrivener. It was a big number with a deadline, the kind that looks sensible when you set it on a motivated Sunday evening. Every time I opened the app, the progress bar quietly informed me how far behind I was. On a good day that pushed me. On most days it made me close the laptop and tell myself I'd start fresh tomorrow.

I didn't notice how much that bar was shaping my behaviour until I caught myself avoiding the file. I wasn't avoiding the writing. I was avoiding the feeling of looking at a number I was failing to hit. Those turned out to be two very different problems.

A few weeks ago I turned off the project target and set a session target of 400 words instead. When I hit it, the bar fills and I'm allowed to stop, or keep going if the scene is moving. Four hundred is small enough that I can sit down without negotiating with myself. It's about two paragraphs of effort and maybe twenty-five minutes on a slow day.

The funny thing is that I'm writing more than I did before. Most sessions run past 400, because once I'm in the scene it's easier to keep going than to stop. The few days I do stop right at the target, I still count the day as a win, because it's a day I showed up. Over a month, that adds up to far more than the days I used to lose entirely to avoidance.

I'm trying to figure out how to style my ebooks within the rules ereaders use for displaying text. I don't want to force specific fonts, but I would like to style certain things sans-serif, to contrast the main text which is serif.

In the compiler, Styles, changing the font size, spacing, etc all works as expected in the compiled ebook, but specific fonts are ignored. I tried adding font-family sans serif to the .epigraph css, but that gets ignored too. I'm baffled.

I keep finding little features that would have saved me a lot of time if I’d known about them earlier. Which one was it for you?

I started writing on Google docs, but switched to Scrivener halfway through the second novel of a trilogy. In Google I had every chapter (5 per book) as a separate document. At first I moved all 8 finished chapters to one project, and then separated them into different projects when I started on the third one. However, all my notes, character and location sheets, and especially the timeline are, of course, relevant for all three books, so I combined them again and now have one big project with 15 chapters all on the same level.

How do you you deal with such multi volume stories? All in one or separate projects each? How do you organise your writing in these cases?

I’ve been writing plays but mostly for me and performing for more than two decades, but for the last few years, I’ve focused more intentionally on playwriting. I’ve recently switched over to using scrivener and I’ve loved how it gives me flexibility in moving and organizing writing.

But I’ve found myself with so many more saved drafts than ever and I keep finding myself compiling the draft I’m working on and then noting quite a few issues that I instinctively correct in the compiled draft outside of scrivener. Then I find myself editing the scrivener version and trying to compare it to the saved versions.
It’s a lot.

This got me thinking about how other folks keep track of old drafts, and when you decide to let go of old drafts/ records of cut language/ darlings?

I use a couple of saved docs filled with darlings/language I cut between drafts. But I’m curious how others save old drafts/darlings. When you edit between drafts do you keep every change somewhere else? I’m working to let go of old drafts but I’d also want to figure out other best practices from folks who are better organized than I am. Thanks!

I am a very long-time Scrivener user, comfortable with compiling and satisfied with the output for a recently completed 100k word novel.

My question is for epub and especially Kindle. Aside from drop caps, chapter headers and the like, would Vellum be worth it to me to solve some layout issues on Kindle.

Reason I ask is I have a large number of chapters, some very short, and a humongous TOC just as reader opens up the first time would be intimidating. I also tend to use folders as chapters and files within each folder as scenes. (sometimes the file will have the same name as the folder.) In the ePub autogenerated TOC, the section title becomes the chapter title and the section title for the files should be passed over and omitted but they are not.

I have yet to figure out (a) how to eliminate the front TOC, and (b) how to get the Kindle cooker to eliminate the chapter/filename duplication.

Does Vellum solve these problems for me?

Thanks

I spent hours on Google and still can't find usable instructions on how to add my last name and the page number in the upper right hand corners of my assignment using Scrivener. I noticed there is an MLA template that's more complicated to use. I do most everything on a blank document and then edit the stylization manually, but I tried everything I possibly could in an MLA practice document instead of anything I am working on for college, too.

I have a paper due soon. The teacher is being cool about this minimal detail for now but I know further in my studies, I am expected to figure this out. Basically, I am asking this: How can I add last name and page numbers in a Scrivener document? I even tried the tutors at school but they never heard of this program until I brought it up.

I assume I have the newest version of Scrivener and Windows. I bought this version of Scrivener only a few months ago. My laptop is new as well.