r/scrivener

Hi. I've got 80,000 words in Scrivener across 55 chapters and 200+ endnotes. I now have two editors whom I'll be working with. I need track changes and a master copy, and I need to endnotes in place. I've been told Google Docs is the best way to go because it's easy to work with editors online. What is the best way to compile my project? I've tried compiling to docx, but the endnotes get stripped. Actually, some of them make it, but most do not. Even more strange. Help!

First of all, I know I should probably just learn my music theory. But, really, I just want to whip out the guitar and strum straight away. Sometimes it's not just the chords that I can't recall, it's also the lyrics and sometimes it's song itself that I forget I do know how to play. So I figured since I always have my e-reader on me and I also have an old edition of Scrivener on my laptop and a basic knowledge of it (which actually means I've zero idea how to actually work on this app) that I'd make my own songbook.

After tinkering for a few hours, I now have the makings of a songbook with a few songs in it. I wanted it originally to be in epub but I found it's only through pdf that I could preserve the formatting of the chords relative to the lyrics. (The spaces get eliminated in epub even after preserving the formatting.) Though it does work, I want it to have a working TOC with songs instead of chapters like it does for ereader formats. Now I looked into some published songbook epubs and the way they did it was basically just embed an image of the chords/lyrics into an epub and that's it. I honestly don't think there's a better way of doing that without the use of images, but I'd be grateful if anyone could suggest the most efficient way I could convert or embed these pdf pages into a epub format, or maybe direct me into a better way of doing this personal project.

Hello, I want to work on my stories between my Mac desktop and MacBook neo. What is the best and safest way to move the files back and forth? Dropbox? iCloud drive?

I was banging my head against a wall about this and finally figured it out so I wanted to drop a post In case it helps anyone.

For some reason my hover-over word count suddenly stopped showing the total manuscript word count and was only showing the amounts for the currently selected document. I tried a bunch of settings but could not figure out how to make it show the entire manuscript.

Finally, I figured out that it is showing the word count for the current compile settings which I had briefly changed from manuscript to current selection. Lo' and behold, once I changed it back to manuscript the total word count updated.

Hope this helps somebody, it had been driving me crazy for the past few days.

Hello! I have been using Scrivener for about two weeks and I am loving it so far. I recently made the switch from Word. In Word, there are many options for read-aloud voices, which I rely on heavily when editing my WIP. It's the best tool I have for identifying errors quickly. I like the voices in Word, but the only voice I've found on Scrivener is incredibly robotic. I could use the Word read-aloud, but it would be a pain to try and switch between the two documents, to make the edits in Scrivener while listening to a Word doc. Does anyone know if it is possible to add or download an extension for read-aloud voices? I hesitate to upload my writing into AI voice generators. I don't like feeding/training them when I can avoid it, and that has the same issue as working simultaneously in a Word doc. Does anyone have any suggestions or tools they've used for read-aloud in Scrivener?

Excuse me if this question has been asked but I’ve looked and tried stuff and am still unable to get the ding or chime when I hit a daily word count. It used to do it and I liked it. Then one day it stopped (I dont know if I accidentally clicked something but I have unclicked everything I can think of at this point but to no avail). So I’m wondering if anyone knows how to get my target chime back? And if not, do I need to reset the program or uninstall and reinstall? Hopefully the work is saved and won’t delete if I remove Scrivener. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!

I'm thinking of buying an iPad to use for watching but also for using scrivener with. I have a MacBook Air (2020) that I use mainly for writing. \

I don't really have any interest in buying a new iPad as I'll just be using it for casual writing sessions and watching. What series/model is good enough for writing though? And how much storage? 64 GB or 128?

If you can share your experiences with writing novels on iPads, even better! Thanks.

I know that scrivener has a feature where you can track edits. Like if I add something to my work it will show up in a different color or if I delete something it will strike it through instead fully deleting it. I just don’t know how to find that feature, any advice?

Heya, just new to Scrivener, and I've got a project that has 16 text files, each being a "chapter" or "scene" and upon compiling them, there's no page breaks in-between each text file.

Can someone please explain clearly how I add page breaks at the end of each text file, so that when compiled each scene is broken into a separate page? Thanks

For example, lets say i typed this very sentence into scrivener in the exact same manner i have typed this one just now. It would like like this:

"For exampppppppppppple, lets say i typed this very ssssssssssssssentence into scrivener in the exact same manner i havvvvvvvve typed this one. It would like like thhhhhhhis:"

As you can see, the occasional keyboard input gets 'stuck' as if the key was being held down physically. Or if scrivener froze at the same moment of the keystroke and kinda stroked out itself, repeatedly reading the input until it returned to normal.

Annoyingly, it can happen with backspace too, so when i'm fixing the duplicates, suddenly a bunch of good text is gone lol.

-My keyboard is clean

-It's a Keychron K5 Max that i primarily use plugged in rather than wirelessly

-Sticky keys are not on

-I have not encountered this issue anywhere but in scrivener, so whatever the cause, be it scrivener or something else, it's somehow isolated to this app

-It does come and go, but has persisted through multiple PC restarts, updates, and so on.

Has anyone else encountered this? Or have any idea on a fix?

I've settled into a nice workflow with Scrivener and am now looking for a nice dark mode theme, but I'm kind of shocked by how poorly organized the community around the app is. The best way to find themes is to browse a forum thread with a decade's worth of posts and random comments in-between themes, of which several link to dead posts and none are curated or indexed in any way?

so i’ve been using dropbox to backup my files for a long time now, but i wanted to use a thumb drive to transfer between computers easily so i can write in bed sometimes. i got myself a thumb drive for that so i could have that as well as dropbox as a backup.

only problem is, while one file transferred successfully (i have now transferred it back to dropbox as well as copied and pasted immediate chapters just as a precaution in case my only surviving file got corrupted in retransfer), all of the others will not open whatsoever, only giving me a small window saying i cant access the project. and despite me only copying these files to the thumb drive, i cant open my dropbox backups either.

are those files corrupted for good? i never transferred those files, i only saved my main project as a test (stupid, i know, but at the time i thought my backups would survive since they were on a separate cloud) is there any way to get them back?

i dont even want to use these stupid thumb drives anymore lmfao, i just want to make sure my files are okay. thankfully i only had two other ongoing projects, one of which was merely notes while the other i actually saved as a pdf to share with a friend, while the others were already finished projects that i have posted elsewhere. only thing is i’d really like to have the original files back if possible.

so, are they just gone for good? or is there an fix to this. i am never using an external drive for my projects again lol. im just glad my biggest project survived

edit: i found all my OG files! turns out my backups were being saved to my computer, not dropbox like i thought. while my dropbox backups are corrupted, my computer ones are completely fine. thanks for the help :]

still never using an external drive for this ever again

I've been using Scrivener on iOS for a while now with no issues. Most of my writing has been on my phone, then I sync to dropbox to access when I'm on my PC. Today is the first time I've had an issue with syncing that caused me to lose a chapter and I'm wondering if it's recoverable.

I wrote today on my phone, then synced and closed the app. When I opened Scrivener on my PC, it said something about being unable to sync, then continued opening the file. I clicked the OK button quickly out of habit, because it usually tells me of conflicts that I already know about, so I didn't catch anything except the words "unable to sync" multiple times.

When the file opened, it was the older version with the unedited version of a chapter that I essentially rewrote. I closed out of Scrivener (probably should have alt+f4 in hindsight) then went back to my phone to try syncing again. Once my phone was synced, I checked again on my PC to find the same thing, and when I checked on my phone it had synced to the version on my PC.

I tried searching the files in the data folder for the new version, but can only find the text files from the older version. Are there any other options or do I have to rewrite?

My editor prefers to work in MS Word so I compiled my book in Scrivener into an MS Word doc and sent it to her. She returned it with a lot of inline comments. Right now, I have a printed copy of my book and am making notes on it from her comments (I read her doc into LibreOffice to see the comments). After I mark up the printed copy, I'll make the changes in the Scrivener doc.

Any recommendations as to a more efficient approach to doing this?

I use scrivener for my creative writing. But when I try to copypaste my fanfiction directly to Ao3, the formatting gets lost along the way no matter what I do.

I previously found a way to bypass this by copy-pasting to word, where it would keep the formatting (???), and then to ao3, but this no longer works. Same problem trying to copypaste to google docs so I can have a friend beta read something -it just isn't keeping my hard-earned formatting.

Please help. Why won't copy-pasting out of scrivener keep my formatting? Thanks.