I have a lot of editing work to do today. However, because it doesn’t take me much time to do this at the same time I am doing my productive editing work, I’m going to walk you through how I use scrivener for edits.
For our first screenshot, this is a view of my manuscript at the topmost level. This shows the four primary folders I’m working with on the corkboard.
The corkboard is an interesting function. You can switch the order things appear just by left-clicking, holding the mouse button down, and dragging it to its new position. I use this feature frequently. You access it by clicking the folder you want to manipulate. All of the files within can be controlled in that fashion.
For example, look at where it says Mortan on the left hand side. You’ll see Temple of the… Travelling to Trial… The Grand Temple… and so on. If I click Mortan, I will be able to change the orders of those folders by dragging them.
If I were to click Temple of the… I would be able to swap the orders of the two scenes within that folder. Now, I’m going to do a little editing work on this. The next screenshot will be what I’ve done on this page.
As you can see, I added blurbs of information about each of the folders, as well as Document Notes. These document notes serve as something outside of the writing — a to-do list, or special notes you need. The synopsis notes at the top are supposed to be blurbs about what is going on in the scene. As this is a character overview for their arcs, this is simply the character’s name, and the locations that the characters are at during their arcs.
Now, to do some scene nitty-gritty.
The concept is the same here. as I’m going through each file, I change the scene name to make a little more sense, add a to-do list for edits I need to do for that scene. I am skimming the scenes for a quick read, not an intensive read. I’m going to be doing a lot of fixing here, so I just want general to-do list items for each scene. I will be repeating this phase often as I get a better idea of the edits that I need to make.
These edit notes are vague because I don’t tend to do massive line-items unless really necessary. Some scenes will have scene goals as list items if they aren’t written yet. I will show you these later.
This is a good time to discuss the writing functionality of scrivener. It is very similar to word. I use windows, so the dictionary really, really STINKS. But, I use Microsoft Word for final spell-check edits. I prefer that interface over scrivener. I also read text differently between scrivener and word, so this allows me to see the text in a different fashion.
One thing I do like about scrivener is the simplicity of the word processing once you get to the phase you’re writing. I like that I can make notes quickly in the document notes, and I like how easy it is to make new scenes. Uhm, I guess you can enjoy that snippet of the book, seeing as I’m using active text for this. I will blush now. (I really should have thought of this before I decided to use my book as an example of working in scrivener.)
A few things I should probably note at this point: I imported this book manually from word, one scene at a time. While there are ways to import files into scrivener, I found that doing it scene by scene helped me organize things better. If you’re using scrivener from scratch, formatting the scenes to your needs will come naturally as you write. This was hacked together because I didn’t start using scrivener for this book until I was at the second edit run.
While this book is done and has been edited — and submitted — I am continuing to improve it so if it continues to get rejections, I can submit better versions to new agents / editors. I decided I wasn’t going to sit on my laurels and wait for another edit run. For the most part, I’m very pleased with how the book worked out on the first run, but I think I can make it better.
Back to editing.
Time to start setting up Mortan’s new opening scenes. A few things to note about the screenshot below:
- I have clicked Temple of the…
- Click the arrow next to the green circle with a +.
- Click New Text.
- Note that I’m in the corkboard function again. I can move scenes around after creating them.
This is the screen you get after going through the process. A few things to note.
- It sets your new screen at the end of the lineup in that folder. If you are adding to different sections — like the beginning, you will need to move the scene.
- To move the scene: Click the parent folder, in this case, Temple of the…
- Click and drag the scene to the appropriate place on the corkboard.
- That’s all!
I am going to go ahead and fill in the data for this scene so you can get an idea of how I put in placeholders for scenes I have to write from scratch before I move it.
One thing you may notice is that I do not have description and to-do data for Mortan’s main folder. I don’t feel I need them here, since I have the majority of the to-do work on a scene by scene basis. If I need more to-do work, I would add it to this section, as this is the notes for the folder in general.
Voila! I now know what I intend to do with this scene.
Now, I’m going to show you a little of how I structured my book. A lot of the folders beneath the characters represent locations. I do this because it gives me a feel of where I am in the world I am writing about. This is something important to me, as I’m trying to build not one, not two, but three cultures in this book. Different elements of culture are showing through location. Characters also behave differently depending on their location. This is something i had to pull my hair about a lot.
Find your own way of organizing your work. This is important. If you don’t find a way to organize that works with you, you’ve wasted your time. (And potentially your money!)
I do not use the Characters folder. However, it is the same concept as with the scenes. You will make a file for your characters, include all of the data necessary for them, and so on. You can reference your notes by putting them in the Research section. I created a folder called Discards. This folder is where I’m keeping scenes that I’m getting rid of but need to reference as I work on this edit run. (Right now there are four scenes in there.)
I don’t have to do this right now, but this is something I’m going to show you because it is a very, very, very important feature. Just how do you swap scenes from folder to folder?
Click and drag. But, I’ll let screenshots speak louder than words. (Just click and drag, dump into the folder of your choice. Click the folder and sort in the corkboard. You can also do it on the sidemenu but scrivener is a little touchy about it so the corkboard is often faster.)
I had to hack together this little bit. The screenshot refused to capture the hovering text. The Meeting with the… is a mock of what the floating text looks like, except it has the more bluish background and outline. If you click and dump on a file, like is currently selected, your file will become slave to the scene. You will get a little arrow to expand the scene. You can click and drag to move over the folder if you like.
The ability to have scenes be parents/masters is very convenient if your layout requires sub-scenes or sub-arcs.
Now, on to some rather fancy labeling abilities of scrivener. Do you have poor memory on what is a draft and what has been edited? Noooo problem. Observe the below screenshot. This shows my current status and synopsis for Kalen’s Rifts Edge arc.
Now, here is what I’m doing. I will show you the screenshot when I’ve finished this stage of my editing reference work.
- Identifying the blurbs for each scene
- Adding basic to-do for each scene
- Adjusting scene status
- Any notables I might need to remember at a glance
One thing I will note is that I’m not spending a lot of time on each of these notes. This novel has been swiped through with the polishing rag a few times now, and a lot of these improvements are things I considered changing in the last revision run and had not.
I’m now taking advantage of the fact I’m doing an editing run to make these changes I think will improve the book.
Now, how in the world did I set those statuses? I’ll show you.
- Right click to bring up the menu on the scene / file / folder you wish to change the status of.
- Click Status.
- Select the appropriate status.
Those are the basics of Scrivener. Now, for our last trick… compiles.
Compiles are important. This is how you get your precious novel out of scrivener to a format that other program (and people) can read. Right now, your novel is trapped! Trapped in proprietary software mobojumbovoodomagic. Let’s fix that right now.
Click File -> Compile as shown below.
Next, you will want to select the format you want your file in. I have custom settings. For example, I do not have scrivener replace italics with _underscore_. I will show you where you can change this preference after you have done the first compile.
After you select the type of file, it will guide you through saving the file, just like any other program. Save it where you want and let it compile.
Done. You can open it in whatever program you want and take a look at your file. If you want to change the settings for compile, you will click that blue arrow above the Compile for: Section in the screenshot above. It will take you to the screen shown below. You will want to likely change things in the Transformations category, which is where the controls for italics, em-dashes and ellipses are shown.
And that is the very basics of Scrivener. It can do a lot, lot more, but this should (hopefully) be enough to get you started with using it if you want. You can find Scrivener here if you don’t have it already.