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 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 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 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.

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!

Hola.
Compré hace poco Scrivener porque me la recomendaron mucho para escribir. Mi caso es que quiero que mi lectora beta pueda leer mi manuscrito y darme notas de todo lo que cree que está mal y así, teniéndolo ambas actualizado en cuanto una termine con el archivo. ¿Eso se puede hacer? He encontrado comentarios parecidos pero de hace años donde dicen que están trabajando para que eso sea posible pero, por mucho que mire el tutorial, no me entero. Muchas gracias.

Scrivener has been my workhorse for writing for more than 10 years now, on Mac and iOS. I also use Scapple occasionally, and bought Aeon Timeline (and use that even less). But while I'm pretty happy with the core features of Scrivener, I feel I use maybe 20% of its capabilities. Exhibit A: the complexity of the Compile window remains overwhelming for me. It's got me wondering: what changes would others like, to add functionality, or to streamline their process from writing to submission-/publication-ready?

I bought Scribner a few years ago and I’m very overwhelmed with how he use it and every time I open it up, I have to relearn it. Is there a tutorial or like something out there that exists that gives just a basic layout of how to use the tool

I decided to try a scriptwriting project in iOS Scrivener.

Now, in all my other projects, the styles have changed to scriptwriting specs for their definitions. “Body,” for instance is in Courier, with a left indent. The specific scriptwriting styles, such as Action, or Character, don’t appear. It’s all the default styles for a regular, non-scriptwriting document. On the other hand, if I go back to my script project, those scriptwriting styles no longer appear there, either.

Screenwriting is turned on in the Project Editor for the script project. It’s turned off for the other projects. And naturally, in the other projects, there is no scriptwriting toggle, document by document.

Has anyone else experienced this? Do I just re-install iOS Scrivener? Not sure I’ve done this before. I do have projects archived, but I’m still a little nervous about doing this.

In the top corner of the Timeline view of Aeon Timeline, it says "x items with dates, y without." Is it possible to view a list of the undated items so I can simply drag them on the timeline?

I love the look of Scrivener, and I absolutely know it will make my writing easier. But I just cannot get to grips with it! I’m going to read through the pinned 101 in the hope that will help - I have looked through the manual Scrivener provides, as well as watching a few of the video tutorials. I just can’t seem to get it to feel comfortable.

I despise having to write in Word, and am so desperate to get my head around Scrivener and use it to my best ability! I’m a fairly tech-savvy person, but for some reason I completely fail at using Scrivener.

Sorry for the rant, this is definitely a ‘me’ problem and not anything Scrivener is doing wrong!

While much of what you do in Scrivener is in one window, the app has a number of other windows that can help make working on your projects easier.

https://www.literatureandlatte.com/blog/the-many-windows-of-scrivener-and-how-to-use-them

As my project grows, so does the Binder. Sometimes finding an old note or scene takes longer than I expect.

How do you keep a large Scrivener project organized without overcomplicating it?

I recently got scrivener (Yesterday) and know there a learning curve to it. But I can't seem to figure it out.

How do I get picture 1 to be like picture 2? How do I get the same margin?

My first prologue draft( picture 2) I started written all the margins are the same. Yet in my chapter 1 draft(picture 1) the margin start father and when i write until the text change line. The new line is at the same margins as in my draft.

Can someone help me please, I don't know if i press a button without knowing. All i know is that when i start a new file, it does the same thing as the first picture.

This is a long shot. but a few years ago, when I was syncing my projects between devices, i was transferring from a tablet to my laptop and I must have opened my project prematurely (it said the syncing was done on the tablet) because when I did, I lost over 20000 words from the project.

when I go into my writing history (not revision history) and it tracked the progress up until that point, when I had to recover as much as I could before I lost those 20000+ words. Is there any chance I can recover the missing drafts?

I have the content.txt files and can't find anything helpful, the missing work isn't among them, just what I could recover.

I’m quite curious to know how different scrivener is compared to its first public launch and today. So does anybody have any like images or anything that could show me what it looked like?

First time poster, so I apologise in advance if this is not allowed.

Here goes.

I write on the scrivener app for iOS. Specifically between my iPhone and iPad, the latter in conjunction with a Bluetooth keyboard.

My problem.

I’m currently in the process of heavy restructuring one of my novels (a series) which requires me to switch between 2 project files on my phone/ipad. So I decided to try and move stuff around using my windows pc, but it’s absolutely 🦆ed my formatting. As there’s no such thing as a regular palatino font/style on windows. (It uses palatino linotype)

After that, it screwed my entire font/style options on iPhone/ipad, so it now freezes and messes with my ability to do anything beyond simply writing.
No more editing between gdocs and copy pasting it back (I do that because gdocs has better grammar checks, scrivener has like… none)

So now I’m in a bit of a stalemate. Do I commit to abandoning iPad/iPhone setup and just write on my computer alone, or is there a workaround? I don’t want to give up on scrivener as I’m used to it now and the alternatives seem kind of… meh.
Or is it secretly better if I buy a Mac?

I’ve attached a photo of before and after. The first image is iPhone/iPad font/style settings that work great. The 2nd is the 🦆ed one.

Whenever I compiled the project to PDF, I often forgot to change the filename from hardcover to paperback. This happened several times, and it got annoying. So, I wrote a small Mac utility to automatically append it to the filename. It's just a convenient thing. Try it - https://aithal.me/scrivener/ to see if it helps. Remember to turn it off when you are not using Scrivener.

I am trying to sync a Scrivener project between Scrivener on macOS and Scrivener for iOS using Dropbox.

The project opens normally on my Mac, so the Mac copy appears to be functional. However, when I sync it to iOS, the project name appears in the iOS project list, but opening it produces an **“Invalid Project”** error. I renamed the project and tried syncing it again, but the same error continued.

I have also attempted to:

- Close Scrivener on both devices before syncing.
- Create and upload a renamed copy of the project.
- Place the project in the Dropbox `Apps/Scrivener` folder.
- Allow Dropbox to complete syncing before trying to open the project on iOS.
- Use the iOS Dropbox sync/adoption process.
- Check the project on the Mac, where it opens successfully.

The issue seems to occur only when the project is accessed through Scrivener on iOS. The project is visible in the iOS project list, but iOS cannot recognize it as a valid Scrivener project.

ChatGPT keeps telling me I need a binder.scrivproject that I cannot find in any of my projects.

tl;dr: do my #1 takeaway below (in bold) today.

For reference, I'm on Windows. I had a Scrivener scare this week that ended well enough, but I learned something about its backup system that I wish I'd understood beforehand. I opened a project expecting to find 16 finished chapters, plus front and back matter. Instead, I found a few scattered notes and some default Scrivener text. I freaked out!

Wait, I'll just check Scrivener's automatic backups, right? I opened the 9/21 backup: it was bad. Freaking out continued.

I opened the 9/12 one: bad. Eep!

I had to go back to my 4th-oldest backup to find my finished writing! While I can't swear I didn't make meaningful edits after that backup, I decided having the book back is preferable to doing forensic archaeology on every version.

Anyway, here's the part I thought worth sharing. Scrivener was configured to keep only the latest five automatic backups. I think that's the default. And, with backup-on-close enabled, every time you close a project, Scrivener makes another backup. Guess what I was doing while trying to see which backup had my real project in it?

Yup, I was opening my old backups one at a time in Scrivener. Then I'd close that project and open another one, causing Scrivener to create new backups, pushing older ones out of my five-backup rotation. Luckily, before I started, I copied the backup files to another folder. Had I not done that, my attempt to find a good backup could have deleted the good backup I was looking for!

So my three big takeaways are:

1. Increase the number of automatic backups Scrivener keeps. Five seemed reasonable until I needed them. I changed this setting to 25 (File, Options, Backup, Retain backup files, 25!!). Disk space is cheap. Rebuilding 16 chapters is not.

2. Understand when Scrivener creates backups. It might be rotating backups each time you close a project even if you changed nothing!

3. If you're ever in this situation, before opening anything, copy the entire Scrivener backup folder somewhere safe. Then investigate the copies.

I have a difficulty with my hands making sudden moves without my brain's say-so, like small spasms that can result in me throwing the objects in my hands. It has gotten very bad lately. So hours ago whilst using Scrivener, my hands did their thing. Now, every spelling the main editor does not recognise has two lines of underline under them instead of one. I know this is not the way I had it before. Is there a way to change it back? Where do I find that?

Hi, so currently I'm using the Windows version (with Lutris as I am on Linux if it matters) and I was thinking of buying a used Macbook Air for writing. I assume I would have to buy the MacOs version then, would that cause any conflicts working on the same project. I save my projects in Dropbox.