Transcript:
Hey everyone, Greg here.
In this demo, I want to go over the most confusing thing about Scrivener for new users - Compiling. Scrivener aggressively separates the process of writing from the process of formatting text.
Other programs like Microsoft Word allow you to create documents in different _file formats_ like PDFs or ePub, and Scrivener can do that too. But what I’m talking about is an entirely different level of formatting. It’s more akin to styles in Word, but styles that apply to entire similar sections of a project.
If you think about any long-form document, there are sections that each look different. In Scrivener, you can easily format these unique sections. In my comic book template, how panel descriptions are formatted is different than how word balloons are formatted, for example. Changing the word balloon style would change the look of all of the word balloons in the entire project.
Setting up compile formats is an advanced topic that still sends me to the manual and supporting YouTube videos. But don’t worry, I’ve set up two common output formats for you in the template, so let’s quickly go over how to use those.
Technically, it’s possible to print a single document using Scrivener. In the binder, each of these separate items is essentially a separate document. For example, this intro document has already been formatted and you can print it in much the same way as you would using Word. That said, this is the Scrivener equivalent of using five spaces to indent paragraphs - you can do it, but I wouldn’t get in the habit of it. It’s ultimately counterproductive. If I need a one or two-pager, it’s just as easy to use Word.
But let me show you where the magic is. Go under file and then compile. This will bring up the compile window. In here you will see my predefined formats, GT comic book script, and GT comic book script for Letterers. I’m going to show you how to use both of these. Each of these formats has a collection of defined section layouts. Don’t worry about this, for now, but this area is used to define the look of different sections.
Over here is where you tell Scrivener precisely what parts of your project you want to compile into a new document. And up top in this pull-down menu, you can tell Scrivener what file format you want the compiled document to be in. What you choose will depend on the purpose of the final document. For my book on NFTs, I used the ePub and PDF options. But in general, most publishers and courses reviewing scripts are going to want a PDF or a Word doc. So, for this example, let’s create a word document.
On this side of the Compile Window is where you tell Scrivener what specific parts of your project you want to include in a compile. This pull-down menu defaults to the entire project, in this case, your entire series, but you generally don’t want that. Instead, I’m going to use this pull-down menu to select one of my comics - in this case, the example issue I’ve included in the template.
You can actually decide what sections to include in a “compile” using these checkboxes. Say you’re sending something to the artist and they don’t need to know of the letterer stuff, you can instantly exclude it. I would still include it, but, you have that option.
Each of those sections has a different format and you can see that here. Here’s a comic page, comic panel, comic balloon, and then there’s a whole other format for the front matter.
Once you’ve told Scrivener what you want to include, just push Compile. You give your document a name and save this in a folder where you can find it again. Press compile again [gt: Oops! This should be “Press the export button”] and Scrivener will start pasting everything together for you. You can follow the progress along the bottom here.
What we produced is, based on our selections, a Microsoft Word document that is formatted as a comic script. So here’s the finished comic script. Oops, there’s a place in Scrivener you can set the title I didn’t do that, so let me quickly edit that. This is a word document that you can edit now just like you would normally. I might tinker with the way the images are sized on these reference pages, for example.
Once you get past the background material, you’ll find the first page of the actual script. Notice that it has the comic page number written out and that each of the word balloons or captions is automatically numbered. Before I handed this off to someone, I might tighten up a couple of things. I might try to get rid of some spaces to make this fit on a single page, for example.
So that’s a conventional script but now, if we go back to the same Scrivener file, we can use the Letterer format on the exact same material. I’m gonna take out a whole bunch of this front matter because the letterer doesn’t need it in this file. I will give still give them the full script to see, but this format has a different purpose. When I was doing lettering, I found this simplified format much easier to use to do the initial cut and paste of text into Adobe illustrator. You can have the exact same text but format output for two very different purposes. It’s part of the strength of Scrivener.
So try it yourself. Take a minute to prove to yourself that you can compile a script.
Scrivener 02: The Most Powerful (and confusing?) Scrivener Feature