Okay, now I say ‘neat’ because I was pretty chuffed when I got it to work!
Scrivener is the best way to write a book, in my less than humble opinion, but it does have a pretty steep learning curve for some of the really deep stuff it can do. For that reason, make sure you have a good working knowledge of the Scrivener styles setup before you go any further.
Okay, so here’s the scenario:
I’ve just joined a local writing group, (lovely people), and one of the things we do is critique each other’s ongoing work. I like to pull out the occasional chapter that I need help with (which is usually all of them) and drop them in for a quick look-see. Easy enough in Scrivener: you can set the compile page to include just the chapters you want and export them to a PDF.
There we go: first chapter of the new book, ready for export and review. The only problem is, I don’t have a header. Now, the writers group is pretty specific: every submission has to have a header on the first page which showing:
- the author
- the title of the piece
- the word count (our group has a limit of 1500 words for a review, though you can submit two pieces if we’re short of pieces – which we never are)
- genre (I usually have no idea what genre I’m writing until someone tells me)
- type of feedback required (the best answer seen so far: ‘gentle’)
- anything the reader needs to know (you can add warnings for graphic sex scenes, violence or mentioning Brexit)