A neat trick with Scrivener meta-data

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)

Okay, so when the chapter is printed/exported, I want a header at the top. Now, I could just type it in, but then I have to remember to take it out, and then, a couple of weeks later for the next critique, I have to type it back in again. It’d be a lot better if I could just set up the header to appear and disappear when I need it to, and as you have already guessed, this is not a problem in Scrivener. All you need to do is set up another  section type for the chapter heading.

The current set up for my chapter section type just puts a chapter heading and a number. Nothing too clever about this set up; it looks like this:

As you can see, every time we compile a chapter, Scivener will put a header at the top of a fresh page and put the chapter heading about half way down. For our review setup, we can do the same thing but with the review information above the chapter title. So what I’m looking for is something like this:

We’ve changed the section type to Review Heading, which carries the same chapter title, but we’ve also got the extra header information as a prefix heading.

So how do we go about putting something like this together? Well, if you’re reasonably comfortable with the Scrivener compilation process then you’re not going to find it too hard; in fact, you’ve probably figured it out already. If not then don’t worry; it took me an hour of experimenting before I was happy with the result.

The first thing you need is a new section type. My novels only have chapters and scenes, so my setup is pretty basic.  If you go to Project ➞ Project Settings… on the main menu, you’ll find the dialog where you can add a new section type.

So that’s my new Section Type: Review Heading which will be applied to any chapter I want to submit for critique. Once that’s been added, you have to tell Scrivener what you want it to look like for a compiled document, so return to the Compile… menu. Ignore the stuff on the right; we’re just going to focus on the Format options.

Those rather nice people at Literature & Latte supply Scrivener with a whole raft of templates that cover compilation to a pretty extensive range of document types and formats. Personally, I think you’d be a masochist to create a format entirely from scratch when you can just duplicate an existing one (from the + menu at the bottom). The format I use, which I’ve imaginatively called Manuscript (Times) Dom, is the one I use for submissions to agents and my group. It’s derived from the Manuscript (Times) format, which you can see a few spots down in the Scrivener Formats section.

Double-clicking on the format will open up a new dialog that will allow you to change it. If you’re new to Scrivener then sheer wealth of options will seem overwhelming. I’ve been using the app since Version 1.0, and I find the best way to learn what everything does is piecemeal: focus on just what you’re trying to change and then do that. Some time later, when you want to change something else, scan through the help pages, or search the Literature & Latte forums for a pointer in the right direction. In this case I need to do two things:

1. Create the formatting for my new Review Header.
2. Change the formatting so that I can have my critique details above the chapter heading.

The exact steps for this will depend on your setup, but broadly speaking, this is the process I usually go through when I’m creating a new format element.

I select a chapter heading (1) and then I hit the  + button (2) on the top right of the window. This will create a new section layout element as a copy of the item you selected; so if you’re after a new chapter heading, then select an existing chapter heading first, then you wont have to make many changes. Next,  I double-click the new element (3) so I can edit it. Right, what I want to do is add a header above by chapter title, so I select the prefix tab (4) and then add the text for the prefix (5).

Okay, so let’s have a closer look at what I’ve set up in the header:

Author: <$firstname> <$lastname>
Title: <$projecttitle>
Word Count: <$wc>
Type of piece: <$custom:Type of piece>
Genre: <$custom:Genre>
Type of feedback particularly wanted: <$custom:Feedback>
What does the reader need to know before they start: <$custom:Need to know>

One of the really useful features in Scrivener is its sizeable set of meta-data elements. There are lots of shorthand notations for this meta data which you can insert into your document. The most obvious examples are the chapter number, the page number, the total number of pages in the exported document … In our case, we just need the author first name and surname, the name of the book (which Scrivener just calls the project title. The <$wc> element will be replaced with the number of words the export contains, and as if all that wasn’t enough, Scrivener also lets you define your own meta-data which you can attach to any document in the project. In my case, I need to have the type of the piece (poetry extract,  novel chapter etc.). the genre, the type of feedback required, and the very important one: what the reader needs to know about the piece before they start reading it. I’ll show you how all this data gets set up in a bit; in the meantime, save your new element and return to the compile screen.

Now we have to assign our new layout element to the section type we set up earlier, so press the Assign Section Layouts… button

which will take you to the page for assigning the layouts:

Now you just apply the Review Heading section type to the layout element Chapter Heading for Review, so whenever you apply the Review Heading to a chapter, you’ll get the header in the chapter output.

Okay, that was the hard part; though we have pointers in our header, such as <$firstname> and <$custom:genre>,  to show where bits of information should go, we still need Scrivener to substitute the real information when the page is exported. The basic stuff you can find on the compilation page:

You can set up the project title and the first and surname of the author on the meta-data tab. The other parts:

Word Count: <$wc>
Type of piece: <$custom:Type of piece>
Genre: <$custom:Genre>
Type of feedback particularly wanted: <$custom:Feedback>
What does the reader need to know before they start: <$custom:Need to know>

you need to set up as custom meta data.

The custom meta data is set up in Project Settings…

Select Custom Metadata (1) and then just add the extra bits of information (2) you want to record against each document in your project. Remember the titles of the meta data must match the names that you have defined in your header. For example, if you have a metadata item you wish to call Genre, then make sure that your header references it using <$custom:Genre>. Likewise, the Type of piece is referenced as <$custom:Type of piece>. Pay careful attention to the spaces! Don’t try to replace them with underscores or anything clever like that; the title and the custom element names must match exactly.

Scrivener can allow you to create meta data as dates, text, checkboxes and lists. In my case, the lists were really useful because they allowed me to set up the Genre as a list (3) of genres that I can pick from without having to type them in. Nifty!

And that’s kind of it, really.  I use the same template for all my stories so I don’t have to run through the setup again.  When I think that I want to get a chapter critiqued, I head to the document meta data and fill out the information I need to give to people when the chapter is submitted:

So back in the main window, I select my chapter (1) and then open up the meta data information on the side panel (2).

To make the header appear on the compiled document, I set the Section type to Review Header (3).  When I don’t need the header to appear, I switch it back to Heading.

The Custom Metadata section is used to fill in the extra bits of meta data I defined earlier on: the genre, the type of piece (novel extract, poem …), the feedback required and anything the reader might need to know or be warned about before they start reading (my writing group are pretty relaxed bunch so I don’t usually feel the need to fill this in).

Next, I simply compile the chapter:

Now, all I have to do is submit it for review and grit my teeth!