Organization

One of the things that makes Scrivener very different from other writing tools is that it has a very strong, and very non-standard, set of principles that guide how it is developed and used.

• Assembling a larger document from a collection of smaller documents. This is core to the whole Scrivener experience. It’s not a monolithic document like a Word document. It’s a collection of small documents that you can easily add, remove, move, edit, change, search, label, add keywords, group into Collections, take snapshots of, and generally work with as you see fit. During compile time, Scrivener will stitch your selected documents together for you according to the compiler configuration you have designated.

• Divorce the working format (what the writer sees) from the final format (what the Compiler produces). When we as writers create documents, we usually are not creating them in a void. Our output goes to someone else’s desk as input, in many cases. That input has specific requirements about how it must be formatted – standard manuscript format, standard script format, PDF, Epub, etc. Yet forcing writers to think about that final format during every stage of the writing process creates inefficiency – AND actually makes it harder for writers with disabilities. If I have vision problems, having to look at 12-point Courier (or variant) all day might be very difficult. With Scrivener, I can separate the formatting I use while writing (to something larger, in a soothing color, in a very personal typeface) from the format the Compiler will apply to the finished document (standard manuscript format – nobody needs to know I wrote my story in 30 point pink Comic Sans).

• Allow the user to retrieve their data using standard tools if something goes wrong. This is why Scrivener’s file format looks like a folder with a bunch of RTF and XML files – because that’s exactly what it is (although on MacOS this is abstracted out to what is called a “package file”) and that is a good thing. If something goes wrong, you don’t need Scrivener – you can use your file explorer and local RTF editor to retrieve your data.

And you don’t have to like Markdown, or ever use it, in order to use Scrivener. But those who do prefer it can use an optional set of Compilation configuration to run their document through markdown, Pandoc, LaTeX, or other post-processors that they have configured to apply their preferred final format automatically.

Ah, but you wouldn’t necessarily send them the raw Scrivener project. You’d Compile it first…and the compile configurations you’ve selected would take care of applying the proper formatting.

According to its core principles, Scrivener is not a word processor. While there is overlap in functionality, there are things you would do in Scrivener that you can’t do in a word processor, and vice versa. Scrivener specifically was designed to not use WYSIWYG as a core design principle. If that’s what you need, there are other writing tools out there that provide that facility.

One of the most common complaints I’ve run into using Word over the course of my career is how fragile Word documents are. It was much worse until Microsoft upgraded to the .DOCX format – I was writing documents for the Office group at Microsoft in .DOC format that would regularly get corrupted and nobody there could figure out why. When working with specialized templates that pre-provided every style they would ever need, writers would still manually format sentences or parts of sentences instead of just applying the proper styles. They couldn’t help themselves. Over the lifecycle of the document, those portions of the documents would cause more and more problems until someone ended up having to strip out all the text in that area into Notepad, then put it back in and re-apply the styles. And hope they’d gotten it right.

The point is, there is a large population of people who are willing to sacrifice some level of stability in their document in order to have total control over how it looks at all stages of its lifecycle. There is also a large population of people who want their tools to enforce a separation between the structure of the document and the final formatting of the document. Scrivener is written for that latter population – and if that doesn’t include you, then you may not be in the target population for Scrivener. (And that’s not a bad thing and definitely not an attack – I’ve tried a bunch of software over the years that worked in ways that I just couldn’t or didn’t want to get used to!)

But they’re not working without formatting. They’re simply applying the formatting at a different stage of the process, and they’re trusting in the computer – an automated process – to uniformly apply the correct formatting based on the hints they’ve given in the text.

Do have a care here, please. There is a difference between having a strongly held belief because you’ve worked through the alternatives and being closed to other beliefs without having considered them. Many of us in the Scrivener camp are here precisely because we came through the wilderness looking for a program that did things in a different way.

So the same with computer software. Scrivener does not enforce its principles across all writers, only on those who accept them. Would it not be dogmatic to force one’s choices of how a particular software package should work on others, especially when there are already so many packages that do work more in that fashion already?

@David G. Just to take things back to the problem of organisation and memory again, you might find it valuable to read this blog post: https://zettelkasten.de/posts/zettelkasten-improves-thinking-writing/.

The methodology is not for everyone, but it is probably worth knowing about it if you are searching for solutions. At worst, you can discount is as not suitable.

Cheers, Martin.

I see the basic problem here. I have not made my meaning clear and, that is entirely my fault. The term “formatting” seems to have a different meaning in the way it has been received and in the way that I had meant it to be. This has led to arguments that I am somehow not satisfied with how Scrivener is and that I am somehow wanting to change Scrivener into something it is not. I can assure you, this was never my intent, to change how Scrivener does things.

When I discussed adding a formatting side bar or a formatting pallet, what I was doing was to suggest that the tools that Scrivener already possesses could be much easier to use - for me anyway. Scrivener already does all of this. I was merely trying to suggest that remembering what adjustment is in which menu or submenu is a hinderance to my staying in the “zone” and concentrating on my writing. I am NOT making the suggestion that Scrivener should start using formatting like Word uses formatting.

This gets into a little more personal information than I am entirely comfortable sharing here on such a public forum but, I now believe that unless I share a little more about where I am coming from, sharing from my own unique perspectives as it were, then my meaning will continue to be taken the wrong way.

Of course, not all disabilities are the same. I suffered more than one head injury years ago in the service. My records were lost for years and were only recently discovered. Now it is medically recognized that I do in fact have a very difficult time with sequencing and with memory. I am still highly intelligent. I am still determined to get my first book out.

I need visual cues to work. I have worked with Occupational Therapists (OT), professional organizers, and more … It is well documented that I have these challenges. I suppose I can feel a little defensive when I feel I have to explain why I see things the way I do. My apologies to anyone if I came across that way. It’s just that, I have absolutely no desire to have to justify my handicap to others.

Please let me repeat myself here. When I say formatting, I am referring to making the text I am writing more readable for me while I am writing it. Formatting as I am using the term only applies to my own strong need for visually organizing my writing as I am writing. It is a challenge for my brain to make sense out of too much unformatted text. The formatting, actually helps my comprehension of the writing process.

Returning to this thread’s OP on organizational challenges, when I have a stack of papers on my desk, I very quickly can’t remember that anything is in that stack. The old saying, “out of sight, out of mind” is unfortunately quite literally true for me. Similarly, I carry small notebooks with me and record notes to my self. Hand written notes are always the fastest link between the mind and the inspiration - even with routine information such as writing down an address, phone contact, etc. But, it is very difficult to go back into a notebook’s hand written notes and find information again - beyond the last pages I used.

I also make extensive use of having the Mac read back what I have written. I use it so often that I set up a KeyboardMaestro trigger to start a macro for speaking the selected text or, to stop speaking when I find an error to correct or a section to rewrite. When my words are read back to me and I follow along with what I am editing, I will find that I have used an incorrect spelling, repeated the occasional small word, or had not made my meaning clear.

I like writing things out on the whiteboard. It helps my visual thinking process. Even better, what I write on a whiteboard is not going to get misfiled as a scrap of paper might. So long as I copy the idea into my working project of course. I just went to Lowes, a US building supply chain (Home Depot, etc.). I picked up a whole whiteboard panel 8 ft, by 4 ft. Now I have all the room I could ask for for visual brainstorms.

Using the Mac is tremendously helpful to me and my organizational challenges. TaskPaper helps me to draft an idea. It does not actually format, but it does allow me to fake formatting which makes my brain very happy and well functioning during my writing process.

Once again, all of this explanation that I have just given, is meant to return us to the OP idea of organizational challenges.

Thanks. I will look at that. On the surface it seems to have good information about the writing and thinking processes. Right now I am concentrating on the structure of my book as in; who, what, when, where, how, and why.

With my organizational challenges, it is not enough to write the story, I also have to organize it so that its parts have a logical and a coherent flow to them. This is by far the most difficult part of the writing process for me.

Having the large whiteboard seems to help as I can now write out what I am thinking.

@David, thank you for starting this fascinating discussion. Organization is currently near and dear to my heart. I am writing the first draft of a massive first novel, and managing my equally massive worldbuilding notes has become impossible. I can’t find anything.

This looks promising, thank you so much for sharing it!

Best,
Jim

I feel your pain. One thing that I am now doing is using NVAlt for my word list. NVAlt can either save documents in it’s own structure or, my personal favorite, store its documents in individual text files - one document per note in NVAlt. What I have done is to take the external text file that NVAlt is using to store my word list and give it a meaningful tag.

Then, I have HoudahSpot set up to have saved searches on various tagged items. Doing this helps to keep my mind somewhat sane. It is maddening to want to find something that I have used before, such as a word list, and, I can’t remember where I put it. Sadly, this happens to me all the time. With this method at least I can now easily find my word list from a saved HoudahSpot search template. Then, it is easy to open my word list to look at the key words I was last using and add to the list when I need to.

All of this points to the idea that on a modern mac, I might want a single app that does it all, but in truth, what I really need to do is to use the applications that best help me to organize and then to fulfill my writing project.

TaskPaper is great for my organization of a rough draft.
Scrivener is great for working through my project once it becomes too unwieldy for TaskPaper to handle alone.
Nisus is great for creating a proper document format for output. Scrivener may fulfill this eventually but at this point, I have no experience in using the compile feature in Scrivener.
HoudahSpot is great for saving searches that I will use to focus on the parts of my project.

By the use of tags, I can keep track of all the parts of my writing process. Using HoudahSpot, instead of having to remember my tags and locating items that I have already forgotten, I can easily summon up all the parts I am working on in a single list.

Oh, now this thread is getting interesting!

First, @David G., thank you for your honesty. With your disclosure, I understand more of your point of view. I have ADHD and share many of your disability’s symptoms. Much of the blather (sorry, folks, but that’s how it sounds to me) about Distraction Free Writing just doesn’t apply to me. My brain generates its own distractions regardless of how stark my computer/tablet/phone screen may be; I need a target-rich visual environment. I need to deploy as much as possible that’s related to my task at hand, so that when distraction happens (inevitable) it lands on something task-related. Otherwise, my attention will wander from the (stark, boring, “non-distracting”) screen and I’ll find myself two hours later in the living room taking care of some paperwork that needed doing and wondering WTF happened to my dedicated writing time. I too want as much as possible of the structure of my Scrivener project on view at all times. I suffer from “out of sight, out of mind” as well, though perhaps not to your extreme. I’m not comfortable with memorising elaborate keyboard shortcuts; I know the basics, and have a few I’ve constructed (mostly assigned to bare function keys), but in general they’re something I look up and use when I have a specific repetitive task and forget about after.

In short, I live on the toolbar, the formatting bar, and the menus in Scrivener, and the composition mode is anathema. It’s not a way of working that appeals to many. Now that I know there are more folks like me out there, I’ll be sure to share any tips I may have on keeping stuff visually available!

On to the organisation of ancillary material: Thank you @mbbntu for bringing up the concept of zettelkasten. This is how I use premium-level Evernote and is why I cling to it. I just didn’t have a name for it.

Basically, I use Evernote for everything in my life, I don’t use categories, much; categorisation is a blank spot in my mental arsenal. It takes me a ridiculous amount of time to decide what category something belongs in, and when I look it up I’ll like as not look in the wrong category. So I’m cool with the zettelkasten philosophy there! 95% of my (vast) Evernote database lives in either Stuff or Writing. If something is for a particular project and I know that when I (look it up/make a note) I’ll tag it. I keep my number of tags down, too, and trim them occasionally.

Why Evernote premium? Two things: search by handwriting recognition, and what Evernote calls “Context”. Handwriting recognition lets me take snapshots of my white boards or scrawled paper notes and put them into Evernote in searchable form. I also publish handwritten pages in an iOS note taking app (I use Noteshelf) to Evernote. These are then searchable by Evernote’s excellent search function. I need to remember to keep my writing horizontal (hard; Before Evernote, I had handwritten scrawls going off at odd angles into death spirals) and legible to another human (if another human can’t read it, Evernote sure can’t). But with these restrictions, I can make notes in whatever form I need (I’m with you on whiteboards, @David G.) and avoid laborious transcription into typed text. (Note: Black or blue gives the best recognition. Red is iffy, and Evernote’s recognition totally ignores green.)

Evernote Context automates the cross-referencing. According to many, DevonThink does a better job of this and I might be tempted, but… handwriting. Seriously. If there’s a boring chore to do like transcribing handwriting to get something into my system (even if machine-assisted), it won’t get done.

Nearly two decades ago I finished writing a book which, when published, ran to 560 pages with about 350 references to works that had been written in four different languages. It was written on a Mac PowerBook 180 using MS Word 5, and EndNote for the references. It took about eight years from beginning to end. It taught me a number of things – 1) don’t do that again; 2) put together what goes together (told to me by a teacher of mine, and one of the most valuable things I have ever heard). It took me about five years to hit on the idea of putting everything for chapter 1 in a folder called “Chapter 1”, everything for chapter 2 in a folder called “Chapter 2”, and so forth. I was considerably helped in my labours by the fact that I was writing a chronological history, which made it rather obvious that I ought to put snippets that I found in chronological order, with the date at the beginning of each snippet. (You can look rather foolish if you suggest that a person’s decisions have been influenced by something that actually happened at a later date.) I can’t remember how many years it took me to have that illumination, but it was probably several. Anyway, it leads me to the point that numbering things is not a bad way to go IF the material you are dealing with lends itself to that methodology. (One of the problems with history is that things do not just happen in sequence – they can also happen contemporaneously, so I had quite a job to find new ways of saying “meanwhile” at the right moment – but numbering snippets can still help.) Getting material in the right order has reduced me to a whimpering, exhausted troglodyte just about every time I have ever tried to write something. It is one of the reasons I tend to compose by writing a single idea on a single line, then two carriage returns before I write the next idea. Combining sentences into paragraphs is something I do at the last possible moment. Scrivener helps immensely in this, and I have even constructed pieces of writing by having a series of documents each consisting of only one line, which I move up and down in the Binder to get the right sequence. In the old days I used to do it with pieces of paper on the floor, which I moved into the right sequence. It seems that proper writers are not above using paper to plan things (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/apr/06/writers.rooms.will.self). But, as I keep saying, the PROCESS of finding what works for oneself is probably inescapable – I do not believe it is exactly a process of discovery, but rather more a process by which a person gradually adapts themselves to an emerging methodology.

The Zettelkasten site is an extraordinary repository of ideas about how to manage knowledge work. I don’t agree with all of them, and I don’t really use the method myself, but I do use elements of it. You probably need to be a bit OCD (just to bring up another syndrome) to take it up completely, and I have heard it said that it can take a bit of work to maintain a Zettelkasten properly. But it is worth sifting the ideas for nuggets that may be useful. Numbering things is a big part of their system.

I’ve reached the age when my short-term memory is beginning to fail, so I have some insight into the problem. The concept of chunking is something I find useful – it is generally reckoned that you can’t reliably remember more than about seven items in a list, but if you break a long one up into smaller chunks you will do better. So I tend to go in for grouping things into collections that are not more than about half a dozen items. But I am very familiar with the “out of sight, not remembered” phenomenon. Very!!

I’m intrigued by the mentions of HoudahSpot on this thread. I’ve looked at it before, but it seemed to be just a prettier interface on top of Spotlight. Given the number of smart people who swear by it, what am I missing?

Katherine

HoudahSpot is a very useful tool. It allows a deep menu of criterion to search by, as well as a full ability to focus on specific folders, drives, and to exclude specific folders and drives. I use this when I am trying to remember which files to keep and which ones to delete. For example, I can exclude the folder that is supposed to have the correct files in it. Every other version I can either drag in and say yes to replace, or deal with in some other way.

Yes, you can do a lot in Finder if you are comfortable writing in code for advanced searches. I personally do not like to write code to do what I want done. HoudahSpot makes it easy. It is quite robust. And, last but certainly not least, is that you can save searches as a template.

What this means in HoudahSpot, is that a saved template search will appear in the left column which is similar to Scriveners Binder area. What I have done is to have sections with dedicated searches in them. I have one for PDFs I added in the last 24 hours. I have one for image files added in the last month.

I have a folder for anything created by my various apps so for example, if I am having trouble remembering what I did with a file but, I can remember it was something I probably did in Scrivener, I can click on the Scrivener saved search and I get a list of all the files made by Scrivener. I have an app specific search for all my different high use apps.

I have a folder for when I am done with my day and I want to relax with a movie. I have searches saved that point to my external movie disk and then I have a separate saved search for all my action movies, comedy, documentaries, etc.

One other thing that may come in handy with HoudahSpot, I can export a saved search as a stand alone file. This can be useful when you have a folder with all the things that you are working on for a project. You can build a custom search using any and all criterion you might want to see in a search in HoudahSpot, similar tags, etc. Then you export that search as a stand alone file and you place it in your project folder. When you are in your project folder and you launch that stand alone search file, it opens HoudahSpot with that saved search running with all your project’s collected documents.

I tried DevonThink. With DevonThink I have to continue to remember to update its indexing system in order to find files. With HoudahSpot it makes better sense to be able to search in real time for a file that I am looking for. HoudahSpot finds files, easily and with a great many power options that you don’t need to understand code to apply. Short answer, HoudahSpot is very powerful and at the same time, very easy to use.

PS: You can search for so many criterion. One method is to search for any text containing “whatever you are looking for”. I just tested this in a Scrivener document by putting a unique, made up word in a Scrivener document. Then I had HoudahSpot search for any text containing that made up word, et voila, the Scrivener file was found by HoudahSpot.

You can use boolean searches as well as in,
ALL:
any text contains “a red house”
any text contains “the river”
any text contains “a cloudy day”
date modified was after (a date)

You can also search by filename, type of file, date modified, date created and so much more.

Brett Terpstra must be one of the geekiest people on the internet (I hope he won’t mind me saying that – the person who created nvALT is worthy of admiration) and if he says he finds HoudahSpot useful, I don’t think it is because it is merely prettier (see https://brettterpstra.com/2019/04/04/houdahspot-5-dot-0/). He is the kind of person who cheerfully issues commands in Terminal, so HoudahSpot must be doing something extra for him.

For me, HoudahSpot presents the search results much better than Spotlight alone, which helps me. And now that DEVONthink has a new update (v 3) which means money out of the door, and what I am doing is changing subtly, I’m beginning to question whether I need DEVONthink any more if I can find things using HoudahSpot. DEVONthink has been a fixture in my life for many years, but I never exploited all its capabilities. I may upgrade DEVONthink anyway, but I am going to experiment and see if HoudahSpot is good enough for me now. The one thing I might miss is replicants, but I begin to feel they are not necessary with tagging and smart folders, so that a single file can “appear” in many different places. We’ll see.

While I must admit DevonThink was too complex for the way my mind works, the one thing it did that “seemed” really useful was its Artificial Intelligence (AI). DevonThink was good at finding similar documents to one you highlighted based on similar wording or, … something.

On the other hand HoudahSpot is very good at finding things, period. As previously self disclosed, I have a difficult time associating a thing with its location. I can usually remember the context of a thing, something that was said in the document that I am now searching for, but I may well have forgotten the documents name or where I last found it. HoudahSpot allows me to look for things.

DevonThink expects me to have kept up with indexing my files before I want to find something, DevonThink has its own built in ways of doing things such as “replicants”. If you have used it for years and you are already familiar with this term I am sure it is very useful. I was just not able to make the transition to the DevonThink way of doing things. With HoudahSpot, I can simply apply the many and vast tools that are in HoudahSpot to, you know … find things. The more I use HoudahSpot the more I appreciate it. And, as previously mentioned, creating saved templated searches in HoudahSpot for what I regularly look for, has been a huge relief and simplification of my work flow.

As an example of how I have been using HoudahSpot, I have been in full battle mode with the VA (US Veterans Administration) for the past six years. My records were lost for decades and only recently found. I have had to fight what is essentially a legal battle to get my records corrected. In fact, after I post this I have to spend the next three hours working on my VA case before meeting with yet another person working in their system.

I have to research when a thing was mentioned and in which claim, which denial, or what i still consider to be valid evidence. I might remember a phrase or a few words that were mentioned that the document I am seeking would contain. I might remember that it was a PDF file. But I cant remember when, if, or how many times it was mentioned and, if they mentioned it - or I mentioned it, in making my claim.

HoudahSpot is great for this. Finder would suck at doing this. I can quickly and easily look for something that is very difficult to find, altering my search criterion on the fly until I find what I am looking for.

HoudahSpot is just very good at finding things that you want found. Once you get the hang of ALL, ANY, NOT and how you can combine them, the sky is the limit. I have already pretty much stated all this earlier.

Just to mention it, the developers of HoudahSpot also make Tembo which is a more spotlight-like app that is still not as powerful as HoudahSpot. In Tembo you just start typing and it finds matches grouped into sections for PDFs, Documents, Mail, Images, Events and reminders, Folders and Disks, Applications, System prefs, Fonts, Movies, and Evernote. All can be set or unset as criterion for searching in preferences. This can be very helpful when you want to use it like you use Spotlight. But unlike Spotlight, Tembo is an app that remains open and allows for the searching of the found set more than Spotlight can do.

Beyond this, Tembo is not at all customizable where HoudahSpot is very much customizable.

An example of HoudahSpot search criterion:

Please note that in this screenshot, selecting “other” gives many dozens of additional choices.

PS: The lower part of the menu has past search information. I was using Device Model and, Content Creator to search for photos taken by a specific camera I had at the time.

Also, the YouTube Templated search in the screen shot is referring to my YouTube downloads folder. As far as I know, HoudahSpot is not a tool for searching Youtube online.

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Much to ponder.

I won’t be abandoning DevonThink Pro anytime soon. It’s as integral to my workflow as Scrivener is. For HoudahSpot to be mentioned in the same conversation speaks well of HS’s capabilities, though.

Katherine

And, you shouldn’t. DevonThink Pro is a very useful tool. I think of DTP as more of a system built to do what it does. HoudahSpot is a tool to do one thing, FIND. With DTP you can import everything you want to track into a DTP database, or you can index all the files you want to track where they are in the Finder system of folders. This was one reason I was not comfortable using the DTP import feature, I have been working too hard just to get my folders organized and deduplicated. I didn’t want to set up yet another organization system with it’s own rules and terms.

Mind you, this is myself I am talking about, I am not in any way being critical of DTP. DTP also has built in tools for viewing documents which is something I generally prefer to handle in the documents I am using already.

I recently got a license for NeoFinder thinking it might be useful. I discovered too late that NeoFinder may be good for photos, but it is terrible for documents. The preview in a NeoFinder document is just a photo preview icon sized image so the text page you want to see in NeoFinder in a PDF is going to be blurry.

With DTP I have great text viewing and document viewing.

BTW, one trick to mention is that, I use multiple monitors. I use KeyboardMaestro to set up one key macros. I have one monitor set to vertical orientation. One of the reasons I have taken to HS is that I have learned that a quicklook window will respond to window resizing commands just like any other window. Knowing this, I have a macro triggered in a key that will take the current window and make it full sized to a monitor. When I have a list of found files in a HS search (HS will also show thumbnails in different sizes), I select a file, hit my space bar, hit the macro key and, voila, I have a full screen quicklook window of the file in a HS list. Of course, you don’t have to keep hitting the macro to send the quicklook window to full sized as once you have done this and start this process - it stays there. Now when I want to review a bunch of files in a found HS search I highlight the first one (spacebar, trigger key) and press the up or down arrow key while I focus my attention on the screen.

This is somewhat similar to what you can do in DTP. Only with DTP it is all built in and rather elegant. Once again, I have no problem with anyone enjoying DTP as many people do. HS is perhaps more like having one tool which, in an informed user’s hands, can do quite a lot. HS is like a samurai sword compared with a regular sword, perhaps. My aim is to find things that I am continually losing. With DTP I had to spend more time trying to remember and understand its way of doing things than I had the brain power to spare.

Perhaps it is because I have a distinctly Thoreau-esque philosophical bent and I am inherently suspicious of an app that, no matter how well meaning, wants to do too many things for me that I am already using other apps to perform tasks with. Somehow … this also seems related to my refusal to purchase subscription software. I prefer my independence. None of this has any bearing on how well DTP does what it does. I enjoy a little independence in my thinking and with DTP, you either understand it and embrace it - or you don’t understand it and you can’t embrace it.

I occasionally will grumble here and there about HS. But, the developer is very responsive. I recently tried to leave HS behind and tried NeoFinder, then DTP again. But, at the end of the day, it is still HS for me. I envy that DTP works for you. I bought a full license thinking it could work for me. Alas, alack, and Alaska, I could not fathom the DTP way of doing things. Ah well, c’est la vie.

I don’t use DTP as an all around place to store things. Maybe that’s the difference. I use it as an alternative to Scrivener’s “research” folder to store the (sometimes voluminous) materials related to specific projects.

I’ve found it doesn’t work as well (for me) as a general “everything” box, maybe because it assumes that things are neatly categorized.

Katherine

This is sort of what I’ve been using one of my DEVONthink databases for as well

My research for the novel I’m writing is in the neighbourhood of 200 documents divided into folders according to topic. That’s too much for me to deal with in Scrivener, even with keywords and searches.

So, in DEVONthink, I read through each one, highlighting the parts that are useful in each document and add annotations directly to the pages.

Then I make highlight summaries of each document I’ve annotated. I merge the summary documents of a given topic into what I call a Digest. I send these digests over to the Research folder of my Scrivener project.

In Scrivener, I now have only the most relevant info ready to use. I’m only dealing with a dozen or so documents rather than 200.

Each of the digests has links to the original documents which open in DEVONthink when I click on them so if I forget what a particular quote is about or want to dive in further, all I have to do is click on that section of the digest.

Doing all of this took a lot of work but I also discovered things I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise and came up with some great details and fixes for my plot holes.

It’s made a huge difference to my Scrivener research folder. I no longer feel disorganized and overwhelmed. Now I actually WANT to use my research!

In Scrivener, I’ve tried lots of things to get organized, but I find the thing that helps me the most is to use “Inline Annotations” (CTRL-SHIFT-A shortcut). You can pick different colors for your annotations simply by going up to the “Font Color” chooser and picking a color. Different colors will group separately-- something I find useful if I need to put two separate comments together side-by-side, pick slightly different colors for them and they stay separated.

So, when I’m working out a chapter or a scene, I typically start like this:

[Location]
[Synopsis]
[GOALS: ....]
[MILESTONES]

[THIS IS A MILESTONE]
my story.. blah blah blah

[THIS IS ANOTHER MILESTONE]
[And then if I need to talk to myself, I just do it like this...]
More story... more blah blah blah

I typically do my Synopsis in teal, with an italicized font. I generally do my Goals in red, with as many bulleted lines underneath as needed to outline my intentions for the scene/chapter. I also tend to do my Milestones in red also. Which can sometimes be a problem if I’m laying them out before I’ve started writing any text-- they want to merge together-- which is why the different color trick is useful.

So, when I’m working in the scene-- or come back to the scene, I see these various sections and they remind me what I’m doing, what I wanted to do, whatever I was thinking about, etc. And they start me out with a structure (aka, Milestones) for the scene. I often pick up the milestones from my handwritten brainstorming notes but generally introduce one any time some new aspect has been introduced or achieved.

Dear Marianne, in your Daily Writing log something is missing…
" * FYI, Project Bookmarks are available for the whole Scrivener project or file. Document Bookmarks apply only to the single document.
* This method works only if you’re… ???"
Would you please complete that sentence?

TIA

+1 for HoudahSpot. In my experience, HoudahSpot finds things Spotlight has forgotten it’s holding.
I have my issues with TextExpander, and wouldn’t mind trying Typinator if it’s better - but I’m invested with a million shortcuts already created in TextExpander…
Will the Masterlist Scrivener project listed above work with Scrivener 3, or is there a version for Scrivener 3? It sounds interesting as a work tracker, job tracker, information tracker and book-progress tracker.

a-Text, ($4.49, or is it £4.49?) can import TextExpander snippets etc. I understand.

Mark