How to export a synopsis

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I’ve been using Scrivener for 13 or 14 years.

HOW IS IT that they’ve made version 3 impossible to compile the synopsis of my script into a treatment to send to my producer?

I used to click compile and click a box. Now I cannot make head nor tail of it.

Please can somebody help me! All I want to do is export the synopsis of my selection into word with nothing else.

2

PS. I’ve literally never been so infuriated by a software update as I have with this. I used to recommend this to other writers. I won’t anymore.

3

The various built-in compile formats are documented in Appendix D of the user manual. There you would have found the Outline Document Format, which is a general-purpose setup for these kinds of reports. So:

  1. Open File ▸ Compile…
  2. Select the “Outline Document” compile Format in the left sidebar.
  3. Click the Assign Section Layouts… button below the preview column in the middle.
  4. Likely you want to select all of the section types in your project in the left column, and then select one of the example templates (or Layouts) from the right. “Title and Synopsis” is maybe what you want, or just “Synopsis”.
  5. Click OK and Compile.

In the future you’ll only have to switch to that Format to get your setup for this project. So you can switch between a full script or just the treatments with one click.

By the way, double-click the preview tile to edit the Format. Once you’re doing that, you’ll find this to be pretty familiar from version 2. That’s the only major change that has been made here: all of those settings are now formalised into a preset system to make it easier to use them across many different projects.

4

Once you resolve the immediate issue, I’d recommend taking a look at our upgrade guide for Scrivener 2 users, which you’ll find here:

literatureandlatte.com/scri … date-guide

Katherine

5

Okey dokey! That works. Thanks.

I’m disappointed in this update – that’s a very longwinded way of doing something. It takes energy and time away from what I should be doing – which is writing.

6

You’re welcome!

I’m not really sure what you’re referring to about “very longwinded” though, sorry. You’ll have to be more specific. Both version 2 and version 3 required an initial setup and learning phase (and by my reckoning, just by counting the elemental steps involved, both are about the same—v2 requires one extra step in fact), and both can be reduced to single-click switching once you’ve done that.

How is one of these “longwinded” and the other not? :slight_smile: Perhaps you learned how to use v2 a long time ago, and kind of forgot what all it took to learn and set up? I mean of course, once you get a process refined, it’s going to be more efficient than learning a new one—but that’s hardly a long-term inefficiency that robs you of writing time in the long run, no?

I’m a bit odd though, I consider writing to be the processes around it, as well. For example, if I were doing this the old-fashioned way with a stack of real index cards, and typing them up on a typewriter, I would consider that task to part of the process of writing. So taking five minutes to click a few buttons instead of hours of typing up metadata into longform seems to me a pretty good reduction on the mechanical overhead that goes into the job. And that’s not even the one second variation that results from the five minutes of setup I did once in my life.

7

I’m having the same problem.

I’m following these steps:

But I’m not given any option to click “Title and Synopsis” or “Synopsis.” Please advise!

8

Screenshot? – Katherine