All righty then.
I may have not followed the suggestions religiously, but I’ve solved the problems. This is coincidentally how many writing problems are solved—someone makes a suggestion that takes you out of your own thinking pattern and allows you to come up with an even better idea than the suggestion.
Better? Not assuredly, but this problem escalated. Today, I discovered that some projects were not creating the frighteningly-large type effect in epub/mobi. That was surprising, since all 4 of my projects use identical compile settings and identical templates.
But that is an even worse problem. At least the large type alerted me to missing styles. It turns out I’d missed dozens of no-style lines that did not display, after compiling, in large type. The styles I use are only subtly different, and no-style, narration in unwrapped lines, and dialogue in unwrapped lines can look almost the same, depending upon where it is being viewed and whether the reader has set the type size larger or smaller.
I wasn’t about to hold my breath for Scrivener to address this. They don’t seem to understand why it’s even a problem, let alone have motivation to address it. That’s ironic, from a program that tries to cover all the bases and typically excels at that. Scrivener is still absolutely the king. No one else does it even close to this well.
If anyone is facing similar problems, maybe this can help:
I decided to embrace the concept of imported styles. I created a small project with the three main styles that have been problematic for me, each in a single short line. Then I gave them different primary colors, so they would stick out. Then I duplicated that project and redefined those styles with black type only.
I imported the colored styles into my 4 main 100k-word projects, then went full screen, set the size to 75%, and just scrolled the entire manuscripts. When I found black type, that meant there was no style applied. I fixed them all, then imported the black-type styles to get back to all black type without changing the style formats beyond the font colors.
IOW, the styles were then all formatted properly, but with different font colors, which was then fixed by importing black-type versions of those styles. Problem solved.
Then I changed the default font to a light purple, so that when I revise, edit, add new lines, those will stick out and remind me to apply the style they need.
These may not be the concepts that were suggested, but what was suggested inspired me to find a fix, so thank you for that.
Now, let’s set the record straight and clear up what appears to be a mystery to some:
First, it IS INDEED necessary to associate a style with every paragraph if you want dialogue to have a different format than narration in fictional prose text, or at a minimum associate a style with one or the other of those. That’s the very definition of a typographical ‘style’—being unique and displaying type differently from another style, and that is exactly what I’m trying to do.
Second, this will be the third time I’ve been compelled to repeat that I am fully aware what the complications can be, and that this is completely beside the point of solving this issue. The fact that it brings complications has nothing to do with the fact that it is still a problem. Did I throw my hands up and whine about it? No, I put my head down and fixed it.
Third, I don’t assume people are trying to annoy me on purpose. What motivation they might have is not clear, and I’m happy to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Fourth, understanding the above three things is the secret to actually being helpful, if that truly is the goal.
Fifth, being admonished by people who don’t understand what I’m saying, very clearly, is indeed annoying, as is jumping to conclusions regarding what I believe about them. My only conclusion is that it is quite obvious no one is really paying attention to what I am saying.
Sixth, I love this forum and I love Scrivener. It does irk me that it was written in a way that has made me have to search for elaborate workarounds to accomplish what I have accomplished, but I consider that just that they never considered this particular application of this wonderful tool, and wrote it in a way that ignored this. That is often referred to as an ‘oversight’.
But that’s not something I blame them for, or even something I expect them to address—just something I expect them to step up and take ownership of. And after all, how did I fix this? By using other features built into Scrivener. So they can take credit for that, if it might make them feel better, and those who suggested what they suggested can also take credit. I’m in everyone’s debt, even if I had to finally fix this issue myself.
I am not being stubborn, I am being resolute. There is a difference with a distinction there.