scrivener dissertation template

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Using Scrivener for PhD Thesis & Dissertations

By Ann Sylvia
June 19, 2020

Scrivener for Academic Writing and Journals

A fantastic tool for academic writers, Scrivener is a word processor that makes writing more convenient, organised and, dare I say it, enjoyable! It differs from other word processors, such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs, in that it has in-built features that help you focus on what you’re writing, and how you’re writing it.

It offers a distraction-free writing experience, a friendly layout and a vast array of organisational features which make it enticing for all sorts of academic writing. And I’m not just talking short essays; I wrote my entire 92,000 word-long PhD thesis and 4th-year undergraduate dissertation in it.

To help show you how the software could revolutionise your writing experience, I will explain what it is, the features it boosts and how easy it is to get started with it.

Scrivener For Thesis, Dissertation & Academic Writing – A Complete Guide

Created by Literature & Latte , Scrivener is a writing tool that takes a unique approach to the way you sit down and write. Rather than create a single file for the document you need to write, Scrivener creates an entire project. Within this project, you can then create sections, outlines and drafts of your document. The project keeps all your work in one place, meaning you can easily organise your thoughts and record any research in the section they’re relevant to. That way, when it comes time to creating your first outline, you already have a ‘pre-outline’ to speak based on the high-level structure of your project.

Here are some ‘structural’ features, which will stand out for your drafting stage.

Corkboard View

If you’ve extracted data or ideas from several research papers, you can save each extract as documents. You can then gain a quick overview of all your research by viewing all your extracts as index cards in a corkboard style view.

This won’t only ensure you never lose sight of the bigger picture, i.e. the question your research paper is trying to answer, but also allows you to reorganise your findings in a logical order. This is thanks to the ‘drag-and-drop’ feature built into Scrivener which lets you rearrange sections by simply dragging them into their new position.

Composition Mode

This feature removes everything from your screen except the document you’re working on. This works surprisingly well when you need to get words down on paper. Removing all visual distractions also helps in eliminating writers’ block, as you’re not continually getting overwhelmed by countless reference papers.

Split-screen View

Scrivener lets you open two documents side-by-side in the editing window. While this isn’t exactly a groundbreaking feature, it’s incredibly useful when you want to refer to data or related papers.

Scrivener Research Paper Dissertation Workflow

Research Folder

Any new project you create has a ‘Research’ folder by default where you can drag-and-drop in all images and documents relevant to your paper. This ensures you always have the information you need accessible through the single click of a button, regardless of where in Scrivener you may be.

This may seem like a small perk, but the efficiency of never having to dig through an endless number of poorly named folders (we’re all guilty of it) can’t be overstated.

Word Count Targets

Writing day after day can get tiring quickly, so it’s not surprising that writers’ block is one of the biggest hurdles all writers face. Although you’ll still have to sit down and force yourself to write, thankfully Scrivener makes this a little easier through its ‘Word Targets’ feature.

With this feature, you can set a word count target for each day, or each writing session if you’d prefer, which remains displayed at the bottom of your window. This helps you monitor your progress, and also has the benefit of helping you to approach your writing goals in a healthier way – in consistent daily sessions rather than long and intense sessions usually followed by burnout.

Scrivener Dissertation Templates

Several Scrivener dissertation templates are available which aim to help you immerse yourself into your academic writing in a matter of minutes. You can find these templates on both Literature & Latte’s website, or on other fan-made websites that also use Scrivener as their go-to writing platform. These templates range from project set-ups for PhD theses and dissertations, to single document set-ups for academic essays or short coursework assignments.

The templates will probably be more useful for undergraduate students writing short pieces of work, however, as all templates can be customised, you should be able to modify a thesis or dissertation template to meet your requirements. I modified an existing template for my PhD thesis but have, and will continue to, use 3rd party templates for drafting journal publications. This is one of the many benefits of Scrivener – it can be as minimalistic or detailed as you would like it to be.

Zotero Scrivener Integration

Using Scrivener for any research paper, whether it’s your PhD thesis, a final year dissertation or your first journal article , there’s still no avoiding that you will have to use citations. Many academic writers use reference managers such as Zotero or Mendeley to eliminate having to reference papers manually.

I personally use Zotero because of its simplicity, plus its compatibility with Scrivener. Here’s a quick guide to show you just how easy it is to integrate the two tools so you can get the best from both worlds.

Install Zotero, which is available as a plugin and standalone app.
Next, install the RTF/ODF-Scan for Zotero, the add-in that makes this integration possible. It can read the citation markers into a document saved as ODT and transform them into Zotero citations automatically.
Under the Preferences tab, click on the Export option – Default Output Format – Scannable Cite. Selecting this lets you insert citation markers by drag and drop or using ctrl+alt+c and ctrl+v. And that’s all there is to it – you can now simply copy-paste citations into your writing from the in-built reference manager.

Scrivener Research Paper Dissertation Workflow

There’s no right way to use Scrivener, but from my experience, there is a wrong way, and that’s by forcing a particular structure or workflow. One of the best features of Scrivener is that it’s flexible enough it can adapt to your individual workflow process. Therefore, I won’t describe my exact workflow as the tool will be more useful if you allow it to adapt to your needs naturally, but I will share a few workflow tips to help you get started quickly after your first time using it.

Tip 1 – Starting Folders

Tip 2 – icons for tagging folders, tip 3 – meta information, tip 4 – outline view.

Final Thoughts

Scrivener is a powerful writing tool that has the potential to transform your entire academic writing experience; from your dissertation to your thesis and journal publications. It provides you with an intuitive way to structure your writing, organise your research and implement popular referencing managers to your disposal.

However, Scrivener is just that, a tool. It won’t turn you into a great researcher if you aren’t one already; similarly, it won’t turn you into an organised writer if you already have poor structuring habits which you aren’t willing to work on. Assuming you don’t fall into this category, I encourage you to try Scrivener, or any other similar writing manager as it will make your next writing task just that much more enjoyable.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not represent the views of DiscoverPhDs. The author nor DiscoverPhDs are affiliated with Scrivener, nor any of its subsidiaries.

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Scrivener (http://literatureandlatte.com/) is a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. While it gives you complete control of the formatting, its focus is on helping you get to the end of that awkward first draft.

Last I checked… Scrivener 2.0 for Mac OS is $45 (Edu $38.25) Scrivener for Windows if $40 (Edu $35)

It Comes with a free 30-day trail. Unless they have changed this, it is a 30 use days trial, not calendar days. What this means is that if you open Scrivener 3 times a week, you get 10 weeks of using it for free. This is nice and you can certainly decide if the application is worth the money to you in this amount of time.

Scrivener has lots of really useful features that I will get into below, but first, I think it would be good to show you the Getting Started screencast made by the developer. This is probably the best way to show you the power of Scrivener as a long-form writing tool.

Unfortunately though, the developer has not allowed the ability to embed the video here, so you will have to open this up in another tab or window. So before you go there to watch this 10 minute tutorial, here are a few notes I want you to have in your head as you watch:

The developer will start a new document using the “Blank Template” – We will want to use the “Non-Fiction Writing” template.
At 3 min in, he will cover dragging document to restructure – We will use “Folders” for chapters and “Documents” for chapter sections.
At 4 min in, he will cover “Cork-board View” – Super useful in the early planning phase of structuring your content.
At 5 min 30 sec in, he will cover “Outline View” – We will need this view to helps us with some goal setting.
At 8 min in, he will cover the “Compile” feature – This feature will allow us to focus on writing instead of formatting. More on that soon.

Introduction to Scrivener Video from http://literatureandlatte.com/videos/ScrivIntroLarge.mov

Welcome back. Hopefully you now see why Scrivener is hands down the best software to use to write your thesis. It allows you a lot of flexibility to break your content down into manageable chunks and reorganize as needed easily without doing a lot of copy and paste action. It also allows you to easily begin working from wherever you are in the process, importing previously written documents, making notes on sections not at the forefront of your current focus, and allowing you to focus on the writing knowing that it can compile your document to fix formatting as you go.

Setting-up Scrivener: Front Matter

To start setting up Scrivener for your thesis document, you will want to start with the “NON-FICTION WITH SUB-HEADS” template rather than the “BLANK” template used in the video. This comes with a couple of nice features built in so that you do not have to figure out how to set these up. First, it comes with this document in it that explains a lot about using the template. Read it.

The most notable feature of this template is the default “ENDNOTES” page. You can rename this Bibliography. Then as you write, you can easily attach a footnote to the in text citations – (Tippery, 2012) – that then includes your full MLA or APA citation. Upon Compiling a draft, all your relevant citations will now appear on this page. At the end of your writing process, you will have to manually put these in Alphabetic Order because they will appear in order of usage, but this is a relatively small task for the final version.

Next you will want to create a new folder. Call it “Front Matter.” Move the default Title and Contents documents to this folder, delete the Forward document, and create new documents for all of these parts of your Front Matter. Getting these things in place really helps make the writing real and gives you a place to start compiling this information as it occurs to you.

Acknowledgements (optional)
Table of Contents
List of Tables
List of Figures

So your front matter will will look like this in Outline View.

A couple of Front Matter Pro-Tips:

Pro-Tip 1 – I made a Cover Page that I included whenever I compiled a draft to send to someone for editing or review. It included my contact info incase my printed document was misplaced, the date that it was complied so I could tell one draft from another, and the word count (rounded to the nearest 100). This word count was for two reasons: One, it let my draft reader know how much reading was ahead. Two, it helped me keep my motivation as I saw that number go up.

Pro-Tip 2 – No single thing made my thesis FEEL more real than the first time I saw the Title Page come out of the printer all formatted correctly. Do this very early to kick yourself into high gear.

Setting-up Scrivener: Chapters of your Manuscript

Next, using your existing thesis outline , create new folders for each of your planned chapters under the Manuscript Heading. You can do this extremely quickly using OPTION-COMMAND-N on a mac or whatever the equivalent is on a windows machine.

Now, we are going to once again take advantage of the very formulaic nature of a thesis. With the exception of the Introduction Chapter, which is its own sort of beast, we want to create two new documents in every chapter folder.

The first is the Chapter Introduction. (I called mine Chapter Overviews because I liked that better than Introductions.) EVERY chapter should have an introduction of some kind. As stated before, people who read theses will scan these to decide if they want to read the chapter. This introduction is also very formulaic. I wrote this formula on the synopsis card so I would not forget.

¶ 01: Create a link back to previous chapters.

“In the previous chapter I provided an overview of some of the larger societal factors affecting Design Education today…”

¶ 02: State the aim, purpose, and/or function of the chapter.

“In the following pages I will frame the state of Design Education currently…”

¶ 03: Outline how you intend to achieve this.

“In order to frame current state of Design Education, I will focus on two aspects. The first is what I will call the ‘Promise’ of design education, or why we teach designers. The Second aspect will focus on the current debate surrounding the future goals of a formal design education…”

So the first document in every chapter folder is your Chapter Intro.

The Second document you will create in every Chapter Folder is the Conclusion. Every Chapter should have a Conclusion. This should cover what has been achieved or established in the chapter that previously had not been.

Point of Clarification: A conclusion and a summary are not the same thing! A summary states what you found out. It is a potted version of the chapter. This is not what you want. A conclusion , on the other hand, states the SIGNIFICANCE or IMPLICATIONS of what you found out. A conclusion responds to the purpose of the chapter, as stated in paragraph 2 of your chapter introduction.

“In the previous pages, I have brought to light some of the complex issues currently in flux with regard to the state of design education and defining the Promise of a formal design education. If we as a discipline are to strive towards resolving these issues as we move into the future, it is evident that…”

So now your Scrivener Manuscript will look something like this, though your chapter titles will be more related to your thesis – not mine.

A Chapter Planning Pro-Tip:

By the time you get to the writing process, you will know an awful lot about your topic. You will also have a lot of this documented in various nuggets in Evernote. Now you need to start building a road map to help you plan more discretely your thesis writing journey.

Once I had this basic structure set up, one of the most helpful things I did was write a draft of every single introduction to every chapter. Then I wrote at least bullet points for what I thought would be in the conclusions. This helped me map my trajectory through the chapter content that would come between these documents. It helped me identify the start and end points for each leg of the journey. Some of the Introductions I obviously had to go back to, in order to touch up a point here and there, but overall this activity was far more helpful than the additional time it took to edit them again later.

Setting-up Scrivener: Writing Goals

The next thing to do is to set up your goals. Remember those word goals we started thinking about in the section on managing your writing ? Get those back out and revisit them now. This should be easy because they are sitting some where in your Evernote “zz.Admin” notebook. Break those larger section goals down into their chapter components.

For example:

Background: 20% or 6,000 words. I had figured out that I was going to have two chapters in this section; one on Culture and one on Design Education. Split 20% in two and each chapter should be about 10% of the total chapter, or 3,000 words. Use your developing outline to split the percentages and word goals into goals for each chapter.

Next, With Scrivener in Outline View and your Manuscript selected in the Binder, click the little square, just below the split screen icon, with the little double arrows. It will open a drop-down menu that lets you select the meta-data columns you want to see. You want at least the following columns in your outline view.

Title: this is the one that tells you the titles of your folders and documents. I also have the Synopsis turned on in the image below.
Status: this one lets you mark each folder or document with where it is the writing process. Is it started? Is it a crappy first draft? Has it been through the editing process and OK’d by all my committee members? Awesome. It is done.
Total Words: this one tells you how many words are in the document or folder.
Target: This one, along with another that called Target Type (which I forgot to turn back on for this screen shot) lets you set your target per document or folder. Target sets a number and Target Type specifies that number as words or characters. I just set Chapter based targets.
Total Target: This one displays your target and target type as one column, but you cannot edit it. Once I had set all my targets, I only displayed this column and turned off the Target and Target Type columns so I would not be tempted to “readjust” my goals.
Total Progress: this one shows a color coded progress bar for each section. as you get closer to your writing goals, the bar fills up and moves from red to orange to yellow and finally green when you achieve the goal.

So get these Columns visible, enter all your word count goals, then turn off the Target and Target Type columns to stick to your goals. Now this view will help you keep track of your progress at the chapter level. There is one final thing we want to set up to let Scrivener help you monitor and achieve your writing goals. This will also help us in the next section to plan our writing timelines.

Setting-up Your Total Manuscript Target

This is really powerful. It bases the number off your goal and how much you have completed. So with this example of trying to finish in a little over a year (from when I first prepared these screenshots) , with a little over 4400 words written, I only have to muster up the courage to put down 152 words three times a week to stay on track. As you type, that second progress bar will work its way from empty to full, moving through the spectrum from Red to Green.

On days when the writing was flowing, I’d usually blow past the daily goal before I realized. Dont stop writing if you are in the zone and have nothing else you have to do. This just lowers the daily goal the next time you open Scrivener. On the days when you are really just struggling though, this gives you a mark to shoot for. You can tell yourself, its cool… muscle through a measly 152 words… make progress… call it a day.

This daily word count writing goal number is important for our next step to get ready to write. Write this number down somewhere safe (Evernote). Now Scrivener is all set up to work for you as you start the real writing and I know you really want to jump into it now, but there is still just a little more high level planning we need to do to make sure you write what you need to when you need to in order to finish on time.

We need to attach your writing goals to a time line that also takes into account some outside factors that you do not have total control of. You need to set Deadlines in your Calendar. ->

Scrivener (and other Academic Writing Software)

Teach Yourself Scrivener
Scrivener with Zotero
Alternatives to Scrivener

Which Scrivener template should I use for a Cornell dissertation or thesis? Avoid the non-fiction essay templates which lack chapters and thus will cause problems when you compile. Choose either blank or non-fiction -->general non-fiction template which allows parts, sections, and chapters. (If you started writing a thesis or a dissertation using one of the essay templates, create a new non-fiction project and drag and drop the documents into it.)

How should I set up Scrivener for writing a dissertation or thesis?

Tips from Hacking the Thesis at The Ohio State University

Can Scrivener create a Table of Contents? Yes. All Scrivener projects have tables of contents. But for academic writers, make sure you've chosen a template that allows chapters. Use "Edit ▸ Copy Special ▸ Copy Documents as ToC" and paste it into the Scrivener document. When you compile as a PDF, the ToC will be formatted text, but if you compile into Word, the ToC will look like hyperlinks. In Word, copy the ToC and "paste special --> unformatted text." Adjust formatting in Word to suit.

Not specific to a academic writing but nonetheless useful: step by step directions on Table of Contents from Scrivener Virgin

How do I format a dissertation in Scrivener? Scrivener was designed for fiction, not dissertations. It can do a lot, but it might not be able to do everything if the dissertation requires complex formatting. In such cases, plan to use Word as a last step. When you're ready to submit, compile the dissertation into Word for a final round of formatting and use the Cornell Graduate School's Word templates for dissertations

Not specific to a academic writing but nonetheless useful: step by step layout & compiling tips from Scrivener Virgin

What cloud storage is recommended for Scrivener? Because a Scrivener project consists of lots of parts, all cloud storage services have the potential for error when syncing Scrivener projects. Scrivener recommends saving the backup to Cloud Storage , not the original. More info Scrivener leans a bit towards Dropbox; the mobile Scrivener app has been designed to work with Dropbox. Dropbox is freemium. If you're not a Dropbox user, consider using it for Scrivener and only Scrivener. Other Cloud services (such as Google Drive, Box, OneDrive,etc.) can be used but have the potential for errors.

Can I use Zotero with Scrivener? Yes, but understand that Zotero isn't as fully functional with Scrivener as it is with Word and Google Docs. However workarounds exist.

How to Use Zotero and Scrivener for Research -Driven Writing from Daily JStor has tips for incorporating Zotero notes and annotations into Scrivener.

Can I use EndNote with Scrivener?

Yes, but it's not as seamless as Word.

Copy a reference from an EndNote Library and paste it into Scrivener which will be a temporary citation. Compile the Scrivener project into Word. Open the document and choose “Update Citations and Bibliography” button OR compile to an .rtf file, then in Endnote, go to the tools window and choose “Format Paper.”

What about Scrivener and foreign languages? Change the interface language under "Preferences/Options -> Language." Add diacritics under "Preferences/Options -> customize shortcuts." Additional tips for working with non-Roman characters (from the Scrivener forum)

Can I install Scrivener on multiple computers as well as mobile devices? Yes, the license allows up to five, if the computers are the same operating system. PCs and Mac's require different versions of Scrivener. Mobile Scrivener for iPhone and iPad must be purchased separately. Best practice is to share the Cloud-stored backup version of a project between computers, not the original.

Can I collaborate with Scrivener? Scrivener was designed for drafting, not collaborating, but Scrivener projects can be shared if all parties have Scrivener. Share a project via email as an attachment. Under Options is a "Sharing" feature that allows import and export of projects. Alternatively, compile for Word and share the Word document. A Word document imported into Scrivener will not retain its Scrivener "track changes" features.

More questions? Consult the Scrivener User's Manual or the Literature & Latte Scrivener forums .

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Next: Alternatives to Scrivener >>
Last Updated: Apr 24, 2024 1:14 PM
URL: https://guides.library.cornell.edu/scrivener

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Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Dr. Serena Killam and I'm going to give you a quick walkthrough here on how to use Scrivener to write your thesis. I wrote my thesis in Scrivener and I absolutely love it and I've regularly conducted workshops for postgrad students on how to use Scrivener. So this is going to be a pretty quick video just to give you a basic overview. I used to blog about this. I've thought about making a course on it for ages, but hopefully this is enough to get you started. So I'm going to assume that you've watched the introduction to Scrivener video. I'm not going to show you all the basics. I'm going to show you how you can set it up to make it work for you for your thesis. So the first thing to do is to get a template and here I'm just going to go new project and we're just going to start with a blank one. I'm going to save it right on my desktop and we're just going to call it thesis draft and I always like to give a date to my things because it really helps if you're coming back to find something later. So I'm going to maximize this now. So the first thing we should probably do is change this title up here to thesis. Then I want to add a bunch of folders which are going to be my chapter folders. So I just do a few under there and I'm just renaming them by clicking straight on the folder as you can see. We probably don't need these two, I've probably gone a bit over so just move those ones to the trash. So then within our chapters of course we want some sections so we can add some new sections here. Now when I was getting set up I did like to try and structure my chapters fairly in similar sizes or similar structure so each chapter had an introduction and a conclusion and then just depending on what faculty or discipline you're from it will kind of depend how you rename these sections. So I'm just calling them concepts here but of course you can call them whatever you want. Main concept 2. So if you find a structure that you like you can also just duplicate that chapter. Now you can see here that it's just added numbers to it but again I could change this. Let's say I'm going to call this chapter 4. I like that structure and then I can just drag it down and reorder it. Actually I want it inside the thesis and so there I've duplicated that exact structure from chapter 1 into chapter 4 but I've just renamed it.

Using Scrivener for Writing Scientific Papers

Word has many flaws, but the most irritating is its amazing ability to hang or crash. It happens all the time, but especially when exchanging documents that have “track changes” enabled with colleagues on PCs. I still remember vividly one night when I was working on a paper that Word crashed more than 30 times.

So infuriating.

Macbook Pro Scrivener Academic Writing in Progress

Enter Scrivener

My frustration with Word drove me to experiment with many other word processors like Pages, OpenOffice , LibreOffice , and Google Docs. Although it wasn’t first on my list to try, I kept hearing rave reviews of a program called Scrivener from accomplished writers like Michael Hyatt and Jeff Goins . Scrivener isn’t a word processor. It’s a writing studio.

Like them, once I gave Scrivener a try, there was no turning back.

Although I fell in love with Scrivener’s writer-friendly layout, organization features, and distraction free writing, the thing that kept tripping me up was citations. Writing scientific papers means using citations, and lots of them. To avoid the massive pain of manually numbering references to other scientific papers, most people use reference managers like EndNote, Mendeley, or Zotero.

The only problem is that while all of these reference managers have plugins for Word (and many for OpenOffice or LibreOffice), none of them have plugins for Scrivener.

After lot of experimenting and digging around, I’ve finally found a straightforward process for using Scrivener to write scientific papers. This processes uses the wonderful (and free) Zotero reference manager so you can still create perfectly formatted bibliographies and inline citations. It also depends on having either OpenOffice or LibreOffice . This isn’t a problem for me, because I keep LibreOffice around specifically for grant reports that I need to submit as Section 508-compliant pdfs. (OpenOffice and LibreOffice both support adding alt-text to images, but I could never figure out how to do that with Word or Pages).

With a little bit of upfront setup, you can reap the many rewards of using Scrivener as your primary writing environment.

Let’s walk through the process.

Setup your tools

Install Scrivener and Zotereo . Scrivener is available as a desktop application for MacOS, iOS, and Windows. Obviously, I use the Mac version (and also the iOS version). There is discounted pricing on an Educational license for faculty and students available too. Zotero is free and available as a plugin for Firefox or a standalone application. I use the standalone application.

Browse to the downloaded rtf-odf-scan-for-zotero.xpi file, select it, and you’re in business.
Now, in Zotero when you fire up the “RTF scan” process it’ll work on .odt files as well.

If Zotero doesn’t have the citation format you need already, browse the the Zotero Style Repository for your target journal.
Once you’ve downloaded a CSL style file from the repository, you can install it by double clicking the file while your Zotero client is running. (See the Zotero documentation if you’re having trouble getting your style to show up).

Sit down and write!

Now, time to do your thing. When writing scientific papers, I use a custom Scrivener template that I developed based on one created by Nermin Salkic, MD, PhD. My Scrivener template lays out the framework for a typical scientific paper. Inside the binder there are separate documents for each of the major sections of the paper, as well as placeholders for tables and figures. Here’s what the template looks like:

As you’re writing, insert citations from Zotero into your Scrivener document with a copy and paste:

Copy from Zotero with Cmd+Shift+C to get the citation
Paste it into Scrivener with the usual Cmd+V

No doubt, inline citations that look like { | Vreeman, et al., 2007 | | |zu:1095885:VDJ4V4NC} are a bit ugly. But, I’ve gotten used to them.

Export to ODT

When you’ve finished writing your manuscript in Scrivener, it’s time to compile your document into ODT format.

Scrivener has tons of options available to fine tune the compiling (exporting) process. The key ones for me are:

Choosing the output format to Compiling For OpenOffice (.odt).
Choosing which sections/components of the paper to export.
Choosing which sections/components should have page breaks before them.
Choosing the output fonts. I love writing in fonts like Baskerville or Crimson Text , but sadly journals and reviewers don’t necessarily have those fonts on their computers. So I export my paper in plain ole Times New Roman.

Run RTF Scan (In Zotero)

Choose File Type: “ODF (to citations)”.
Select your Input File (i.e. the file you just exported from Scrivener).
Select your Output File. I typically just click on the Input File and append “- with citations” to the end of it.
Choose Continue

Insert Bibliography

Sweet! Now we’ve got our manuscript setup in ODT format. To create a Bibliography (e.g. a References page):

Scroll down to your “References” section and delete any placeholder text you may have put in there.

Save as a Word Document

Ugh. I hate to say it, but few journals (well, at least the ones I submit to) will accept submissions in ODT format. Fortunately, LibreOffice makes it dead simple to “Save as” a Word document. Do this, and you’re ready to submit!

Get Published!

That’s it, your moment of glory has arrived. Go submit your manuscript and get published!

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Scrivener Templates You Can Use [Download Here]

Scrivener templates will open up a whole new world of writing and allow your creativity to come alive. Some Scrivener templates are available directly through the Scrivener software , while others are created independently and must be imported.

Either way, you will be able to find a lot of Scrivener templates that will help you through any writing project.

Why a template?

It saves you from reinventing the wheel which saves time and several other resources.

Scrivener offers you with several features which are mostly customized. Your Scrivener experience can be as detailed or as minimalistic as you want it to be.

While a lot of writers prefer to simply use the basic bare-bones blank document, there are many other options that don’t get due attention. With that said, let’s dive into the Scrivener templates that will make writing easier and fun.

Default Scrivener Templates

Scrivener itself offers a few basic templates to help you get started immediately. That’s the beauty of using book writing software. They keep you going right away.

Choose an appropriate template based on what you want to write, and you are all set. Here is a list of default Scrivener templates that are available to everyone who downloads it.

If you are a fiction writer , Scrivener has three options for you.

The basic novel template provides a title page and compile settings for creating a manuscript using a standard novel submission format, or for exporting as an eBook. It includes places for character and location sketches as well as a research folder.

There is a template for novels having different parts. It is the same as the basic novel template but allows the draft to be broken down into separate parts as well as chapters and scenes.

Lastly, you have a short story template which is similar to the novel template, but it includes proper formatting for standard short story submission.

Scrivener isn’t only for novelists and fiction fanatics. Any form of writing can benefit from Scrivener and this includes nonfiction books as well as university essays.

You will find a basic nonfiction manuscript template with in-chapter subheadings. You will also find templates for research or thesis proposals and undergraduate humanities essays. The essay template is based on one that is used at several UK universities .

Script Writing

Scrivener includes a few different options for scriptwriters. For those who write for radio, you will find templates for BBC radio “scene style” and taped drama.

It has templates for comic scripts, screenplays, and stage plays – both UK and US stage play structures are included.

Miscellaneous

Scrivener offers templates for those who are writing a motivational or persuasive lecture, or a recipe collection.

The recipe template provides a cookbook/binder style to organize your cooking resources. It includes color coding and a rating system.

External Scrivener Templates

If none of the core Scrivener templates work for you, you can import your own templates. This has opened up a huge market for template creation and there are hundreds of templates out there to choose from.

You can find Scrivener templates for pretty much anything you think of:

Genre-specific fiction
Novel outlining and structure
Scientific papers
Newspaper articles
Research papers
Brainstorming

That is just to name a few.

When finding a suitable Scrivener template, it is important to determine what type of writing you are doing and what will work best for you.

You might have to go through a few different templates before you find a structure that you will love.

Scrivener Templates for Outlining

If you are planning and outlining fanatic, you can find Scrivener templates that will help you get the job done swiftly.

K. M. Weiland’s Scrivener Template

Stuart Norfolk and K. M. Weiland designed an incredibly detailed template that covers every aspect of outlining you can imagine. It is arguably the most popular outlining template out there.

It is based on the principles she covered in two books she has written on outlining and structuring a novel.

You can download this powerful and comprehensive template here.

Seven Point Plot Structure

Different types and genres of novels will sometimes follow slightly different story structures. If you want a good basic structure with seven points laid out to guide you through creating the major events of your story, then the seven-point plot structure template is your best bet.

Click here to download the template.

You will find several other templates. Feel free to download as many as you want. One of the best templates is “Hero’s journey” structure which is a popular archetype in fiction. Do download it.

Scrivener Templates for Novels

Scrivener provides a basic template for your novel project. If you need more novel templates, you will need to download them.

There are tons of novel templates available out there to choose from. These cater to different writing styles and preferences.

No Nonsense Novel Template

Herron created this template and I have to say that it is one of the best templates out there.

If you are serious about completing your novel from first draft to finished and then to publishing it, this is the template for you.

It includes sections for research and notes and sections for character and setting sketches. It includes a place for storyboarding and has a nine-point outline to help you map out your plot.

It helps you create your sales copy and about the author sections which you will need for publishing.

30 Chapter Novel Template

If you are a beginner and looking for a simple yet effective template, this is for you.

This template is rather basic in nature – it outlines a general 30 chapter novel for you. Of course, you are free to take your story in any direction, but it provides a good general guide.

It has customized documents for each of the 30 different chapters, each with a general topic such as introduction to main character and enemy or antagonist strikes. It makes it easier for you to navigate the structure of a solid story.

You will find a lot of other novel templates, short story templates, story structure templates, and more.

Scrivener Templates for Short Stories

Scrivener is a great tool for researching and completing your short fiction. Short stories are as meaningful and creative as a novel, so don’t hesitate to write short stories with limited word count.

Scrivener have got you covered with its amazing templates.

The Anthology Template

There are different types of writers. Some will come up with a couple of brilliant one-offs in their lifetime, while others are serial short story fanatics.

If you can relate to the latter category, you can use Matt Gemmell’s approach which is sure to help you a lot with your short stories.

He used Scrivener to complete his anthology of short stories. You can read the complete process here . He explains how he began with the basic novel template provided by Scrivener and made some adjustments suitable for an anthology.

Though this is not a complete template available for download, he gives a detailed description of how he did it and the instructions are not difficult to follow. He does include a download at the end that provides the compile settings.

If you are wanting to get going a little faster, you can check out this short story template:

This template is ready to go and will help you craft your short story in the most effective way possible.

Scrivener Templates for Essays

Scrivener is a perfect book writing software that is of great help for students too.

Essays and research papers always include ample research, copious amounts of note-taking, and usually, several drafts. With its organization system and several features, Scrivener can assist you with the most complicated and in-depth projects.

If you’re a student who wants to get started with Scrivener, try downloading some essay writing templates and get started right away.

Essay Writing Template

This basic essay writing template is a great way to get you started on any paper. With documents for drafts and revisions, you can keep track of your editing as you go.

An additional section includes documents for your research and another section handles your notes.

Advanced Essay Template

If you are further along in your schooling and are writing extremely long, in-depth, and well-researched papers, there are helpful templates for you too.

With Scrivener’s powerful features, you can get that paper written in record time without sacrificing quality.

Hattem has outlined his process and experience writing a dissertation with Scrivener. He talks about what he did and shares actionable tips that will help you replicate his technique like a pro.

Genre Specific Scrivener Templates

The beautiful thing about writing fiction is that you can pretty much do whatever you want. It’s your story in your world with your rules.

With that being said novel structures exist for a reason. All stories follow some sort of basic structure and the same holds true for certain genres.

Some avid Scrivener users have taken it upon themselves to share their genre-specific outlining process in the form of customized templates.

Murder Mystery

Mystery novels are hard to write. They require a lot of planning. Every detail must be thought of and kept straight. If the outline is not organized and thorough, plot holes are going to pop up everywhere.

Murder mysteries take it up even another notch.

When done well, a murder mystery is interesting, exciting, nail-biting, and intensely thrilling. But they are complicated to write.

Jennifer Mattern has shared the template she used to create a good murder mystery. It is a comprehensive template that is well-thought and includes everything. You don’t have to do a lot of tweaking. Download it and start writing immediately.

A romance novel can be fairly easy to write or it can be very complex and detailed. It depends on what type of romance you choose to write.

Romance is versatile as it can be interjected into almost any other genre and taken in just about any direction. The typical happy-ending romance is great but sometimes a romantic tragedy can be a breath of fresh air.

If you are a romance writer or want to give it a try, check out this basic romance template by Jami Gold. The template walks you through a basic novel outline/structure. Gold has shared a lot of actionable tips along with detailed instructions on creating a successful romantic arc.

You are sure to love it.

If you’re looking for something a little simpler or more linear, this one might be a good option:

This template walks you through each section of a romance novel. You are free to include as many chapters as you want or need within each section, depending on the length and style of your novel.

It allows you a lot of freedom while still offering solid guidance.

Non-Fiction

A non-fiction book can take any form.

You can write how-to guides, self-help books, biographies, etc. You can choose creative non-fiction which is a true story that is written in the same storytelling format of a novel. There are tons of options available to choose from.

Writing any kind of non-fiction book requires just as much time, effort, research, and attention to detail as a novel. You can seek help from book writing software along the way.

A good nonfiction template for Scrivener is extremely helpful if you are interested in writing an exceptional nonfiction piece.

Read this article for a simple and easy formatting template. Lise Cartwright has explained everything in a step-by-step guide along with a video tutorial that will make your life a whole lot easier.

For something more general that you can fiddle with and customize to your own topic, this template is a great choice:

It offers help and guidance without being restrictive to one style or topic.

World Building Scrivener Template

A good chunk of awesome novels take place in the real world. They maintain real-life settings, real-life limitations, and real-life laws of physics.

Some novels, on the other hand, take place in another world. A world created by the author.

If you have decided to write a story that takes place in a world/reality of your own making, it is going to take a lot of hard work. You must decide on several things such as:

Physical limitations
Social norms
The economy
Education systems

The list goes on.

World building is an arduous task and it can be difficult to keep everything straight. Plus, you need several book writing software to help you throughout the process. But if you know how to do it with Scrivener, it will get easier.

Read this amazing article by Amber on how to use Scrivener for worldbuilding. It is a great tutorial with screenshots that will show how you can create your own world easily in Scrivener without getting lost.

The World Building Leviathan Template

This is an incredibly detailed and comprehensive world building method. It has several steps and it covers all the necessary details and information that will help you build a complete world for your next novel.

Belinda Crawford has a free leviathan Scrivener world-building template that you can download here .

It includes a basic layout to help you write your novel as you build the world. It has chapter and scene documents, and a place for ideas, references, and research.

It also includes a “story bible” where you can store basic plot information as it relates to your specific world – characters, groups/factions, major events, items, etc.

Lastly, it includes an outline of the Leviathan method. There are 53 steps to building your world. It may be a daunting process but once you get through it you’ll have everything you need.

You are sure to love this template.

Fantasy Template

World-building is often something that goes hand-in-hand with a fantasy novel. If you’re looking to write fantasy but want a template that focuses more on the structure of the novel, this is a great one:

You can still achieve some world-building in here, but it’s much simpler to follow and a little easier to understand.

Choose the Template you Love and Get Started

That’s all folks.

Now that you have access to numerous new templates that will aid you in your writing journey, it’s time to get cracking.

And this doesn’t end here. There are hundreds of other Scrivener templates that are waiting to be explored. Find them.

Remember to look for a few key elements when choosing a template:

Organization
Easy to understand
Relevancy to your project
Includes note-taking support
Includes research support

If you can’t find one that works for you, try creating your own. There are endless options when it comes to creating a Scrivener template.

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Scrivener Templates

One of the most popular parts of Scrivener is the ability to use, create and modify the way things work, so as to improve the way you use Scrivener.

However, once you’ve found the best layout, font, and or functions, saving them as a scrivener template allows you to re-access them when you start a new project.

Scrivener templates are fantastic for helping us writers structure our work, make and refer back to notes as we write, and to keep all our research for a project in one place.

So, how about getting your hands on scrivener templates that have already been created for your use?

Read on to discover –

Access to a professionally designed fiction template
Downloadable non-fiction template
List of other free scrivener templates
How to install a Scrivener template
How to create your own

Also, if you’d like to download our free professionally designed Scrivener Templates, just click here!

Scrivener Templates For Fiction

If you want to use a template for your fiction project, you have basically two options – use an existing template or create your own.

The advantages to using a pre-made fiction template are that –

You don’t need to know how to create templates on Scrivener
The story structure is provided for you, so you only have to write
You may be inspired by something found in a template which you wouldn’t have otherwise thought of

In its simplest form, a fiction template consists of folders for chapters, an outline, a place for your research, and blank front matter to make it easy to export and format your fiction project.

At the other end of the scale, complex fiction templates exist which help you to follow advanced techniques such as the snowflake method.

It’s worth taking the time to try out several templates rather than settling for the first one you come across. Experiment to find the right option for your needs and make changes as you see fit. One of the great things about Scrivener is how quick and easy it is to modify or entirely remove parts of a template you don’t find useful.

Scrivener Templates For Nonfiction

Nonfiction Scrivener templates are often a lot simpler than their fiction counterparts.

This is due to the fact that while a fiction project may require a complex story structure, with the word count carefully distributed among a three act structure for maximum impact, a nonfiction project almost always consists of a series of chapters, without any particular need to think about flow or chapter length.

The essential elements of a nonfiction template for Scrivener are a place to outline your work, separate folders for each chapter, a place to store your research (possibly divided into topics or themes), a place to take notes, and the front matter ready for when you export.

List of Other Templates To Download

Below is a collection of other author’s templates for you to use:

Novel Templates:

Mystery Novel Scrivener Template

4 Part Novel Template

Fiction Master Template

30 Chapter Template

Story Structured Stylized Fiction Novel Templates:

The Hero’s Journey Template

Seven Point Plot Structure

The Snowflake Method Scrivener Template

The Great American Novel Template

Blogging Templates for Scrivener:

The Power of Blogging Template

60 Minute Sales Letter Template

Single Blog Post Template

Multiple Blog Post Template

Academic and Research Templates

Academic Paper Template

Research Project Template

Case Study Template

Outlining and Structuring Templates

Outlining and Structure Template (Mac)

Outlining and Structure Template (Windows)

NaNoWriMo Template (Mac)

NaNoWriMo Template (Windows)

Comic Book Template

Minimalist’s Brainstorming Template

How To Use and Install A Scrivener Template

After you download a Scrivener template, you will see a file which has the extension .scrivtemplate.

When you open Scrivener to start a new project, click on options, like in the image below.

When the Options menu opens, click ‘import templates’, like in the image below.

After you open your Scrivener template file, it will open in Scrivener as a new project. You can then proceed to work as normal.

How To Make Your Own Scrivener Template

Making a Scrivener template requires no specialist knowledge. If you can use Scrivener, you can create a template. Template creation takes place within the main Scrivener software.

To create a template, simply set up a project the way you want, ensuring that the actual content is left blank. For example, you would create all of your folders, cork board cards, and texts, without actually filling in any of the information. So if you had a research folder, it wouldn’t actually contain any research. You want to make sure that the icons are changed to the most useful and appropriate options, that the trash is empty and all of the meta data is clean.

When you are sure you have followed the above steps, it’s time to convert the project into a template. In the main file menu, you will notice the option ‘save as template’. Warning! Save as template is separate from the main ‘save as’ section, situated lower on the menu.

After you have saved your project as a template, you will have a file in the format .scrivtemplate. You can then easily open this in your own version of Scrivener for future use, or share it with others.

How to Modify Scrivener Templates

Sometimes, you’ll find a Scrivener template which is more or less what you’re looking for but contains aspects you don’t need or is missing something you do need.

If that’s the case, it’s super easy to modify the template and save it as your very own. Before getting started on the actual project (in order to keep the content blank), delete, add or change the parts you want, then click ‘save as template’. This will give you the exact, customized Scrivener template you need.

Some of the things you may want to consider switching up include –

The icons used (consider your own system of icons and color coding)
The notes on the corkboard (check these fit your requirements first)
The way the research is divided up (your project probably has specific research needs)
The style of the front matter (perhaps you don’t want a dedication page, for example)

Once you’ve made all of your modifications, and clicked ‘save as template’, you will be the proud owner of a customized .scrivtemplate file which you can use time and time again without having to repeat the same modifications.

Scrivener Template Takeaways

By now, we’ve learned that –

Scrivener templates are available for almost any type of writing project
You can use Scrivener templates to allow you to focus on writing
Scrivener templates can be adjusted to your needs and easily saved

What are some of your favorite ways to use Scrivener templates? Do you prefer to avoid them altogether? Let us know in the comments!

Mike Thompson

A Group Blog on Early American History

Dissertating with scrivener.

Much of the basics regarding Scrivener can be found in that previous post, so, if you are wholly unfamiliar with the application, I suggest reading that portion of the post. Scrivener has been around for a long time now and was originally designed for novelists and screenwriters. Immediately after first seeing the GUI, I could see the ways in which it could be easily adapted for historians. In that first post, I was describing how I used Scrivener for a journal article length piece of writing. But today I want to focus on how I have used it to produce a much longer piece of writing with a much larger amount of research.

As you can see from the screenshot above (click for full-size view), Scrivener organizes material in the left sidebar or “Binder.” At the top is the main document that you are writing, i.e., “Dissertation.” Using individual text documents, I created the structure of the dissertation in Parts and chapters. During the initial phases of the project, each chapter also had various subdocuments related to each of the chapter’s major themes. For example, I might have a subdocument under a chapter for the chapter’s introduction. Then subsequent subdocuments for each distinct part of the chapter. In this way, the Binder allows you to break down your work into manageable sections. Once I had drafted a chapter, I would combine them into a single chapter document. This would be especially helpful for people writing chapters that rely on subheadings for organization. Needless to say, the structure of my dissertation changed a lot over the course of writing it and early on, thanks to the nature of Scrivener’s Binder, I was able to shuffle pieces of writing around, both within a chapter and, if necessary, from one chapter to another. Ultimately, in addition to acting as a way of structuring your work, the main document in the Binder also serves as an outlining tool and a visual representation of the outline of your work.

Within my main “Research” folder, I have created detailed layers of subfolders. So each chapter gets its own folder with subfolders labeled “Primary” and “Secondary.” Within both of those (which often correspond), I include subfolders for each of the chapter’s main themes and topics. Beyond that, you could decide to give each individual repository at which you did archival research its own subfolder. How you want to do it and how far you want to go is up to you but even the most complex number of layers of subfolders is easy to view and work with in the Binder. And, ultimately, that is the beauty of Scrivener and its Binder. Not only does it make managing a large amount of different materials easy, it also acts as a one-stop location for all of your research and writing together (my Scrivener project file contains over 4,000 individual files and totals 26.8GB).

Besides the top-level “Research” folder, I also have a number of other top-level folders. These are usually called “Working Documents,” where I kept things like my dissertation prospectus, bibliographies, and even emails with my advisor and others offering feedback. I also keep a top-level folder called “Notes,” where I keep my random thoughts and other miscellaneous things. For example, every few months as the project progressed, I would write a 30-second spiel about the dissertation and I kept them all (dated, of course) in a subfolder called “Synopses” within the Notes folder. That has allowed me to see how my own thinking about the project most broadly has changed over time. Finally, I have two folders called “Fellowships” and “Conferences” where I would keep information and application/submission proposals.

Since we’ve talked about how I use Scrivener to manage my research materials, let me just say a few words about the writing process in Scrivener. Each of the documents you see in the main Dissertation folder is just a rich text file. When you import Word documents anywhere into Scrivener, they get immediately converted into rich text files. It is important to note that Scrivener is designed primarily to help you produce a first draft that can be exported (or, in Scrivenerian parlance, “Compiled”) into your chosen file format. Without the usual page layout controls one using Word might be accustomed to, Scrivener lets you just concentrate on the actual writing as opposed to formatting. There are caveats, however. Since it deals with rich text files, it handles footnotes by putting them in the right sidebar rather than in the text file (see above). This can be a bit strange at the beginning but you quickly get used to it. As noted above, though, the ability to break chapters down into bite-size pieces by giving each its own subdocument, helped greatly in not becoming overwhelmed when starting a new chapter from scratch. When you have a draft (of a chapter or the dissertation as a whole), you can choose to Compile it to a Word document. The Compile settings let you set all the standard page layout features including spacing and fonts as well as how to handle/format your footnotes.

Ultimately, I used Scrivener for my dissertation (and, likely, the manuscript to follow) because it provides a single space in which I do the vast majority of work. To have everything in one place is an enormous convenience that has become a necessity. And, because I keep my Scrivener project file in my Dropbox folder on my hard drive, it constantly updates with almost every change. That means I never have to worry about losing any of my work and I can pick up right from where I left off on my (or anyone’s) laptop or desktop. The other great thing about Scrivener is its customizability and flexibility. Scrivener can be setup for almost any kind of historical-related project one can imagine and tweaked according to each user’s own preferences. For example, I currently have a Scrivener project dedicated to the job market (where I work on and keep document drafts and information relevant to each job) and I usually create one for each class I teach. Now, despite the length of this post, I have only really touched on the very basics of using the application, so I am happy to answer any questions in the comments related to the application and how I’ve used it in writing my dissertation. And once again, I am offering a new dissertation/large project template file, my Preferences file, and my up-to-date Chicago-style preset file which can be downloaded here .

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37 responses

Thanks for this great post, Michael. Would you mind talking about how to use the tagging and metadata features?

I can’t upload pictures here but each document also gets a “Label” and “Status” drop-down menus, which you can customize. So for the former I use “primary source,” “secondary source,” etc… And for the status, I use things like “To Do,” “In progress,” “Completed,” and a number of others. The keywords I described above in the piece, which is probably the main way of traditionally tagging your documents. Finally, each document also has a “Metadata” tab in the right sidebar for which you can customize the fields. All of these things occur in the right sidebar. In addition, Scrivener’s search function is excellent and allows you to search for keywords in any part of the document or attending information/metadata/comments.

Do you also use Zotera to manage references? Does Zotera work in conjunction with Scrivner?

Gene (and David), I do not use Zotero with Scrivener so I can’t answer your question from my own experience. I actually prefer to type up my footnotes “by hand” and for bibliographies I use an application called Papers. I’m pretty sure you can drag a reference from Zotero into Scrivener and it will drop the formatted reference in your text or footnotes. But I don’t know if there is a CWYW-type way of connecting the two. A quick look on the very good user forums on the Scrivener website would likely answer that question quickly.

Thank you. I will try as I really like Zotero

Much of my research is in Zotero, so this is a critical element in considering using Scrivener. While there is no direct integration, I have learned there is a plugin for Zotero that helps create a multi-step workaround if your final output is going to be to either Open/LibreOffice or MS Word. I’m still on the fence about Scrivener’s overall value to me, but I have tried the integration method linked below (method#2), and it does work:

http://dahl.at/wordpress/2014/02/05/scrivener-and-zotero/

Thanks for the great tutorial and the files.

This is great, as I’m currently doing my prospectus using Scrivener! As Gene Procknow asked, do you use Zotero with it? I’ve seen this method of integration but it still feels clunky… http://thedigitalresearcher.com/how-to-use-zotero-with-scrivener-part-2/

David, see my comment to Gene above.

However, is Scrivener freeware? Or does one have to pay for full features?

Scrivener is $45 but $38 for academics and students.

Also, I perhaps should have noted this in the post: I am not affiliated with Literature and Latte, the producers of Scrivener, and have not received any form of compensation for this post.

Nice post, Michael. I’ve done just about all my writing on Scrivener since fall, 2007, not long after it came out, and find it indispensable for how I work. Unlike with Microsoft Word, it allows for the writer to put conceptualization first, and reduces writing distractions. That said, as with other people on this thread, I also use Zotero, which means having to employ a workflow (as Carl linked to, above) for citations. Also, the iOS version, released (finally!) in July, works great on an iPad, and allows easy syncing through Dropbox. Scrivener’s built for long-form writers from the bottom up, and at this point, I can’t imagine, or at least don’t want to, writing otherwise.

Thanks, Andy! I could pretty much echo every one of your comments. I switched to Mac in 2009, primarily because I wanted to use Scrivener. I’ve used it for journal articles (and for teaching) but it’s real utility has been with the dissertation, i.e., long-form writing. At this point, I can’t imagine doing any kind of research/writing project without it. I am a huge hoarder of PDFs of both primary and secondary sources and simply could not manage such large numbers of files in any other way. And certainly not in a way that was wholly integrated into the actual process of writing. Like I said in the post, it’s the “one-stop” nature of Scrivener that allows my research and writing to be two parts of a single process and I have found that enormously helpful, both in conceptual terms and in terms of productivity.

Michael, I can’t get your files to function in my Mac version of Scrivener. Any advice would be appreciated.

TO USE THE FILES LINKED TO IN THE POST:

1) Find PREFERENCES (on PC, under FILE or EDIT). In the bottom-left of the Preferences pane, choose MANAGE and LOAD ALL PREFERENCES. Choose the file: “Hattem-Scrivener-Preferences.prefs”

2) Back in the project, choose COMPILE and FORMAT AS. Then MANAGE COMPILE FORMAT PRESETS and IMPORT. Choose the preset file “Chicago Compile Preset” and it will be available whenever you need to compile a project.

Great stuff. I’m just wondering how to use the presets for Chicago.

1) Find PREFERENCES (on PC, under FILE or EDIT). In the bottom-left of the Preferences pane, choose MANAGE and LOAD ALL PREFERENCES. Choose the file: “Hattem-Scrivener-Preferences.prefs”

Thanks, Michael!

Pingback: Course Planning with Scrivener – Smart Women Write

Hello! Really great stuff. I’m from Brazil and here isn’t common to use the Scriviner. But I’m really like it to use for my dissertation. My question is, do you use Scrivener when you transcribe quotes and notes directly from your documents (primary sources)? Or do you write in a paper, notebook or Word and then transcribed to Sriviner? (sorry my english!)

Michael, if this comment thread is still active, I’m interested in this question too. About to start my first nonfiction book, 90K words, and using Scrivener for the first time. I want to set up a system for notes and quotes from my sources. Thanks for any insight!

For quotes, I would copy or type the most useful quotes from the document (along with a summary) in the notebook section in the right sidebar so whenever I looked at the document in Scrivener, the notes and quotes would be there. For notes, I either used a Scrivener doc I kept in a folder called “Notes” or I also used Evernote, if I needed to take something down and wasn’t at home or had Scrivener open. Then I could use the share function in Evernote to import the note directly into Scrivener or just copy and paste the text from the Evernote note into my Scrivener notes document. Hope that helps!

Thank you Michael for sharing your knowledge. I also use Papers and love it. I have used Scrivener for some shorter papers (compiling them to APA format) tweaking and adding references via papers magic cite. Works really well.

I am about to start writing my dissertation and wanted to use scrivener. I’m not sure how to find your files “attached to this post”….is there a link somewhere? Thanks.

I meant to write: “I have used Scrivener for some shorter papers (compiling them to APA format) exporting to Word then tweaking and adding references via papers magic cite. Works really well.”

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Thank you for this blog post and making available your preset files, Michael. It’s quite generous. I’m wondering if you might say a bit more about how you use Papers. The Papers screenshot from your earlier workflow post shows a degree of PDF organization that’s bordering on sublime, and I’m planning to begin using the program asap.

I’ve noticed there’s a Primary Sources folder in that screenshot, so you’re storing those in Papers, too? Everything goes there? Do you also convert your archival JPEGs to PDFs for storage there?

Jacob, in the beginning I did include primary sources in Papers (mostly PDFs of old newspapers). However, I quickly moved to simply storing them in my Scrivener project file and I continue to do that today. This is partly because my sources are specific to individual projects but also because Scrivener allows me to have a much more complex (though more easily navigable) multi-tiered folder structure for my primary sources. In Scrivener, I import JPGs taken at archives directly (though Papers will allow you to import images as well). It’s mostly a matter of preference and need.

Thank you, I appreciate the follow up!

A significant drawback of Scrivener for course management is that the main binder can only contain RTF files. You can put other file types down below in “Research,” but it is difficult to have a single folder per class, for example. On the other hand, I had forgotten about using Collections. I suppose I can set up each class as a Collection, and then pull material from different places. I’ll try it. Software that I use: EagleFiler for my document manager; OmniOutliner for outlining and taking notes; Nisus Writer Pro for writing (though I’m moving away from it as I use Scrivener more). Experimenting with DevonThink

That is a good point about the main binder, but since you won’t be “compiling” anything there’s no need to use the main binder as your main folder. I’ve used both OmniOutliner and DevonThink in the past and liked the latter much more than the former.

Tried the link and it no longer works.

Does anyone have a copy of the file?

Hi Michael,

Thank you for your invaluable advice, and for your generosity, in sharing these files. When I download them from drop-box the Scrivener Files folder is fine, but the three within it remain greyed out. I am working in Scrivener-3 and guess that is maybe why I can’t select them under Import Format? If you have any suggestions I would be most appreciative. I would like to add Chicago style dissertation settings.

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Katelyn Knox

Helping Scholars Finish Strong First Books

Scrivener 3: An In-Depth Review for Academic Writing

last updated on December 19, 2017

What is Scrivener 3?

Scrivener is word processing software published by Literature & Latte. It is unique in that the entire “project” is a file, and within the project, you can write drafts and store documents. You can think of your “project” as a folder that has all your writing in one place, and that you can organize and hierarchize. This makes it the best word processor for academic writing.

Scrivener 3 vs. Word (or other Word Processing Software)

Do you find that your academic writing projects extend across multiple documents? Do you regularly have multiple Word documents and PDFs open when you write your drafts?

The main difference between Scrivener and Word is that Scrivener has built-in attention to both structure and content, while Word (or other word processing software) just allows you to type documents. In Scrivener, each piece of writing is a “project.” You can keep everything–including academic articles– inside of the project itself. Scrivener’s overview video really sums this up nicely. (Video not displaying? Watch it on Vimeo ).

This attention to structure and content makes Scrivener 3 the best word processor for academic writing.

What Makes Scrivener Awesome for Academic Writing?

Built-in attention to structure and content. For me, this makes Scrivener 3 the clear winner over word. I usually jump around a lot when writing academic articles and books. I tend to switch between drafting new material and organizing what I’ve already written. Scrivener 3 allows me to easily switch between drafting and organizing modes.
My writing feels less linear and lower stakes . I tend to produce a LOT of drafts and need to “write through” my ideas to figure out what I’m trying to say. When I write in Scrivener , the drafts I produce feel lower stakes than when I write in Word.
Corkboard View. When you select multiple pieces of writing, you can choose to see them as one continuous document (like you’d see in Word), or as notecards on a corkboard. Dragging and reordering the cards moves around your text. So you never have to copy and paste multiple paragraphs again to reorganize your draft! This feature makes Scrivener awesome for academic writing, because you can simply drag a notecard from one spot to another, and Scrivener will automatically reorganize your draft.

Corkboard view in Scrivener 3 In Depth Review

Splitscreen View. By far one of the best features of using Scrivener for academic writing is splitscreeen view, meaning that you have two “documents” open side-by-side in your editing window. I find this extremely useful when quoting from primary or secondary sources, and when referencing my other writing.

Scrivener 3 In depth review Split Screen View

Composition Mode. Ever wished the world would disappear so that you could focus better? Try out Scrivener’s composition mode for academic writing! It takes away everything from your desktop (including the time and any pesky notifications), leaving only you and writing.

Scrivener 3 In depth review Composition Mode

Word Targets. Do you find setting and meeting word-based goals rewarding? Or, alternatively, do you struggle to stay under your maximum word count? Not only does Scrivener always display the word count of individual documents, but its “Word Target” feature gives helps you stay on track. In a Scrivener 3 vs. Word head-to-head comparison, this feature makes me do all my drafting in Scrivener!

Scrivener 3 in depth review word target feature

Keep all your documents in one place (“Research” Folder). All new Scrivener projects, by default, contain a “Research” folder where you can drag and drop documents and images. This means that you always have all of your relevant documents (articles, webpages, etc.) on hand. Never again will you have to search through your computer to find the article you want to cite!
The app version syncs across all my mobile devices (iPhone and iPad). Do you have frequent small chunks of time and wish you could work on your academic writing? Do you have ideas but not your laptop or computer? The Scrivener app syncs your writing across all your devices. So, you can add text on your phone, and have it there when you open the project on your computer!

Check Scrivener Out!

Scrivener 2 vs. Scrivener 3 for Academic Writing

Is Scrivener 3 worth the $25 upgrade from Scrivener 2? Yes. Here’s why:

Lock Screen in Place. Do you sometimes accidentally switch the wrong document in splitscreen view? In Scrivener 3 you can lock one or both of your documents in place.

Scrivener 3 in depth Review Linguistic focus adjectives

Split already split editing windows. Now, you can have up to four documents open at once, instead of just two.
Easier to use Quick Reference Panes. Quick reference panes “pop” your research or other document into a floating window. With Scrivener 3, there is a quick reference pane button in the top bar, which you can either drag documents onto, or click if the document is highlighted.

Try Scrivener for Free for 30 Days

A Few Limitations of Scrivener 3 for Academic Writing

After finishing an article or chapter, instead of using Scrivener’s built-in “compile” feature, I usually simply copy and paste my text into a Word document for final formatting. In my experience, Scrivener’s “compile” function adds goofy formatting.
I use Endnote as my reference manager, and Scrivener is not currently able to format Endnote citations. I simply insert the unformatted citations into my footnotes. Then, I format my notes and bibliography once I am at the point of finalizing my Word document.
The Scrivener app is still very limited compared to the full program. Splitscreen, for instance, is still possible, but difficult in the app.
Sometimes, I encounter syncing errors when opening the same document on multiple computers. Scrivener, though, always alerts me to the issue, and saves any documents that are different in a special “Conflicts” folder.

Where to Get Scrivener (including a Scrivener 3 Education License)

Try or Buy Scrivener!

Literature & Latte also has an extremely generous trial offer: you can download the software and use it for free for 30 days. Click on the “download trial” button on this page .

Still have questions about Scrivener, or want to hear more about how I use it to do certain things? Leave a comment or email me !

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Reader Interactions

March 22, 2018 at 5:16 pm

Correction: the “Lock Screen in Place” feature is indeed present in Scrivener 2 (I’m using it as I type this). Other than that, it’s a bummer to find they haven’t done anything else to better enable academic writing with citation integration.

December 11, 2018 at 9:52 pm

Ah, I guess I never discovered that feature on Scrivener 2. Thanks for the info!

April 5, 2018 at 1:18 pm

Thank you for writing this review. I have used Scrivener for academic purposes for a long time and my workflow included Sente 6 as a reference manager and PDF organizer/reader. Sente is no longer supported and I need to look at another reference manager/PDF reader organizing alternative that works well with Scrivener. I see you used Endnote. I used it in the past and preferred by far Sente. My university gave me Endnote X8.2, but I am unconvinced. Do you have any thoughts on Bookends or other more mac-friendly reference managers that do also help organize PDFs? Or perhaps you know a good review about it? Thanks!

December 11, 2018 at 9:54 pm

Thanks for the great question! I started with Endnote my last year of college (believe it or not!), and kept using it because that’s where my entries were, and I had a lot of practice getting it to do the things that I need my reference manager to do. I never really explored changing (except for a quick trial of Zotero) because it seemed like it would be too much work to migrate all my references and learn a new tool. But if you have any recommendations that do have a cite while you write feature in Scrivener, please do let me know!

December 4, 2018 at 11:34 am

Hi Prof Knox Thanks for your super post. I’m using Scrivener to write my PhD Thesis (in basic science/medicine) and have recently upgraded to Scrivener 3. I thought I had the perfect combination of writing tool (Scrivener) and reference manager (Papers) until a few months ago it all stopped working well. Papers 3 has been purchased by ReadCube and they seem to have stopped updating and supporting Papers – specifically, my “MagicCitations” (cite while you write) function no longer works.

I wondered what your experience was of an ideal reference/citations program for Scrivener 3?

Thanks Shamim

December 11, 2018 at 9:46 pm

Sorry for the belated reply! You ask an excellent question: this is actually my biggest issue with Scrivener, too. I personally use EndNote, and there is currently no ability to have EndNote format references (cite while you write) in Scrivener. So, when I’m done with the manuscript, I copy and paste the text into Word (or “compile”) for a “final formatting” pass. I haven’t been able to find a good workaround for this. I did recently see Zotero will work on Google Docs, so maybe they will offer some sort of Scrivener compatibility in the future?

Best of luck,

March 7, 2019 at 8:26 pm

Hello Shamin

Here’s a great description on how to do it. Hope it helps!

https://danielvreeman.com/using-scrivener-for-writing-scientific-papers/

February 10, 2019 at 11:16 pm

Thanks for demonstrating “Linguistic Focus.” I never noticed it.

Using endnote as your bibliography managers: EndNote is notoriously awkward and expensive, especially on Mac. It used to be very buggy; perhaps that has improved. But it is also the standard in many departments, which allows it to lag so far behind. My advice is to avoid it if you have a choice. Estella Maris, this means you! For example: EndNote integrates with MS Word, but not Scrivener.

I use Bookends, which is well integrated with Scrivener. There are several alternatives, including some mentioned in other comments to this post.

February 11, 2019 at 4:10 pm

Thanks for the helpful recommendation on Bookends as a reference management software that works well with Endnote! I’ll have to check it out. Thanks again!

How to Use Zotero and Scrivener for Research-Driven Writing

This month, I’m doing something a little different with my column: I’m sharing the system I use to write it, so that you can use or adapt my system.

How we structure the writing process shapes not only how we articulate our ideas to the world, but also, how we work through those ideas ourselves. The digital environment in which we do that work may feel crucial to those of us who earn a living through our writing, but this environment should matter to anyone who does significant amounts of writing for work or leisure.

I wrote those words two years ago in a column about Scrivener , the writing software I use to write my columns for JSTOR Daily (and other publications). I now use Scrivener in tandem with Zotero, a bibliographic software tool that makes it easier to organize source materials and insert citations, and I’ve developed a workflow that makes it dramatically easier to draft articles based on scholarly research.

So, this month, I’m doing something a little different with my column: I’m sharing the system I use to write these columns, so that other researchers, writers, and students can use or adapt my system. If you do a lot of writing based on research in JSTOR (or other academic materials), I suspect you’ll find that the combination of Zotero, Scrivener, and Zotfile (a plug-in for Zotero) lets you work much more efficiently, and with better results.

Many writers already know Scrivener as a tool for long-form writing, and many academics already use Zotero to track their citations. As the scholars Jason Muldrow and Stephen Yoder explain in Out of Cite! :

Zotero is able to recognize the information necessary for a citation on Web sites ranging from JSTOR to Google Scholar to YouTube, and to store that readily available information in your Zotero library… Within the record you are able to attach an unlimited number of documents (Word, PDF, TXT, etc.) as well as create notes about the reference. If it is an item you found online, you can even archive a copy of the Web page and annotate the Web page directly.

These features make Zotero an ideal partner to Scrivener in writing material based on quoting or citing existing materials. Think of Zotero as the database that helps you get to an outline—or even a first draft.

It’s taken some experimentation to figure out how to use Zotero and Scrivener in a way that accelerates my writing. I’ve shared my system in detail below, which may make it look complicated: Consider following the process step-by-step and you should find it quite easy to repeat (or tweak to your own needs) in the future. You may also find it helpful to look at this sample Scrivener file ( download zip file here ) based on material from Zotero. My sample file includes the material I collected and organized for my recent column, “ The 4 Questions to Ask Before You Unplug, ” and also provides a short summary of the steps below.

Ingredients

My system uses the following pieces of software:

Scrivener (available for Mac, Windows, or iOS) for actually writing your article or book. You can download a trial version here , which will work for 30 days. If you’re new to Scrivener and have trouble finding any of the menu options I reference in the directions below, you can look them up in the downloadable Scrivener manual.
Zotero (free download for Mac, Windows, Linux). This is the software you will use to collect your research materials and generate citations. You may want to pay for an annual subscription that increases the amount of space available for storing your Zotero library in the cloud, but it’s not necessary to making this system work. .
Zotero connector for your web browser (Firefox, Chrome, or Safari), so you can easily save things to your Zotero collection.
Zotfile (a free plugin for Zotero) for extracting article highlights. Follow the instructions on the Zotfile site to get it up and running in your Zotero installation.

Step 1: Collect source material in Zotero

Save to Zotero button shown in browser bar

When I’m starting work on a new article, I begin by creating a new collection in Zotero, named for the topic of my story. Then I open my web browser and start searching in JSTOR for materials related to that topic. I’m a bit of a drunken sailor when it comes to rounding up research materials: I usually just command-click on every result that looks interesting until I have a few dozen tabs open.

Then I click through each tab in turn, taking only a very quick look at each article to decide if it’s something I might want to read. If it is, I click on the Zotero Connector in my browser toolbar to save the article citation (and the article’s PDF) to Zotero. (For reasons that will become clear, I wait until the article is in Zotero before I actually read it—or even properly skim it.) Note that the Zotero Connector button varies a little in how it looks depending on what you’re saving, but it will always be in the same position in your browser toolbar. You’ll know that the article is saving to your new collection (and as a full PDF) when you see the little download notification pop up in your browser.

Step 2: Review and highlight your source material

Once I’ve accumulated a promising collection of materials in Zotero, I start by reading (or skimming) the articles that I expect will be most useful to me. I usually start by sorting my collection by year, so that the articles published most recently are at the top of my window. But sometimes I refine my search keywords in the process of reviewing my initial results, which means that the most relevant results are the ones I save later in my search process. Sorting my Zotero collection based on when the item was added can make it easier to find those items and read them first. (If you don’t see the “date added” column in Zotero, just click the column selector button to see the drop-down menu that lets you choose which columns you want to view.)

location of column selector button in Zotero

When I spot an article I want to read or skim, I double-click to open the full-text PDF. Since I’m on a Mac, that PDF opens in Preview. I use the highlight tool in Preview to highlight any line or section of the article that looks like something I might want to quote or refer to while reading. If you’re reading an article that has a multi-column layout, you may need to select the text you’re highlighting by using the select tool (or option-dragging) to draw a text box around the text you want to highlight.

Once I’ve finished reviewing an article, I close the PDF and then return to the entry for that item in Zotero. Right-click on the item in Zotero (control-click on a Mac) to bring up the contextual menu, and then choose Manage Attachments/Extract Annotations. (This is the option you get by installing Zotfile.) Zotfile will now chug through the highlights in your PDF, and magically extract them for you, so you don’t have to type them out! It’s not perfect—it might misread a few characters here and there—but it works for me most of the time.

Zotero's "extract annotations" submenu, thanks to Zotfile

Continue this process for all the articles you want to read until you have extracted annotations for each article you’ve read and highlighted. As you’re reading, skimming and highlighting, notice any recurring themes or topics that are covered in the materials you’re reviewing. this will help you think about how to categorize your quotations once you get them into Scrivener.

Step 3: Export your annotations

Your next challenge is to get all those juicy quotes into Scrivener, where you can work with them. Select all the extracted annotations at once, and then right-click (Windows) or ctrl-click (Mac) to get the contextual menu. Choose “Generate Report from Items,” and you’ll get a new pop-up window with all your annotations. A hyperlink to the source citation will be included in each quotation. Select all the text in this window, and then copy and paste into a text editor with a solid search-and-replace function. (I use Microsoft Word.)

Take a moment to zip through the document and delete the item titles that appear at the top of each block of quotations: Delete everything from “Parent item” to the date stamp that follows “Extracted annotations.” They’ll be easy to spot, because they will be in bold.

Now, you need to give Scrivener a way of recognizing the break between each individual quotation. The parenthesis that ends each citation isn’t a good bet, because lots of quotations contain parentheses within the text body. So I like to go through the document using search and replace, and replace each closing parenthesis with the combination of parenthesis plus curly bracket, like this: )} But I don’t want to replace parentheses that are inside the body of my text, so I tell search and replace to look for a parenthesis that’s followed by a line break. Then I replace it with a parenthesis, curly bracket, and line break. Your document should like something like this:

Block of text with curly bracket at end of each quotation

Save your document as a Word, Open Doc, or RTF file. Don’t use plain text, or you’ll lose the hyperlinks back to the original citations in Zotero. At long last, it’s time to import your quoted material into Scrivener!

Step 4: Import your quotations

Create a new folder in Scrivener with a name like “Quotations.” Next, from the File menu in Scrivener, choose Import…/Import and Split.

In the file section window, navigate to the text file you just created with all your quotations. Check the option at the bottom of the window for “Split into sections by finding separators in the text.” And for “sections are separated by,” enter a } bracket like the one you used at the end of each quotation.

Now, click the Import button. Scrivener will now import all your quotations, making each one a separate “document” inside your quotations folder. You’ll see something like this in the left-hand sidebar (what Scrivener calls the “binder”):

Step 5: Organize your quotations

By this point in my process, I usually have some idea of how I want to organize my article, or at least, I know the major topics covered by the various materials I’ve collected. If I know what my structure or subsections are going to be, I create folders for each subtopic within a “Top quotes” folder. If I don’t yet know how it’s going to work out, I just put the quotes I like best into “Top quotes” and look for themes as I go. (I often end up creating subfolders as I drag my top quotations into the “Top quotes” folder, because patterns emerge through that process.)

Because I’m usually writing for a general rather than academic audience, I care as much about whether a quote is juicy and fun to read—or exceptionally pithy and articulate—as I do about its content. So my process of looking at quotations is about style as well as substance: I start by looking for the quotations that would make for a great article, and try to weed out the quotations that won’t be particularly engaging. I create a “More quotes” folder for the quotations that don’t make the cut, dividing these into “nope” (quotes I definitely don’t want to use), “meh” (quotations that might ultimately prove useful to making a specific argument, but aren’t particularly special) and “TBD” (quotations I’m not sure about, but don’t want to slow down to decide).

Once I have my folders set up, I zip through the individual quotation documents I just imported into my “Quotations” folder, and drag them into the various subfolders I’ve just created. (Tip: Use the “Scrivenings” group mode and set the scrivenings window to “Lock in place,” so you can see all your quotations and rapidly click through from one to the next.)

If you’re doing a long-form project, with hundreds of imported quotations, all this dragging and dropping into folders may be annoying and cumbersome. In that case, you might find it more practical to use Scrivener labels to assign categories to each quotation: Just define your own set of labels, and then use the drop-down menu to label each quote while viewing it in Outline mode.

If you need to see more of each quotation in order to categorize it, switch back to Scrivenings mode and set the view to “lock in place;” then turn on the Inspector by clicking the blue “I” in the upper right of the Scrivener window. This will give you a right-hand sidebar with details on each of your quotation documents. Navigate through your quotations by clicking in the binder. As you do, that quotation will move to the top of your Scrivenings panel, and you’ll be able to apply your chosen label using the label options in the bottom of the Inspector panel. Once you’ve labelled all your quotes you can return to Outline mode, sort by label, and either drag each group of quotations into its own folder or just work from the sorted Outline view as you get to work on writing.

Scrivener view with quotation folders in left-hand binder and full quotations visible in main window

Step 6: Write your post, article, chapter, or book!

This is the point where the magic of Scrivener and Zotero pays off: By giving you a quote-driven structure for your article or chapter, or at least making it easy for you to find the quotations you need to flesh out the argument you have in mind. I’ve used this workflow both ways, either organizing my quotations into folders based on a prior structure, or letting the structure and argument emerge from the process of organizing my sources and quotations.

In either scenario, I like to treat my structured collection of quotations like an outline. I use Scrivenings mode to view everything in “Top quotes” at once, but all those quotation are separated into subsections based on the various subfolders I set up.

Next, I create a “Story draft” folder in the binder, which I use for drafting my story, and create a new “Draft” document inside the folder. Then I split my Scrivener view so that I can see my “Top quotes” folder and my “Story draft” folders side-by-side, and I set “Story draft” to Scrivenings mode and lock in place, just like I did for the “Top quotes” folder.

Now I start writing in my “Draft” document, dragging each quote I want to use directly from the “Top quotes” folder into the “Story draft” folder. If I want to insert a quotation in between parts of a text I’ve already written, I use the “split at selection” option to slice the Draft document into pieces, inserting the quotation into the gap. This is what my window looks like as I get underway:

Sometimes I actually start by dragging the quotations I want to use from “Top quotes” into “Story draft,” arranging them in the order I want for my story. Then I insert additional blank documents in between the quotations, and write the story around the quotations that are already in place. Scrivenings view makes it all look like a single document.

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When I’m finished writing, I either use Scrivener’s compile function to export the complete draft (with quotations) into a Word document, or (more often) simply copy everything that’s visible in the “Story draft” folder into a new document in Word or Google Docs. Before uploading my text to a site like JSTOR Daily , I copy my text from Scrivener to Word, and then from Word to a site like HTML Tidy , so I can preserve any hyperlinks but get rid of any weird tags that get created through the copy-and-paste process.

What will you write with Zotero and Scrivener?

This article has mapped out the way I use the Zotero-Zotfile-Scrivener combo to write my regular columns here at JSTOR Daily , but it’s a process I’ve adapted for other research-driven projects, too. Whether you’re an academic writing papers, a journalist writing articles, or a marketer writing blog posts, I suspect some version of this process can dramatically simplify and accelerate your own research-driven writing. If you try this process yourself—or have questions about how to apply it—I hope you’ll let us know!

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The PhD Experience

Call for Contributions

3 Reasons Why You Should Write Your PhD Thesis With Scrivener

By Drew Thomas |

Writing my PhD thesis was one of the longest and most challenging tasks I’ve ever accomplished. I never would have completed it without using Scrivener. Scrivener is a word-processor and outlining programme that originally was popular among book authors and screenwriters. However, it quickly expanded and became a great writing tool for researchers as well. It helped me keep my writing on track, focused, and structured. It is a programme that wants you to forget about the formatting and how the text looks and just focus on the writing. No distractions! It took some time to get used to at first, but now I highly recommend it. Keep reading to find out how Scrivener can help you conquer the seemingly unmanageable project that is your thesis.

1. Structure

Scrivener is a writing programme that breaks up your writing into sections. Instead of one long Word document, you have a separate writing space for each section. If you’re an Evernote user, it’s kind of like having a separate note for each section. This has two big advantages. On the left of the programme is an outline of your project, based on all the sections and subsections you have created (these do not have to mirror the titled sections in your thesis). So you always see where this particular section fits into the larger project. The other benefit is that you can reorder these sections however you wish. This gets rid of all the copying and pasting that would be required in a normal Word document. I took advantage of this many times.

Scrivener also provides a great feature, which allows you to view your project as a “corkboard”. This is like a film’s production board, where you see each scene as a separate card. This gives you a different view of your project and helps ensure everything is properly organized.

Scrivener’s corkboard view

Because each part of your thesis is separated in Scrivener, when you are writing, you are only focused on that section or those few paragraphs. As a writing programme, the focus is solely on writing. There is no page view to see how the text and footnotes would appear on the printed page, which distracts from the task at hand. You don’t even have to worry about saving your work, as Scrivener automatically saves every word as you type (and you can save previous versions of each section). And for those who love minimalism, there is a full-screen mode, which is just a blank slate and the text you type, nothing else.

If you do need to look at information from another section while you are writing, Scrivener has a split screen view, allowing you to view multiple sections at the same time. You can also add tags to different sections, which aids in finding your other material.

It helped me keep my writing on track, focused, and structured.

One of the features I love most about Scrivener is the ability to pace my writing. As everyone knows, real writing is re-writing. Getting that first draft complete is a huge hurdle to get over. Because you break up your thesis into different sections, you can assign different word counts for each section. So if I outline my chapter and then put each bullet point into Scrivener as a separate section, I can assign word counts to ensure I reach my goals and to determine if my chapter outline is realistic. By breaking down each chapter, section, and subsection into small goals, it is a great feeling of accomplishment as you write. Moreover, this pacing not only helps you achieve your word count, it helps prevent you from overwriting, which is one of the worst things you can do. Cutting words from a chapter is excruciating. How can you chop off part of your masterpiece? It’s better to avoid the problem altogether.

You can also set daily writing goals to estimate how long it will take you to write each section and to keep you on track; you can even view your writing statistics. You can add a status bar to each section so you can visually see how close you are to achieving your target. Each section also has a status label, which you can update from first draft, revised draft, final draft, or whatever status you might want.

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Once you have finished writing, you can export it as a Microsoft Word file. You can export whatever sections you want, such as a single chapter. I would write a chapter, export it to Word for formatting, then send it to my supervisor. I would then incorporate comments and track changes in Word.

Now the one downside about Scrivener is that it’s not free. You can buy a license for either Mac or Windows for around £25. There is also an iOS version if you want to work on an iPad. If you’re unsure, you can try a free trial for 30 days (that’s 30 days of use, not 30 days from beginning the trial). I tried the free trial, then ultimately ended up purchasing it.

Overall, I really benefited from the way Scrivener allowed me to break everything down into manageable tasks. And by setting word counts for each section, it helped me stay on track and reach my writing goals. It turned my thesis, which at times seemed unmanageable, into a project with a pathway to success.

Drew Thomas is the Technical Editor for Pubs and Publications. He recently completed his PhD at the University of St Andrews on ‘The Industry of Evangelism: Printing for the Reformation in Martin Luther’s Wittenberg.’ He is now a postdoctoral researcher with the Universal Short Title Catalogue working on their Preserving the World’s Rarest Books project. He is also the Project Manager of the Caroline Minuscule Mapping Project , hosted by the University of Pennsylvania. You can follow him on Academia.edu or Twitter at @DrewBThomas .

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March 19, 2018

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Help with dissertation writing in Scrivener (Chicago format)

I'm a graduate student who's trying to beat the dissertation submission deadline by attempting to speed the writing process up by using Scrivener. I've got a really exciting research topic, but I'm super overwhelmed by the technical side of things like setting up the right formatting style and importing citations and bibliography from Zotero.I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to correctly use markdown as Scrivener also has styles and is essentially a WISIWYG text editor. Granted, I had never used markdown before, but I'd thought I'd be able to master it on the go.

Nope. Instead, I wasted hours upon hours trying to get systems like Scrivomatic and Scrivener for Scientific Writing to work. It bore zero fruit. Some scripts gave mysterious error messages at random. Results compiled in Scrivener using Pandoc were just utter trash with misplaced headings and incorrect formatting. Installation of Zotpick (a shortcut for quickly copying references from Zotero) succeeded, but then it just didn't work (looks like the project has got outdated). Every attempt to get things under control spiraled into yet another rabbit hole.

But going back to MS Word is out of the question as it would just mean dealing with the exact same problems but without any benefits of visual writing that Scrivener offers. So I'm just stuck in this debilitating limbo for now.

Fortunately, at least it looks like the Zothero workflow for Alfred seems to work fine, which means that I should theoretically now be able to insert my citations/footnotes in a proper way. I have also downloaded Michael D. Hattem's preset file for historical research as the dissertation needs to follow the Chicago Manual of Style. I hoped that it would allow me to compile my work correctly, but so far it produced unsatisfying results. Perhaps, I'm still doing something wrong.

Now, here's why I finally resorted to creating this outcry for community help:

→ What should one do to produce a Word file that would be formatted like this ? The link leads to a sample historical dissertation with the correct formatting.

The resulting Word file should follow these basic requirements :

- a standard academic front matter (like this one )

- an interactive table of contents (with correct pages)

- proper page numeration (nothing on the titular page, "ii, iii, iv" on the next few pages, and "1, 2, 3" after that)

- Times New Roman font only

- 12-point-sized double-spaced regular font for body paragraphs

- 14-point-sized bold centered font for top-level headings (Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc.)

- 12-point-sized bold centered font for other headings (1.1 Review of relevant literature, 1.2 Topic introduction, etc.)

- consistent paragraph indentation

- all the citations in footnotes (10-point-sized, Chicago-style)

→ What tutorials or videos should I watch/read in order to finally figure out how to manage styles / compiling settings or presets in order to achieve standard academic formatting using Scrivener?

★ This is what my Scrivener project currently looks like in all its messy glory. The screenshot contains several more specific questions about the app interface and functions. I hope someone knowledgeable in these matters is going to be able to lend a helping hand.

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Subheadings in Table of Contents (Dissertation Formatting)

I’ve been writing a PhD dissertation in Scrivener for the past few years and am at the point where I’ve merged all my fragments together into single chapters, but I need all of my subheadings to show up in the Table of Contents, both for the final document but also just for purposes of working on the structure, navigating it, etc.

How can I create a Table of Contents with subheadings included, this is the standard format for theses and dissertations. I could just move to another program and finish it there, but I would rather keep working in Scrivener as I really enjoy it and didn’t want to have to do a final edit in other software until the final draft stage. Thank you for your advice!

I did search the forum and this question was asked in 2015 and the answer then was that it isn’t possible, so I’m wondering if the feature has been added since, or if anyone else has figured out how to do this. Thank you!

Each heading and subheading should be a Binder title. You may have merged more than you’ll find convenient.

Thank you, I do understand that would create the desired ToC but that structure won’t work. Making each subheading a separate document creates an extreme nested situation that I can’t work in or even process.

Is there no way to build a ToC using heading coding? That would seem to be a basic feature no?

It’s basic if you do it as designed.

Check out the 915 page Scrivener manual and its ToC. It was written in Scrivener, after all. You can download the manual as a Scrivener project, if you don’t believe it.

Does that mean the answer is no? Headings can’t be used to define a ToC?

This is leaving out some significant information that I strongly doubt the OP is aware of. Most importantly to the discussion:

That Scrivener almost has nothing to do with the actual construction of the user manual as a PDF. That project makes use of the LaTeX typesetting engine to do almost everything mechanical that you see being done, including the construction of the ToC, and the much more detailed “mini-tocs” that appear after major chapter breaks, as well as its ability to create cross-references to any isolated piece of text, like figures in the middle of a block of text (something Scrivener cannot do by itself without spamming section breaks and hyperlink bookmarks everywhere, and necessitating chopping up the outline by content rather than by concept ).
Although it is not employed frequently, and by and large the outline structure of that project does drive the heading hierarchy, I can and do insert heading markup in the content area itself. I am not limited by structure to produce a functional heading hierarchy that can appear in ToCs, and can seamlessly blend what is generated by the compiler with what I type into the editor. That is not a capability that is limited only to those using markup and LaTeX, however.
An implication in all of this (particulars of which software one uses in post aside) is that Scrivener isn’t the best place to be putting together the mechanics of a book. It is very limited for doing so, and unless one never needs to go beyond those limitations, there is no good solid reason for trying to constrain yourself to them. There are far better solutions outside of Scrivener, and arguably the compiler is designed to faciliate a seamless transition to them, moreso than it is attempting to replace them.

ToC Basics for Word Processing

If you already know how to make a ToC in a word processor, you can probably skim right past this and into the practical application stuff below.

So setting aside the technical details of how the manual differs from your average project with font styles and so forth driving appearance directly, there are a few key things to be aware of when it comes to generating a table of contents. These are by and large basic fundamentals for most (if not all) desktop publishing tools and word processors (which again, Scrivener is designed to aid seamless transition into):

Functional structural headings are a combination of stylesheet application and the styles themselves declaring themselves as being part of the document outline .

You don’t ordinarily need to mess with detailed settings, as most document designs will include a hierarchical heading structure in its stylesheet—typically indicated by “Heading 1”, “Heading 2”, “Heading 3” and so on. Scrivener is no different.

A ToC is a construct that is inserted anywhere into the document which uses, as its data source for constructing itself, the overall use of hierarchical headings throughout the text.

In more heavy-duty design environments all of the above is deeply customisable. In Scrivener you have to follow a simple convention, you must have styled headings using the naming scheme described above. It will look for this naming convention and build the outline settings into the stylesheet for you.

Thus in simple terms, to have a document we can add a functional ToC to, our only requirement is to have styled text throughout the document that is indicated as one of these “Heading n ” type styles. Most ToC settings will indent the ToC entries based upon that hierarchy, and generate formatting for each line, including dotted lines connecting to the page number, or whatever else one wants.

So long as the final result is hierarchically coherent, it doesn’t matter where the styled text comes from. By coherent, I mean you don’t have Heading 4 following a Heading 2. The heading usage must correlate to logical depth, step by step.

Applied to Scrivener: given that basic requirement, and how all of this works, it does not matter how you get these headings into the output. They can come from the compile format’s Section Layouts, which are applied to outline structure in the Draft folder, and they can also come from styled text in the editor itself, or even exclusively, where the compile is doing extremely little and one is apply the “as-is” layout to everything.

Application of Styles in Scrivener

That is a bit of theory and background, so here are some practical tips:

Linking to Scrivener’s “no style” default to Word’s “normal” style. : this basic introduction mainly covers how to get “Normal” or “Body” styles applied to body text, but that is a good convention you should consider doing, and the principles here also apply to how you would apply “Heading 1” to a major section heading, and so forth.
compiling - sections, page breaks, styles : now this post goes more directly into applying stylesheet headings to a document for the primary purpose of generating a ToC, and includes a sample project wired up and ready to be finalised in a word processor.
How to add TOC to : just another checklist and sample document describing compile heading setup.

A Hybrid Approach of Compiler and Editor Headings

There aren’t as many existing discussions out there for blending that approach with headings in the editor as well, but that’s probably because it’s a fairly simple concept. Let’s say you have your major sections in the binder—perhaps chapter-level constructs, with “Heading 1” being applied to those headings by the compiler. Maybe you also break things down to level two, to the Section level, and have the compiler styling those smaller headings with “Heading 2”.

So given that framework, any headings you create in the editor, within those Section level documents will be “below” that level, or Heading 3, as Subsections . If there are headings in between those, in your text, they would be below that, using Heading 4, or what you’d think of as Subsubsections.

That leaves one final point: any headings you don’t want in the ToC should not use the “Heading n ” naming convention. That’s it. Call it whatever you need (like “Subsubsection”).

One last thing pointing out is a feature in the Styles compile format design window:

Open File ▸ Compile... , and double-click on the compile format you are using, in the left sidebar, to edit it.
In the Styles pane, take note of the Override Name field. With this, you can take a style you’ve been using in the editor (like “Subsubsection”) and rename it on the fly to “Heading 4”.

Now consider the implications of that in terms of flexible project design. If your styles in the writing environment are pragmatically named, like “Chapter”, “Section” and “Subsection”, then by themselves they won’t actually be useful for generating a ToC. But, that doesn’t matter because we can use this Styles pane to rename them to “Heading 1”, “Heading 2” and so forth, as we require.

The implication is that we can drive the depth of the ToC purely from our compile settings. We don’t have a duct-tape and baling wire approach of changing styles names in the writing environment to suit the output requirements.

At this point in your project, that may be of lesser importance since you are nearing the end of using Scrivener. But it’s something to consider for the future. Styles, like almost everything in Scrivener, can be used in a writing-centric fashion, without having to conform oneself to the mechanical practicalities of output.

Thank you for this thorough reply and explanation. In my case I’ve used only the pre-existing Heading 1 and Heading 2. What surprised me was upon inserting a ToC it didn’t use those, instead it used the titles of the documents as they are in the binder. From a single read through of your answer it sounds like it should be possible to create a ToC in Scrivener using those headings instead of the binder document titles, or am I misunderstanding that?

I’ve created ToCs in Microsoft Word, for example, for my M.A. thesis, so I do understand how that works and how headings and styles work there. And I know that after I move the document there for final editing, that I can easily do what I want.

However, what I need now is a ToC that includes my Headings styles simply so I can see the structure of the writing more clearly while working in Scrivener, which is what led me to ask the question. Is that possible, or will the ToC generated in Scrivener always only be based on document names from the Binder?

Yes, that is what I am suggesting is the best solution for the final phases, which although in reading your response, I see might be a tangent from what you were looking to resolve here. I think in your case it is particularly so, given how you prefer a heavy dependence upon headings in the text rather than using Scrivener’s outlining-based approach, but in almost every case I would say a stylesheet-driven document, and a dynamic ToC inserted after compiling, will be better than how the Contents in Scrivener works.

We can really better think of that as a structured list of internal hyperlinks in static text. It doesn’t change if you rename or move things around—really it’s more meant to be the kind of thing you slap into the front matter somewhere directly before spooling off a proof copy, and anticipate having to rebuild frequently until the structure settles down. It’s more of a scaffolding system, something to make do with while in formative phases of the project.

So yes, here is where we get to where I misunderstood you a bit. Since you were speaking of a table of contents, I figured you were looking to start the migration out of Scrivener (because that is the only time I would start thinking of such a tool, myself). However it sounds like you are looking for a navigation tool , more so? To the question: the binder names are all Scrivener has to work with, in most regards. The outline in the binder really is meant to be your “writer’s ToC”, through and through. If it doesn’t represent the structure you need to be able to work with the text effectively, then something is amiss.

Yes, we can weave additional headings into the text, as noted, but in my opinion that is a capability better reserved for non-Toc minor headings—things you don’t really need to know of until you’re already in the right place. For example, earlier you stated that having every subheading would produce too much structure to make sense of, and that is fair. There is the other side of the balance though, where if you remove too much structure the work becomes difficult to navigate in a program that isn’t designed around heading usage in the text much at all.

The best answer, it seems to me, is somewhere in between where you were and where you ended up. You’re now faced with a text that you cannot fully see. You’ve turned to the ToC feature as a way of trying to solve that (as one might in a word processor), but for the same reason things are now obscured to you, the ToC feature can no longer see that “deep” either into the structure of the text.

Hopefully these two considerations can be seen as independent, and in thinking of them that way, bring clarity into why it works this way:

The draft folder should be as detailed as you need it, to work effectively. That tool is yours, and yours alone! It actually does not need to represent the structure of the document that it will eventually become. It can represent parts of it, maybe only broad strokes, or maybe for some people even more detail than the reader will ever see.
By implication, the actual ToC that ends up in the final work can and should be entirely heading driven . It may be produced by a combination of compile inserted headings and stuff in the text editor you’ve styled, and where you start doing the latter is that line in the sand where draft outline structure ceases to be useful to you.

I mean to emphasise the second point only to clarify that talking about the structure useful to you need not be bound by what the ToC will eventually need.

Thank you. Yes, for my process, I used nested folders of documents in the binder for several years of processing data and writing, but now found that in order to bring the writing to the next level of draft, to really have coherence, I needed to merge those into single documents, each of which is a chapter in the binder. Since I’ve done this I find that I’m able to work much more easily, write more easily, and all is going very well. The only piece missing for me is the ability to see the true structure of my document, which is based on headings. I do want to keep working in Scrivener for now, but it does seem I can’t see the structure of the document in the way I want as I do so, without moving backward in my process to breaking up these merged chapters into subsections again. Unfortunately due to the way I think and work that would not be good thing to do. Really the only thing missing here is an ability to see the actual ToC - for example a binder view that shows structure based on headings, would be extremely helpful. I will be continuing to work in Scrivener for many more months because other aspects of the folder structure are extremely useful as I work on integrating text, removing it, sorting out ideas and drafts - it’s just the actual body of the thing that I need to see slightly differently than the software allows.

A temporary solution, and the only one available at the moment, would seem to be compiling it, generating the ToC in the word processor, then copying that document back into my project so I can reference it. And running through that process as needed. I appreciate your explanations, they’ve all been very helpful and I’ve bookmarked all the links you included as well as I will need to refer to them. In the end, I think this turned into a feature request: To be able to generate a ToC based on headings.

To my mind being able to see the structure of your document in many different ways is helpful, and that’s one way of viewing it that is currently missing. But I never know if it’s my own thinking and learning differences that make these kinds of things useful for me, or something others might find helpful as well. Thank you again for all your discussion and help.

How to convert Scrivener folder structure into main headings when I compile to Word, in order to see in navigation map?

Refer to the above post for a walk-through on setting up styled headings. This conversation mainly focused on doing this so that a ToC could be easily inserted in Word, but it is the same exact mechanism that populates the “Navigation” tool.

What you are telling me is that if I use the table of contents of scrivener then when I pass it to Word ,I will see styles H1,h2 ?

Not quite, the “ToC” copy and paste thing in Scrivener is more of a quick proofing tool, it doesn’t really connect with anything or use conventions you’d want to use elsewhere after compiling.

What you want is for your section layouts, the middle column in the compiler, to have h1, h2 headings instead of merely formatted text. This section of the post has some links with more detailed instructions on setting that up right. The third link is probably the best, looking over them briefly.

How could you convert folder in Heading style, using TOC?

In the post I referred to there are instructions for setting up Section Layouts to use heading styles (again, the third link in the bullet list). So to use those for items in your binder, you need to Assign Section Layouts... in the main compile overview screen, bottom of the middle column. That is where you set up how the different types in your outline will look.

Could you describe at which step you are in need of more advice?

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Using Scrivener for PhD Thesis & Dissertations
Learn how to use Scrivener, a word processor that helps you write more efficiently and organise your research. Find out about its features, templates, Zotero integration and workflow tips.
Scrivener
Learn how to use Scrivener, a powerful content-generation tool for writers, to structure and format your thesis document. Follow the steps to set up folders, documents, corkboard, outline, and compile features for your non-fiction writing project.
Template Library
This thread contains links to templates which have been created by users of Scrivener like yourself. In some cases, the template may be from older versions of the software, and will need to be updated prior to use. This update will happen automatically when you attempt to first use the template. If you create your own templates and wish to share them with the community, feel free to post a ...
Using Scrivener for Academic Writing: A Complete Guide
However, for longer and more-involved projects, Scrivener's organizational tools, formatting, and writing interface can make the whole process easier and more enjoyable. Here are some top features to put to work on your next assignment. 1. Outlining Tools. Scrivener's built-in outlining tools are one of the most-loved features of the app.
Dissertation Template Recommendations : r/scrivener
Scrivener's templates are more a way to skip the early setup of a project---once you have already figured that stuff out and made a system of it---and secondarily they are training wheels toward learning how to do so, and what kinds of things the software is capable of doing. There is nothing in a template you cannot do yourself---and once you ...
Scrivener (and other Academic Writing Software)
Choose either blank or non-fiction -->general non-fiction template which allows parts, sections, and chapters. (If you started writing a thesis or a dissertation using one of the essay templates, create a new non-fiction project and drag and drop the documents into it.) How should I set up Scrivener for writing a dissertation or thesis? Tips ...
Dr. Serena Killam's Guide to Using Scrivener for Thesis Writing
Dr. Serena Killam provides a quick walkthrough on setting up Scrivener for thesis writing, sharing tips from her experience and workshops for postgrad students. File. Scrivener for Thesis Writing Getting Started. ... So the first thing to do is to get a template and here I'm just going to go new project and we're just going to start with a ...
How to start writing your PhD thesis in Scrivener
Scrivener Project Templates window. 5. Choose a project name and a folder to save the document. 6. Hit save.. Now you have a fresh Scrivener document to write your thesis in.
Using Scrivener for Writing Scientific Papers
Get my Scrivener template for scientific papers. Step by step guide for importing a Scrivener template. As you're writing, insert citations from Zotero into your Scrivener document with a copy and paste: Copy from Zotero with Cmd+Shift+C to get the citation. Paste it into Scrivener with the usual Cmd+V.
How I Set Up Scrivener for my PhD Dissertation
OPEN ME!: At long last I finally have a video on Scrivener. I had so many issues filming this lol. This is not an exhaustive list of everything Scrivener can...
Scrivener for Thesis Writing: Getting Started
Scrivener for Thesis Writing focuses on how to quickly get set up for writing your thesis in Scrivener.Remember to watch the other videos in this series to s...
Scrivener Templates You Can Use [Download Here]
Scrivener templates will open up a whole new world of writing and allow your creativity to come alive. Some Scrivener templates are available directly through the Scrivener software. ... Hattem has outlined his process and experience writing a dissertation with Scrivener. He talks about what he did and shares actionable tips that will help you ...
Download Free Scrivener Templates
How To Use and Install A Scrivener Template. After you download a Scrivener template, you will see a file which has the extension .scrivtemplate. When you open Scrivener to start a new project, click on options, like in the image below. When the Options menu opens, click 'import templates', like in the image below.
Embracing the Digital: A Review of Scrivener for PhD Students
Final Thoughts. Ultimately, for me and for now, Scrivener works. I enjoyed the 30-day free trial and I plan on purchasing the software afterwards as a small pandemic PhD luxury. I actually think that a good part of my enjoyment from it stems from the fact that it feels like a "change of scenery" in this lockdown PhD life.
Dissertating with Scrivener
As you can see from the screenshot above (click for full-size view), Scrivener organizes material in the left sidebar or "Binder.". At the top is the main document that you are writing, i.e., "Dissertation.". Using individual text documents, I created the structure of the dissertation in Parts and chapters.
How to Plan PhD Thesis Chapters with Scrivener
How to structure your thesis in Corkboard Mode — Step by Step. Step 1. 1. Open your Scrivener Document. 2. Switch to the Corkboard mode. There are three way to switch to corkboard mode: Use the ...
Scrivener 3: An In-Depth Review for Academic Writing
What is Scrivener 3? Scrivener is word processing software published by Literature & Latte. It is unique in that the entire "project" is a file, and within the project, you can write drafts and store documents. You can think of your "project" as a folder that has all your writing in one place, and that you can organize and hierarchize.
Thesis Writing with Scrivener
Thesis Writing with Scrivener. I mentioned Scrivener in a recent post. It would appear that this word-processing and file management desktop programme - specifically developed by Literature and Latte for writers - is becoming increasingly adopted by academics. There are other, more comprehensive accounts of using Scrivener on the web, such ...
How to Use Zotero and Scrivener for Research-Driven Writing
Step 4: Import your quotations. Create a new folder in Scrivener with a name like "Quotations.". Next, from the File menu in Scrivener, choose Import…/Import and Split. In the file section window, navigate to the text file you just created with all your quotations.
3 Reasons Why You Should Write Your PhD Thesis With Scrivener
This gives you a different view of your project and helps ensure everything is properly organized. 2. Focus. Because each part of your thesis is separated in Scrivener, when you are writing, you are only focused on that section or those few paragraphs. As a writing programme, the focus is solely on writing.
Scrivener for PhD thesis
I am using Scrivener for my PhD thesis too. I write in separate chapters (folders), parts (documents) and sections using multimarkdown syntax and use BibDesk to manage a BibTex database. I have a custom mmd citation template within BibDesk and just drag the citation to the correct position after pressing cmd+y.
Help with dissertation writing in Scrivener (Chicago format)
Welcome to the unofficial Scrivener subreddit! Scrivener-related questions, tips, and troubleshooting are all welcome here. Scrivener is the go-to app for writers of all kinds, used every day by best-selling novelists, screenwriters, non-fiction writers, students, academics, lawyers, journalists, translators and more.
Subheadings in Table of Contents (Dissertation Formatting)
Subheadings in Table of Contents (Dissertation Formatting) Scrivener. support, compile, basics, text-editing. DanJackson February 19, 2022, 11:51pm 1. I've been writing a PhD dissertation in Scrivener for the past few years and am at the point where I've merged all my fragments together into single chapters, but I need all of my subheadings ...

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Using Scrivener for PhD Thesis & Dissertations

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