Quick Scrivener tip: automatic scene synopses
Do you always write a synopsis for every book scene in Scrivener? No. Me neither. If it’s in my head already… why bother? Easier just to get on with the job of setting it down.
But later when I’m managing the narrative as a whole I find I do want to see those synopses in the cards or when I hover over a scene in the Binder. There’s a dead easy way to get Scrivener to do the work for you.
Here’s an empty set of scene synopses from The Killing. The parent page has a synopsis for the whole part. The rest are blank.
Select the scenes you want to work with then go to Documents, Auto-Generate Synopsis.
Scrivener will then take the opening few paragraphs of each scene and turn them into a synopsis.
What if you’ve already filled in a few synopses already? Don’t worry. The import routine will give you the option to auto-generate synopses only for those scenes that don’t have them. So… just a few seconds work and you have your index cards up and running in a way that shows you what the scene’s about. Magic…
