Hello, and welcome back to part four of my one-time trilogy on Scrivener.

Four parts? Things are getting out of hand, aren’t they?

Problem is, I don’t know what comes after trilogy. I guess it goes quadology, pentology etc, but that certainly is out of hand.

In a previous post I mentioned that you have to compile you text to get a finished piece of work from Scrivener. So, let’s have a look at it.

Good timing, because I’ve started a new mega-blockbuster.

Excellent. What genre?

Genre? It’s all genres.

Oh. That might be a problem.

Why? I’m trying to cater to all tastes.

Yeah, but the steampunk fans may not like the dieselpunk parts. And the romance people aren’t going to like the horror. But I guess everyone might like the erot-

Wait, wait. It’s Sci Fi. Spaceships and all that.

Well, that’s a bit better.

What’s the matter with calling it all genres? After all, it does have some romance.

That’s fine, you can add romance to anything. You can mix up a couple of genres. But when you say “all,” you might as well as “don’t care,” and people who read generally do care about such things. There’s also the problem that if you don’t know the genre at the started, you’re likely to wander in all directions (story-wise) and do none of them well.

Ok, I get it. It’s Sci Fi, on a spaceship, with a little romance. It’s got blockbuster written all over it. (It has. He wrote it on there himself, but yellow highlight marker doesn’t guarantee blockbuster status -ed).

Since this is an auspicious time in the development of your blockbuster, let’s get back to the subject shall we?

*zips lip*

Compiling is the process of taking you hard work (in terms of Folders and Text Sections) and combining them into a single document. Along the way Scrivener will apply your desired formatting and layout.

The magic word in that last sentence was “desired”.

Huh?

Desired, as in you get to choose.

Er, it’s computer software. Don’t I always get to choose?

Ok, ok. Don’t panic. Yes, you get to choose. But in the case of Scrivener, you get to choose what options you want every time you you compile your document. Each time. Every time.

Really? So, Courier in place of Times?

No problem.

One and half instead of double spaced?

Easy.

Leave out chapter 3?

No problem (but I’ve got to wonder about your writing if you want to do this).

docx, epub (Nook), PDF, mobi (Kindle)?

Just a one-click option.

Well, I can do that with Word!

Course you can. Want me to get out my stopwatch again?

Er, no.

Then quit heckling and fire up your copy of Scrivener.

You have been using it haven’t you?

Everyday.

Good. And you’ve written plenty as well, haven’t you? Because I know you’re prolific when it comes to word count.

30K so far.

Wow, that’s been quick.

Yep, but I need to be able to generate some output.

Right.

Compiling a document is done through the menu option, File / Compile. There are lots of options (see “Compilation Options” on the left hand side of the screen below). Lets start looking at the Contents options.

Then we can control the formatting of the title and text.

There are lots of other options but I’m going to skip to the ebook (epub, Nook) options. The Kindle options look basically the same.

To get to the ebook options you have to choose the ebook option in the “Compile For” drop down list at the bottom right of the Compile window.

Choose the Meta-Data options. Yeah, yeah, this is confusing. Why? Because the “meta-data” here is not the “meta-data” we talked about previously. It would have been nice if they hadn’t overloaded the terms, but that’s just life. Suck it up.

I think most of the fields on this page of options are self explanatory (though I’d suggest less facetious responses if you want to race to the top of the B&N sales charts). These fields turn up, appropriately describing your book, when loaded into a Nook.

One of the really good things about the ebook format is that you can export your work in progress to a Nook/Kindle to read while you’re developing it. Much easier to read than being tied to a laptop/desktop screen (I guess that depends on your preference, but personally I don’t like being tied up at all).

So that’s it. There’s lots of other options which I skipped in order to keep this simple. Just ask (below) if you want some other options described.

If you’ve read my previous posts you now know how to set up folder and text sections, keep track of what’s going on in your story with metadata and create a final version of you work through compilation.

Scrivener is easy to use. It aids the process of writing a large document (fiction and non-fiction) and allows you to target the final output to any other popular formats. Hopefully you have downloaded a copy and are busy working on yet another of your blockbusters. Don’t forget to let us know how you’re getting on.

If absolutely nothing else, throw us a bone and let us in on the title of that blockbuster!

Cheers