As may be apparent already, I am now back in Scrivener 2 for my new project (and booting into Windows for Word 2010 to revise earlier work). Quite a few new possibilities are occuring to me as I work my way into this new version. I'll throw them out as they come along.

First a really very nifty trick for managing the editing of elements of long documents that have different but connected threads. Imagine, for example, that you use three specific points of view. Or three different time periods for your story. How useful would it be to be able to say 'Show me only the chapters where the POV is Costa'. Or 'show me only the scenes that take place in 1986'.

And then when you've checked sense and continuity to make the whole thing revert magically and instantly into the original narrative order.

I <em>love</em> that idea. Here's how it's done (again Scrivener 2 only so just for Mac users).

<!--more-->The key lies in a new feature called Collections. Let me use the opening section of <em>The Blue Demon</em> as an example. Here's how it looks in Scrivener 2 (you can see the Collections button at the top but it won't do a thing until we set it up correctly).
<p style="text-align:center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-6649 aligncenter" title="Blue Demon Part ne" src="http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-29-551.png" alt="" width="252" height="471" /></p>
Part One of this book is 27,307 words long and breaks down into fifteen different scenes seen through three different character points of view: Costa, Peroni and the antagonist Petrakis. There are different ways to separate these out as collections. Let me try the simplest (or what seems that way to me). It involves keywords.

<img class="alignright size-full wp-image-6660" title="Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.47.32" src="http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-47-321.png" alt="" width="151" height="31" />Click the little key icon at the foot of the Inspector for any scene and you get the chance to add a keyword. Let me put one in for each of the three POV characters. It just looks like this.
<p style="text-align:center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-6650 aligncenter" title="Costa" src="http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-07-001.png" alt="" width="226" height="47" /></p>
Now go to the search field at the top of the screen and make sure you are searching for Keywords, not just any old text.
<p style="text-align:center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-6651 aligncenter" title="Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.10.10" src="http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-10-101.png" alt="" width="264" height="221" /></p>
Let's find every scene that has the keyword 'Costa'.
<p style="text-align:center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-6652 aligncenter" title="Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.11.03" src="http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-11-031.png" alt="" width="295" height="480" /></p>
We will then get this. Only the scenes that have been given that keyword. So you can read them for continuity, sense, general narrative flow, and to make sure your people seem the same from scene to scene.

<a href="http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-10-351.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6653" title="Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.10.35" src="http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-10-351.png" alt="" width="490" height="361" /></a>

But we've saved that that search too. Every time we look for a keyword and do that Scrivener will prompt you to create a collection with the name of the search. It takes a jiffy to do all three point of view characters. Once we've done that we just click on Collections and we see each of the saved searches.
<p style="text-align:center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-6654 aligncenter" title="Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.12.18" src="http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-12-181.png" alt="" width="267" height="625" /></p>
Choose any one and you see all the scenes with that keyword in the order they appear in the manuscript. And see them instantly. Click on Binder and you see the full narrative.

Amazing stuff. And dead easy once you understand how to set it up. The one thing that baffled me at first was how to get rid of the Collections when I wanted them out of the way. It's the little x-mark close button at the bottom of the Binder, below.
<p style="text-align:center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-6655 aligncenter" title="Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 16.11.56" src="http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/screen-shot-2011-01-04-at-16-11-561.png" alt="" width="241" height="87" /></p>
If you write multiple POV and/or multiple location or time period stories of some complexity this can make your life a lot easier. If you're writing a first person linear story that has no curves and dark corners don't bother. No need to make your life more complicated than it is.

Scrivener is full of tricks and wheezes. I doubt I know more than a fraction. But we're not here to master software. We're here to write books. So focus, as ever, is what it's about.