Scrivener Icons

Elise Boissonneau • Novel Notes 5

Ahoy, Mateys.

I realize I haven’t posted a chapter in a while. Launching my serial sci-fi sitcom, Space Traveler Fargone, and a paid section on Mark Starlin Writes! has taken a lot of time. But I haven’t completely ignored Elise. I have been doing some outlining, and I devised a new organizational method in Scrivener geared toward this novel.

I have started using character icons so I can quickly see who is featured in a scene. Scrivener allows you to use custom icons for any document or folder in a file. In the past, my scenes used simple page icons. This was fine for the first Baron Britpop novel as Britpop was featured in almost every scene. But with this novel, Elise and Captain Peanut Butter have concurrent storylines. I like to be able to see a visual “outline” of the novel at a glance. So I decided to use character icons as visual clues.

I have a pirate icon for Captain Peanut Butter, a female icon with a beret for Elise, and a male icon for Britpop. Now I can see at a glance how the storylines are split up and progressing.

The left column of Scrivener using icons to show who is featured in each scene.

It is a little thing, but it works for me. And I think it is more enjoyable to look at.

I hope to have a new chapter for you soon.

Mark

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