Happy Monday to all the Story Empire readers. PH here today with another Scrivener tip that may help you with a writing project – tracking your WIP with meta-data.
I’ve written about the Inspector a number of times in the past. Just to re-cap, the Inspector is the bar on the right side of the editor. If you want to find out more about the Inspector, here’s a quick tour. You can use features in this handy toolbar such as the Scratchpad 0r Document References.
Once turned on, the Inspector allows you to work with various forms of meta-data in your project. What’s meta-data? In short, it’s extra information, but for today’s post, let’s expand that to: a way of making comments about your work for tracking purposes. Examples are the synopsis, document notes, document references, keywords, snapshots and comments & footnotes. But there are a few more aspects of meta-data to explore.
How to turn on the Inspector bar
The General Meta-Data and Define Meta-Data Fields panes in the Inspector
First, on the Inspector, the General Meta-Data is almost always available (except in Snapshots and Comments). You can label a document with color or indicate the status of your document based on a number of criteria. Below you indicate when the document was created or modified. Use the check boxes to include the document in compile, set a page break before the document or compile it as-is. All this is pretty straightforward – use these settings to mark your progress. These can be viewable in different ways from the Outliner, Corkboard and Binder.
Next, there’s customizing Meta-Data which allows you to add categories to label and status lists. Clicking over to the Custom Meta-Data button on the Inspector menu reveals a button named Define Meta-Data Fields. From this window the Status and Label lists can be managed in addition to your custom meta-data. Again, these are valuable for how you track progress in your projects, especially with revision and editing.
I’ve found general meta-data useful for updating the progress of any document including a chapter, short story, blog post, blog tour and anything else on which I’m working. It’s a useful and easy way to track your work and customizing is even more useful. It’s one more way the Inspector is as powerful as the Binder. I plan to use meta-data heavily in the coming months as I revise several manuscripts for publication. Tracking my progress will be very important and staying organized in Scrivener will be a big help.
Customize Meta-Data
Thanks for reading this post today and visiting Story Empire. Have you ever tracked your project with meta-data? If so, share your process. Please leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments and I’ll reply as soon as I can.
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Thanks for the share.
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Thanks for the share
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Reblogged this on Archer's Aim and commented:
Moving on with a Scrivener how-to post from yesterday on Story Empire.
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More good information:)
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Hope you can use it
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A helpful post for Scrivener users, P.H.!
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Join the club, Mae! 😉
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I keep saying one of these days, LOL!
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One day, one day…
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🙂
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😀
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I used many of those features all the time. The older version had a project notes option (different than the document notes) which I loved, but now it’s gone. I found a clunky workaround. But other than that, those features are helpful to me. Particularly the status and label.
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Those last two are really useful. I like those doc notes too. Maybe we can L&L to bring it back.
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I never used the meta-data function on my Scrivener projects. This is good information to know for my future projects.
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It helps keep you focused on the progression through the project.
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I’ve never used the meta-data function. I use color-coded labels to track my progress – first draft, second, final, published copy, etc. Going to try this with my next project.
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Hope it helps you with the next book.
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Thanks for this informative post on meta-data and Scrivener, PH. I used colour-coded labels recently for outlining a three-novel trilogy I’ve just begun writing. Your post gives me even more scope for using this feature. Thanks for sharing. Reblogged on: https://harmonykent.co.uk/how-to-track-a-scrivener-project-with-meta-data/ … Find another great way of getting the most out of Scrivener for your writing projects over on Story Empire today >>>
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Thanks for the reblog, Harmony. Glad this helps. I know I’ve my work cut out on the work ahead. Good to knowledge you’ve used this with you recent outlining. I’ve got a lot to do in that vein too.
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