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Keeping track? (Text File) | ScrivenerVirgin

There were several occasions during the first 40K of NANO when I invited my main character to ‘walk this way’.

Instead of populating the outline I had so carefully prepared ahead of time, she was determined to tread her own path.

Was I relieved when the name of Ballycombe-by-the-Sea at last crossed her lips?

Keeping track of the revised storyline might have been a nightmare in Word – been there before, got the T-shirt. With Scrivener, it’s a breeze.

My ultimate aim is for each text file to hold one scene and for each of these to plot an event or decision made by a character. I guessed at most 500 words per scene, so my first line of attack is to identify scenes that appear over long and to break them down. I explained in my Pantser heaven? blog post how to Split at Selection.

What makes life even easier is the control I have over the corkboard view. In this view, I have three columns of cards and the font size is quite small.

Corkboard

Controlling the corkboard layoutIf I want to change this, I click on the icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the corkboard area.

For example, I might reduce the number of cards across to 2, and uncheck the ‘Use small font’ box.

What was the result?

Suddenly, it’s all clearer!

Corkboard with fewer cards across and bigger font

Ecstasy!

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