The Goodreads Giveaway ended on the 29th, and I sent the books to the people that Goodreads selected. I hope they read them, and that they post a review, although my experience hasn’t been all that stellar.
I sent the current version of Discoveries to my reader. Maybe it’s been long enough it won’t seem like it’s all familiar. After her changes, I’ll publish the ebook and fork the paper version. But now, it’s time to go on to Princess, and finish it up.
Word Joiners
A comment on the topic of the word joiner being used to keep em dashes from being split from the word they follow: I haven’t found a good way to search for an em dash without a word joiner. Searching for the absence of something has never been a strong point in the software I’m familiar with. Open Office shows the word joiner character as a shaded vertical line between the letter and the em dash, but while those make it obvious where I have included it, it doesn’t do much for searching. In Scrivener, the word joiner can be detected by moving the cursor (with the arrow keys) through the em dash; the cursor will not move for that one character when the word joiner is detected (since it's invisible, after all).
In addition, I’m not an expert on regular expressions (used by both Scrivener and Open Office) by any means, and I’m sure a search string can be constructed to find em dashes not preceded by a word joiner, but I took the (in this case) shorter path, and searched for every letter followed by an em dash, in sequence.
As always, comments welcome!
Showing posts with label Scrivener. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scrivener. Show all posts
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Useful Scrivener Tips
Perhaps some of you are as backwards as I; if so the following about how to use Scrivener may help answer one or two questions which, depending on your level of OCD, may or may not have caused you distress. So, the 'useful' in the title refers to me, and hopefully, to you.
“How’s Ian? And Kev? And Amy got back okay? And ev
—”
This may show up when dialog is interrupted. (If you have a problem with the open/close quote mark following the em dash, read on.) In case you wondered, I’ve forced the line break where it normally wouldn’t occur, to create the example.
In like manner, the structure without quote marks is typically used for internal monologue that’s cut off, similar to dialog being interrupted, so:
Probably wasn’t even thinking of that possibility, that she would
—
The character ending both these examples is the em dash. In Scrivener, the em dash is created by either of two techniques: clicking the ‘hyphen’ key twice (the easy way), or entering (on a Mac, at least), shift option hyphen
To prevent a line break from occurring between the em dash and the word preceding it, someone created the Word Joiner. Using the Word Joiner will force the lines above to appear as you’d hope and expect:
“How’s Ian? And Kev? And Amy got back okay? And
ev—”
and
Probably wasn’t even thinking of that possibility, that she
would—
no matter how the page size and margins work out. Note, there is no space between the final letter and the —; the font appears to have a narrow space.
The Word Joiner is entered by placing the cursor between the final character (either the "v" or the "d") and the “em dash.” On the Edit Menu, slide down to Insert, and select Word Joiner. Note that, because it is zero-width, you will observe no change in the text, however, the character count in the status bar will increase. Also, if the change is made where the word and em dash have been split, the word will flow to the next line, coupled with the em dash.
As you may have observed, this addition forces the em dash and the word preceding it to both fall on the next line, so it may affect the way the page lays out. This is more of a concern with the pdf file, since the text on a paperback page doesn’t flow the way an ebook does.
To be clear, I use Find and Replace when I'm finished to add the Word Joiner before all the em dashes, since I can't predict in an e-book where the line breaks will appear.
There are three plausible ways to deal with these. First is the one suggested: uniformly enter the quote, then backspace and enter the em dash. Second, finish the word, enter the em dash, and then type the following keys to create a close quote: shift option [
Third, and excellent for one of your final steps in proofing your ms, use Find and Replace to search for instances of —“ and replace them with the correct version.
£30 000 instead of £30
000, which might occur due to line length, page size and font choice. Again, I forced the line break as an example.
There are other situations where you might desire to not have a pair of words split; the Non-breaking Space will allow you that control.
The Word Joiner
Have you had a sentence in either your e-book or paperback (the pdf for which you created with Scrivener) that, by the nature of the margins and font size and all those other variables, ends split across two lines, so:“How’s Ian? And Kev? And Amy got back okay? And ev
—”
This may show up when dialog is interrupted. (If you have a problem with the open/close quote mark following the em dash, read on.) In case you wondered, I’ve forced the line break where it normally wouldn’t occur, to create the example.
In like manner, the structure without quote marks is typically used for internal monologue that’s cut off, similar to dialog being interrupted, so:
Probably wasn’t even thinking of that possibility, that she would
—
The character ending both these examples is the em dash. In Scrivener, the em dash is created by either of two techniques: clicking the ‘hyphen’ key twice (the easy way), or entering (on a Mac, at least), shift option hyphen
To prevent a line break from occurring between the em dash and the word preceding it, someone created the Word Joiner. Using the Word Joiner will force the lines above to appear as you’d hope and expect:
“How’s Ian? And Kev? And Amy got back okay? And
ev—”
and
Probably wasn’t even thinking of that possibility, that she
would—
no matter how the page size and margins work out. Note, there is no space between the final letter and the —; the font appears to have a narrow space.
The Word Joiner is entered by placing the cursor between the final character (either the "v" or the "d") and the “em dash.” On the Edit Menu, slide down to Insert, and select Word Joiner. Note that, because it is zero-width, you will observe no change in the text, however, the character count in the status bar will increase. Also, if the change is made where the word and em dash have been split, the word will flow to the next line, coupled with the em dash.
As you may have observed, this addition forces the em dash and the word preceding it to both fall on the next line, so it may affect the way the page lays out. This is more of a concern with the pdf file, since the text on a paperback page doesn’t flow the way an ebook does.
To be clear, I use Find and Replace when I'm finished to add the Word Joiner before all the em dashes, since I can't predict in an e-book where the line breaks will appear.
The open quote where a close quote should be
According to Scrivener support (who are uncommonly helpful and unfailingly polite), the —“ seen when a close quote is entered following an em dash, is a bug in the MacOS text handler. They recommend entering the quote mark following the text, then back-spacing and entering the two hyphens to create the em dash. This works. However, if you’re at all like me, you miss one or two (or even more) of these.There are three plausible ways to deal with these. First is the one suggested: uniformly enter the quote, then backspace and enter the em dash. Second, finish the word, enter the em dash, and then type the following keys to create a close quote: shift option [
Third, and excellent for one of your final steps in proofing your ms, use Find and Replace to search for instances of —“ and replace them with the correct version.
The Non-breaking Space
A last tip: you may have noticed on the Edit>Insert menu, the Non-breaking Space. This character creates a space which prevents a line break preceding or following it, so that numbers, for example, appear like this:£30 000 instead of £30
000, which might occur due to line length, page size and font choice. Again, I forced the line break as an example.
There are other situations where you might desire to not have a pair of words split; the Non-breaking Space will allow you that control.
In closing
Google em dash to find suggested usages. In fiction, I find it most useful to signal an interruption in speech or thought, followed by using it to signal a parenthetical expression.
A word of warning, the characters generated with the option key only work (in my case, at least) with the US keyboard enabled. Specifically, when I select the Unicode keyboard, they do not work. Also, while Unicode includes the non-breaking hyphen (U+2011) (Prevent line breaks before or after), and an em dash (U+2014) (Line break opportunity before AND after), it has no Non-breaking em dash, as we would like. Feel free to experiment with these at your leisure. You may find characters like ([which may also show as a question mark within a square] created, in this case, by typing option feff [No break zero-width space] using the Unicode keyboard - this appears to be an alternate coding for the Word Joiner [U+2060]). This isn’t intended to be a treatise on Unicode; just an explanation of the character you might see when entering a code that the character set doesn’t include.
As always, YMMV. I'm using Scrivener 2.7 on a MacBook Pro, MacOS 10.11.2. I'm certain the encodings for these characters (and thousands of others) are available under Windows and for Word users; since I'm not one of those, I recommend a brief Google search, which should fill your screen with more information than you could ever hope for.
Comments, as always are welcome. If you have a similar tip, I'd be happy to see it in the comments.
250221 Corrected per Jake's comment.
Friday, May 17, 2013
CreateSpace: Why would you not?
While e-books are likely the wave of the future, many people I know have no interest in adding a Kindle or Nook or whatever to their electronic library. Some don't like e-books for what are to them, perfectly valid reasons. And some reserve their savvy for other than computer-based work. Probably, you have friends in one or more of those categories. And there are potential readers out there who also fit. Given the small amount of additional work needed to create paperback copies of your wonderful novel, doesn't it make sense to do so? No, I'm not acting as a shill for Amazon; it just seems like a no-brainer to me.
Of course, the decision is yours. I'm relating my experience to give you an idea about the effort needed to take a book already available in e-book format to CreateSpace. If you do it, and sell enough to clear the (low) royalty hurdle, congratulations! If not, at least you didn't close off the path.
I spent about ten hours over the past several weeks formatting and proofing Mercenaries; A Love Story for the print on demand service CreateSpace. Most of that time was spent on learning the (admittedly few) ropes needed to select a trim size - I based my selection on a survey of the paperback books in my library and the page count estimates from the processor. That was probably the most difficult task.
For printing, the things you need to choose are the
trim size (the actual page size) of the book, the font and size of the interior text, and the line spacing. Assuming you are not planning a different edit for print, these are
the major determiners of the page count, which drives the
cost, and therefore the sell price.
I went back and forth a few times in
making these choices for my book, and I plan to keep them for other
books in the series, to keep them cosmetically the same.
I asked my wife, an avid reader, for input on the font
and size by printing a few pages in the same size and layout as the
book in different fonts and sizes, and having her review them. Between us we selected Georgia in
10 pt for the font, with 1.1 x line spacing.
CreateSpace takes PDF files for the
internal text. I created these directly from Scrivener, using their
compile option to override the project page set-up with a specific
one for pdf. Along with the page size, I set up the headers and
footers as I wanted and ’pressed the button, Max!’ (Apologies to
Dr. Fate.)
After a review of the resulting PDF file,
I selected it in the internal file section of the CreateSpace process. It was
then a matter of waiting until their review process ground its
wheels. Any errors are flagged. The first time
I tried this, I didn’t understand the requirement that the size of
the pages in the PDF file had to match the page size selected in
CreateSpace. I know, I know, it's obvious, right?
I fixed that in the Scrivener options
by choosing the 6 x 9 page size with margins* to fit CreateSpace
suggestions, and lo, my file came back error free!
I would note that while Scrivener makes
the process of changing the page set-up easy, your own experience may
vary. I believe that it would be as simple if using Word, but my
experience with Word is several years old. I have been unable to
accomplish this with Open Office, since they tie the page size to
Styles, and I haven't ever figured out how to use Styles. My guess is
that LibreOffice is the same as OO. To be fair, since Scrivener does
the job, I've spent very little time on it.
Other choices affecting page count are
requiring chapters to begin on "a recto page" (the right
hand side), the font size of the Chapter headings and the padding
used to lower the Chapter heading toward the center of the page.
These, however, won't affect the page count by more than five
percent, in my experience, if you make reasonable choices. Starting
on a recto page will have the biggest effect; with optimal bad luck,
it could amount to an extra page per chapter. Plan on half that.
Here are photos of the interior, showing a chapter opening, and a two page spread. Focus isn't too good, sorry.
Here are photos of the interior, showing a chapter opening, and a two page spread. Focus isn't too good, sorry.
The second hurdle was creating a table
of contents. In the ebook version, I had entries only for
individual sections, but I wanted to add the chapters in the print
version. This was more trouble, because of the various options for
TOC creation in Scrivener, and rather than detail it here, if you need or want more detail on that, contact me.
The last item is the cover. Once you've
chosen a trim size, it also defines the cover size, and therefore the
requirements for the image. For the 6x9 trim size, the
image you select must be 6.25" x 9.5" with a resolution of
300 DPI. Another requirement is that there be no useful information
within a quarter-inch of the edge. This typically means the title and
the author's name must be well within the finished printed area. Other
trim sizes will have their own requirements, determined when you
begin the process. You will select one of the templates that allow
you to add your own cover image.
An Author photo is nice to include, but
not required. The image should be 1.5" x 1.5", again with a
300 DPI resolution. I haven't checked, but this requirement probably
fits all trim sizes.
You'll need the text for the back cover
(the book description may be what you want), and if you choose, an
author biography to go with the picture.
That's really about it. The CreateSpace
process is dead easy to follow, and it gives you feedback at every
step to keep you headed true.
Once everything's been approved, proof the result. I suggest you order the physical book at least once. When you receive it, make sure it's what you expect. Check the cover: front, back and spine. Check the front material to make sure you got the one for the printed version! Inside, make sure the chapter first pages look the way you want, including whether they start correctly, and have the font and size you expect. Make sure the padding is the same from chapter to chapter. Several places through the text, check the page numbers and the other header/footer text you added. Make sure it doesn't overrun the text.
Once everything's been approved, proof the result. I suggest you order the physical book at least once. When you receive it, make sure it's what you expect. Check the cover: front, back and spine. Check the front material to make sure you got the one for the printed version! Inside, make sure the chapter first pages look the way you want, including whether they start correctly, and have the font and size you expect. Make sure the padding is the same from chapter to chapter. Several places through the text, check the page numbers and the other header/footer text you added. Make sure it doesn't overrun the text.
Before finishing the process for
Mercenaries, I did the same process for an editing copy of my WIP,
Freedom Does Matter. For this copy, I printed it myself, on my
overworked HP inkjet printer.
Because I didn't want to cut the sheets
down, I bought a ream of legal paper and set Scrivener for a trim
size of 7" x 8.5", half a sheet. I used Cheap Impostor to
do the imposting (the re-ordering of pages into signatures). It makes
a nice package... especially if a duplex printer is available. For
Freedom, 292 pages the way I printed it, I had 73 sheets of paper
(four pages per sheet) to fold, which took something over an hour.
Because my printer is not duplex, I
first printed the even pages, then turned them over and printed the
odd pages. For whatever reason, the HP printer doesn't pick up
freshly printed pages as well as it does unprinted sheets; I had to
help the printer pick up each of the sheets when printing the odd
sheets. That added about an hour, so the marked-up copy in the photo
required three plus hours to put together. You can tell that it is
not glued--much better for editing.
I was glad I went through the exercise.
Not only did I get a different format (making editing easier for me),
I got additional experience in the process of making input files for
CreateSpace.
If this seems like it would be useful
to you, feel free to experiment. At the least, if
you decide to have someone else do this work, I hope you'll have some
insight into the work they will be doing for you. If you’d like
more details on any part of the process, contact me. And as usual, comments are welcome!
*The inside margin (the left in
Scrivener) is determined by the page count, to allow the text to be
read when the book is bound. As the page count increases, so does the
depth of the inside margin.
Photos of Freedom Does Matter editing copy:
 |
| Binder Clips. That's what they're for, right? |
 |
| With the beat-up cover-don't mind where the cat licked! |
 | |
| Two piles of folded signatures. I did edit, see! |
 |
| One of the signatures, open |
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
I Miss Her
The Muse.
I've gone through the two beta readers' comments on Freedom No Matter, and made a long ton of changes based on their suggestions. I also gave them more work (that I hope they'll be able to fit into their schedules) asking if changes fit, and what did you mean by... and well, of course you're right, that was just [fill in your own inappropriate adjective].
I want to point out once again how much help these people give. In addition to taking the time just to read the work, they also mark errors, make suggestions, and tell me where they think the plot went astray. It's a lot of work, and I can't say how much I appreciate it. I'm sure every person writing is just as beholden to her or his beta readers; I just hope everyone remembers to say thanks, loud and clear! Even better: do an equally good job when asked to return the favor.
My readers have pointed out significant problems with my work. That's good. What's not so good is that it now falls to me to figure out how to correct them. In a day or two, I'll begin hitting Delete until I've found the focus that I slipped by earlier.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I was waiting for my reader to finish before thinking I understood at least some of the issues at work (Focus, focus, focus!). The verdict is in: the second half is better than the first. The inflection point, Chapter 17, corresponds to my beginning to use a new tool. I hasten to add that the tool isn't as important as the provider wants us to think, but for me, it made it a lot easier to do what I haven't really ever done before: create an outline of the story before writing it.
I can hear the heads butting the desks and tables now. Of course the focus will be better when you know what you're writing. And on and on. Or perhaps the cry is: pantsers will rise again. Maybe.
The tool that made it easier for me to adapt is Aeon Timeline. I found that being able to outline in a chronological context made that part of the job both easier and more useful. I think, with my limited experience, it works better for more complicated story lines, or rather, it has more utility for those scenarios. It also links with Scrivener, back and forth, although I haven't figured our how to use that feature to its fullest. It's a Mac only tool right now; read the developer's blog about progress on the Windows platform.
Check out their websites, linked above. Trial versions are available if you think either of them might help you, too.
As for the Muse, she's been flitting in and out. We're working on the timeline for Background Check so I'll have a little structure when NaNoWriMo comes along. She also got me to start a short story completely unrelated to anything, but snuck out before saying how she thinks it should end. Working on that one, too.
I've gone through the two beta readers' comments on Freedom No Matter, and made a long ton of changes based on their suggestions. I also gave them more work (that I hope they'll be able to fit into their schedules) asking if changes fit, and what did you mean by... and well, of course you're right, that was just [fill in your own inappropriate adjective].
I want to point out once again how much help these people give. In addition to taking the time just to read the work, they also mark errors, make suggestions, and tell me where they think the plot went astray. It's a lot of work, and I can't say how much I appreciate it. I'm sure every person writing is just as beholden to her or his beta readers; I just hope everyone remembers to say thanks, loud and clear! Even better: do an equally good job when asked to return the favor.
My readers have pointed out significant problems with my work. That's good. What's not so good is that it now falls to me to figure out how to correct them. In a day or two, I'll begin hitting Delete until I've found the focus that I slipped by earlier.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I was waiting for my reader to finish before thinking I understood at least some of the issues at work (Focus, focus, focus!). The verdict is in: the second half is better than the first. The inflection point, Chapter 17, corresponds to my beginning to use a new tool. I hasten to add that the tool isn't as important as the provider wants us to think, but for me, it made it a lot easier to do what I haven't really ever done before: create an outline of the story before writing it.
I can hear the heads butting the desks and tables now. Of course the focus will be better when you know what you're writing. And on and on. Or perhaps the cry is: pantsers will rise again. Maybe.
The tool that made it easier for me to adapt is Aeon Timeline. I found that being able to outline in a chronological context made that part of the job both easier and more useful. I think, with my limited experience, it works better for more complicated story lines, or rather, it has more utility for those scenarios. It also links with Scrivener, back and forth, although I haven't figured our how to use that feature to its fullest. It's a Mac only tool right now; read the developer's blog about progress on the Windows platform.
Check out their websites, linked above. Trial versions are available if you think either of them might help you, too.
As for the Muse, she's been flitting in and out. We're working on the timeline for Background Check so I'll have a little structure when NaNoWriMo comes along. She also got me to start a short story completely unrelated to anything, but snuck out before saying how she thinks it should end. Working on that one, too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)