Looking for clarity on what/how AT & Scrivener sync

Q & A
#1

Hi-

I’m not a new AT user, but I’m not a good one, either, and I’m trying to understand how to really utilize AT’s ability to sync with Scrivener, and…failing. :slight_smile: I’ve been reading the how-to manuals and searching YouTube, but I’m not learning how to do what I’m hoping to do, so I’m asking here.

I do think the programs can do it, but I’m not actually sure of that, and I definitely don’t understand how to make them if they will, so:

I’m a novelist and I’m trying to pull one of my books into AT. So far so good: the basic sync works, I got that. I understand how to get characters and locations into both sides of it. I know that on the AT side, I can give all my scenes and everything specific time/date/location/etc information. That’s all good.

What I’m hoping I can do is somehow put that information in on the Scrivener side, through…the custom meta-data, maybe?..and have it automatically sucked into AT not just in a neat narrative list, but actually slot into the right time, story arc, location, etc.

So basically if my scene is ‘march 17 1993, 11pm-3am, new york city, charlie’s apartment, charlie and fred are there,’ the dream here is that I can somehow tell Scrivener ‘year:1993 era:AD month:03 date:17 hour: minute: character: characterarc: etc’ somewhere in the writing app and have it slot into the right place in AT.

My cautious impression is that I’d be setting up a bunch of custom data, possibly on both sides, to make that work, which is fine if I can get to the point of understanding how to do that!

I would be very grateful if anybody could point me at the world’s simplest How To on how to do this, or, I suppose, tell me that it doesn’t work that way, which would at least stop me trying to get it to work that way. :slight_smile:

Thanks for your time.

-Catie

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#2

Yes, you’ll create custom metadata fields in Scrivener, and then create the corresponding “properties” in AT, and then you’ll sync the two together in AT. In AT you open sync settings, and click options, and go to the last ‘page’ of the settings to set up properties sync. Make sure you choose the correct type of property in AT and the correct type of metadata field in Scrivener (e.g., in AT choose multi-line text, and in Scrivener choose text–not checkbox or date or whatnot). I’d recommend trying it out with a throwaway project to make sure you’re doing it correctly before you try it with the book you’re working on.

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#3

Aaah, thank you, I think I now understand how to do this! And yeah, I’ll do it on a test project. :grimacing:

Thanks again! I’ll let you know how it goes. :slight_smile:

#4

THANK YOU. It took me a while to fully grasp what I was doing here, but this worked and I’m now up and running on most fronts! Thank you SO MUCH.

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