Sections without the #?

[Russ_Carpenter]

Hello,

 

I am a new user of Storyist, so my question is probably awfully primitive. But here goes.

 

I'm writing a book that will be converted to mobi and ePub files, and then uploaded to the Kindle and iBooks stores. So far, I've found that using sections is quite helpful for my writing style. But I don't want all those # symbols to become part of the uploaded text.

 

Is there a way to use sections without including the # symbol in the text?

 

Thanks,

 

Russ Carpenter

[marguerite]

Hi, Russ:

Welcome to the forums.

 

The short answer to your question is no. The # tells Storyist that you have ended a section, so you need to insert it while you are writing in order to do all that good stuff like dragging a section from one place to another.

 

There is, however, a way to get the # out before you convert the file to ePub/mobi. I just tried it and it works.

 

1. Copy your file. Name it something like Title_ebook1.story. Open that copy in Storyist.

2. Get rid of everything except the manuscript you want to export and the cover image for that manuscript. Empty the trash in Storyist. (This is a precaution and probably not necessary, but it will reduce the size of your file. You are using this file only to export, so you don't need all the character, etc., information.)

3. Click in the manuscript to select it. Choose Find from the Edit menu. Type # in the "find" field and a space or some other character that you prefer in the "replace" field. Click "Replace all." Ignore the scary message about deleting text and collages (click yes). You end up with individual chapters, each of which contains one section with scenes separated by line breaks.

4. Export that file to ePub and mobi.

 

Clearly this gets old if you are exporting every day. But if you are only worried about the final output, it will do fine. Just make sure you work with a copy and not the original file. Otherwise, you will have to re-create your sections every time.

Best,

Marguerite

[Steve E]

Hi, Russ.

Hi, M.

 

One more thing. Not to nitpick but I made this mistake once myself (I had a character named #23): Before you Replace All, change any instance of "#" in the text to some other character, like "&". Then, after you Replace All, change the "&" back into a "#" where appropriate.

 

Perhaps Steve should supply some easy way to do this. Perhaps under Edit>Substitutions. If you think so, suggest it under Feature Requests.

-Thoth