scene breaks and changing symbols

[Eleni]

First, let me just start by saying I love using Storyist and now that I've decided to publish an Ebook, I'm glad I made this investment for the Kindle conversion ability alone!

 

My question is two-tiered:

 

1. For a scene break I've been attempting to change the pound symbol to an asterisk and have followed the instructions in the manual but have been unable to change the character. Maybe I'm missing something? I've tried editing styles, creating styles, etc, but no luck. I even tried that "applied styles by matching text" feature. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out these kind of issues, but I'm perplexed over this one.

 

2. I also would like to know if there's an option to have a scene break WITHOUT a character at all...or using my own graphic which deals with the theme of my novel. I'm going to be publishing an ebook and would welcome all advice regarding this matter.

 

Thanks,

Eleni

[marguerite]

Eleni:

You can't change the # to anything else within Storyist and still have Storyist recognize the text that follows as a new section. If you want the final e-book to have sections separated by something other than #, I suggest the following:

1. Copy your file (this is because you are about to wipe out all the section breaks).

2. Open the copy and use Find/Replace to search for all the # and replace them with the character of your choice. Be aware that ePub/MOBI are very primitive when it comes to fonts, so your cute little horse head or flower or whatever may display on the Kindle as a boxed ?. So pick something simple, like an asterisk. If you want no character, replace # with a space.

3. Step 2 will leave you with chapters but no sections in the Project View. The text, however, will have the character you picked in place of #. Check a couple to make sure they are still centered (they should be, since they will have the Section Separator style applied, even though Storyist doesn't recognize them as section breaks any longer).

4. Export that file to MOBI or ePub and check the results on your device. When I did this, it worked fine.

 

Go back to your original for any further editing. If you want to re-export, make a new copy and repeat.

Best,

M

[Eleni]

Hi Marguerite:

 

Thanks for your reply. Hopefully this will be a feature they can eventually add on in later versions of the software.

[garrickstaggs]

I would like more explanation for why things behave this way in Storyist. It seems like one should be able to name sections however they wish and be able to change the section break to whatever symbol, number, letter that they wish. I mean it partially works already. When I create a new project using the blank template I immediately delete out all the files except for the Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 headers. Then, clicking on Chapter 1 I add a selection which gives me the # symbol, but in the project view I change the section to read 1, then go over and delete the # symbol and change it to 1 and it stays ... BUT, from then on when I add a section I get the # symbol in my text, but nothing showing up in the project window anymore. I'm not trying to trash talk Storyist, as I love it, but it feels like sometimes that the writer is having to work around the software, rather than the other way around. I would like to be able to tailor my story to look the way I want it to look, especially when its getting exported out to ePub. No body wants their finished project chocked full of # symbols. I did have a crazy idea thinking that I could change the # symbol to the color white, but that doesn't work either. The Kindle sure enough displays it. I think creating a way to change this would be a glorious idea. That way no one has to jump through so many steps to create the version of their novel they wish to see.

[marguerite]

You're thinking in terms of a word processor. Storyist functions as it does (with all those cool features like linking sheets and storing character information) because it is a database manager that includes word processing. The # signals to Storyist that you have created a break, so that if you later decide to move that entire section elsewhere, you don't have to copy and paste it, as you would in a word processor; you can just drag it wherever you want.

 

In theory, the program could be set up so that the user defines the break character, but it has to be something not likely to be used routinely in your story (or you might end up with random section breaks). In practice, I suspect the issue is more complicated than that, since the feature request has been kicking around for a while and remains unfulfilled. Although I am not a programmer, I can guess that programming Storyist to recognize # as a section break is easier than programming it to recognize any user-defined character as a section break.

 

Hope that helps. I'm not trying to blast you for your post (I too dislike # in my e-books!). But that's the explanation, to the best of my understanding. And the work-around is not all that onerous.

Best,

M

[garrickstaggs]

Hi Eleni and Marguerite-

 

I think I might have been able to create a template that fixes this problem, at least it works well enough for me that I am going to implement it in my novel. Is there a place I can upload the template?