Scrivener and Save The Cat!: Using Metadata To Find Your Scene’s Essential Truth

John Castle

The individual scene is the cell in the body of your story. But your overall story structure is the life’s blood of your scenes. Where many writers lose momentum — myself included — is finding the synergy between the cell and the blood, between the scene and the structure.

Well, thanks to Scrivener and the Save The Cat! story structuring method, I believe I have the answer to that dilemma. And it’s as easy as the metadata pane. Here’s how my metadata pane is set up, and you can do it the same way, or use any variation that suits you:

46th Mercury The Big Idea

Let me briefly define each of those fields:

Conflict:
This is where I describe “A versus B”, the essential conflict central to the scene. It could be, “Joe vs. Daisy” or “Joe vs. his phone”, could be “Daisy vs. the washing machine” or “Joe vs. his conscience.” The…

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