Moving from Scrivener
Bring your Scrivener project across, binder and all, and find where your favourite tools live in Mythforge.
Coming from Scrivener? You don't have to start over. Mythforge opens your Scrivener project directly, binder and all, and most of what you know has a place here. This guide walks you through the move and shows where your favourite Scrivener tools live in Mythforge.
Bring your project across
- In Scrivener, close the project, so everything is saved.
- Zip it. A Scrivener project is a folder (on a Mac, Finder shows it as one file, such as My Novel.scriv):
- Mac: in Finder, right-click the project and choose Compress.
- Windows: right-click the project folder and choose Send to → Compressed (zipped) folder (on Windows 11, Compress to ZIP file).
- Or in Scrivener: File → Back Up → Back Up To… with Back up as ZIP file ticked.
- In Mythforge, open the world the story belongs to (or make a new one) and go to its Manuscripts tab. Choose Import…, beside New series. In a world with no manuscripts yet, choose Import from Scrivener, Word or Markdown….
- Pick the .zip, check the preview and choose Import.
Nothing is added until you choose Import, and your Scrivener project is never changed, so you can try it as often as you like.
For every detail of the import, including the preview's choices, see Import a manuscript.
How your binder maps across
| In Scrivener | In Mythforge |
|---|---|
| The Draft (or Manuscript) folder | A manuscript |
| Part folders that hold chapter folders | Acts |
| Chapter folders | Chapters |
| Documents | Scenes (split at scene breaks such as #, if you like) |
| Research, Characters and Places | Lore entries, sorted into your lorebook's categories |
| Character sketches' Father, Siblings lines | Family ties in the family tree |
| Synopses (index cards) | Synopses |
| Status | Status: Outline, Draft, Revised or Final |
| Labels | A scene's Point of view or Location, when they name your characters or places |
| Keywords | Tags |
| Comments and inline annotations | Comments |
| Document notes | A comment on the scene |
| Footnotes | Numbered notes at the end of the scene |
| Snapshots | Snapshots, with their dates |
| Links between documents | Lore mentions, when they point at a document that became a lore entry |
| Include in Compile turned off | Left out, if you tick Leave out what isn't compiled |
Left behind for now: project targets, pictures, the Template Sheets and Front Matter folders and the Trash.
Where things are now
Most of Scrivener's tools have a counterpart. Some work a little differently.
The binder
A world's Manuscripts tab lists your books, and a manuscript's Chapters list shows its chapters and scenes. On a wide window the sidebar's Manuscripts panel is your binder: the chapters and scenes of the manuscript you're in, with a filter field on top. See The desktop workbench.
Chapters are numbered by their place, so you never type "Chapter 12", and moving one renumbers the rest. Scenes don't need titles: an untitled scene is named by its opening words. See Scene titles, paging and the manuscript menu.
Corkboard and outliner
Switch a manuscript's Show scenes as to Cards for the corkboard, or Plan for a grid of chapters against characters, which is handy for following one viewpoint through the book. Filter any of them by point of view, status or plot thread. See Planning and the corkboard.
The inspector
A scene's … (Scene details) holds its synopsis, status, point of view, location, in-world date, tags, snapshots and comments. On a wide window the same details sit in a panel beside the editor.
Point of view and location are lore entries rather than labels, so they link to your characters' and places' pages, and the scene's date puts it on the timeline.
Research
Your research becomes the lorebook: a page for each character, place, faction or idea, with details, pictures and relationships. Write a name in a scene and it can link to its page, so the lorebook knows every scene a character appears in.
Composition mode
Focus mode hides everything but the scene you're writing, and Typewriter scrolling keeps your line steady on the screen. See Focus and typewriter modes.
Split editor
On a wide window, open scenes and lore entries as tabs and put them side by side, in as many columns or rows as you like. See Tabs, groups and split view.
Project and session targets
Set a word target in a manuscript's details, and a Daily goal in Settings → Writing. For timed bursts, start a writing sprint. Writing stats keeps your history and streaks. Imported words don't count towards today's goal or your stats.
Collections and search
There are no collections. Instead, tag the scenes you'd group together, and search for the tag with # to see them all. Search (⌘ P on a Mac, Ctrl P on Windows and Linux) jumps to any scene or page by name and finds words anywhere in your writing. See Search, find and replace.
Compile
Compile and export makes a Word manuscript for agents, an EPUB, a book-style PDF or markdown. Choose which statuses and chapters go in. There's less to set up than in Scrivener: the layouts are made for you. See Compile and export.
Things that are different
- Everything saves as you type. There's no Save, and no project to open or close.
- Your writing is plain markdown files, one per scene and lore entry, readable in any text editor. See Where your writing lives.
- Sync across devices with Dropbox or Google Drive, and edits made on two devices are both kept. No need to close the project on one device before opening it on another.
- Bold and italics are kept, along with headings, block quotes and lists. Fonts, sizes and colours from your Scrivener documents aren't: the editor's typography is set once for everything, in Settings → Typography.
- One world, many books. A world holds its lorebook and every manuscript set in it, so a series shares its characters. See Series and related books.