Exporting to Scrivener

If you draft in Penpoint and finish in Scrivener 3, you can export your manuscript as a Scrivener project instead of a single file. Chapters and scenes arrive already split into Scrivener’s binder (the folder list down the left side of its window), with your tags, colors, and statuses carried over.

Choosing Scrivener Project

Open the Export wizard (see Exporting Manuscripts for how) and pick Scrivener Project from the list of formats. This works the same way on Mac and Windows: Scrivener 3 reads the same project either way.

A Scrivener project is a folder, not a single file, so this format skips the page-level controls (title page, margins, fonts) that a Word or PDF export uses. Scrivener owns all of that.

Picking a folder and opening the project

Instead of naming a file, you pick a folder to export into. Penpoint creates a project named after your book inside it: My Novel.scriv. An existing project with the same name is never overwritten; exporting into the same folder again creates My Novel 2.scriv beside it, and the confirmation screen shown when the export finishes names the exact project it just built, so you always know which one is the new one.

To open it, launch Scrivener 3 and use File > Open, then select the .scriv folder. If your book is one Book inside a Series, the project is named after that Book, not the Series.

What carries over

• Chapter groups and chapters become folders in the Draft (Scrivener’s main manuscript folder)
• Scenes become documents, each holding that scene’s text
• A chapter’s subtitle becomes its index card synopsis (the summary text on Scrivener’s corkboard cards)
• A chapter’s corkboard synopsis (Penpoint’s own short-summary field, from its Corkboard view) and author notes both land in its notes, as two labeled sections
• A scene’s Description becomes its own index card synopsis
• A scene’s Notes become that scene document’s notes
• Chapter and scene tags become keywords (Scrivener’s version of tags)
• Colors carry over as labels (Scrivener’s color-coding, not a mailing label), and statuses as statuses

What stays in Penpoint

Images do not travel with the export. Neither do other scene fields beyond Description and Notes, such as dates or any other cards you have added to a scene’s layout: only those two fields have a home in Scrivener’s document, so the rest stays in Penpoint.

Fonts, spacing, and page layout are left to Scrivener as well. Set those in Scrivener’s Compile settings (its export and formatting screen) once the project is open.