Hey everyone! I'm currently in the process of working on a novel series of epic proportions and although I know the term epic is often overused in this case I think it actually applies. My series currently has eight books outlined (although this isn't set in stone yet) and each manuscript is expected to be a couple hundred-thousand words. On top of this I have a massive amount of world building and reference content that already exists and will continue to grow. I'd prefer not to divide my novels up into individual Scrivener projects because that creates additional complexity and a management burden in keeping world building content and references up to date and in sync with each other across projects. With all this in mind I'm anticipating that I'll easily clear one million words for the Scrivener project across hundreds or potentially thousands of text files contained within. In fact, I won't be surprised if this ends up being in the two-three million word count range by the time I'm working on the manuscript for the eighth book. In addition, I'll probably be inserting a large volume of image media for character bio sheets, setting sheets, lore sheets, vehicle sheets, technology sheets, etc. Is anyone familiar with the limits of Scrivener and whether or not there is a max folder/file count, max word count, or max file size that would prevent me working on a single project of this size? Does anyone have experience working on really large Scrivener projects and able to offer any anecdotal tales of problems or performance issues? Although I'm concerned about any potential size restrictions my biggest fear is actually getting the project to a state where it can no longer load properly or becomes corrupt. I plan on making backups of course, but it's also good to know what to expect. Any insight on this matter is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
I mean... You could just copy paste a page a few times. Then ctrl+a to copy and paste a few pages at a time. And then go until you hit whatever you're trying to hit. Also; it's great you're ambitious. But maybe start by producing a single good piece of work before spreading yourself so thin you'll never finish anything? The whole new writer wanting to create a trilogy epic saga of massive proportions is just a very cliche trope among writers and it never gets that writer anywhere. Like I said: great you're ambitious. But you gotta understand you're starting at zero and trying to skip to a million.
I've not run into any file size issues myself and according to Literature and Latte, the only real limitations are bottlenecks created either by your own computer or (if you use one) bottlenecks imposed by cloud services. I have one file that I use for all my fanfiction stories, each story separated as a "book" (that's one of the icons you'll find) and each book containing its corresponding chapters. Every single document (in the Scrivener sense of the word) is saved as an individual rtf file packed within the .scriv file, so it's never just one big file.
After doing a little more digging I discovered this. They're just numerically ordered, but at least it's all broken down into smaller files. Thanks for the information. It sounds like I have my directory structure setup somewhat similar to what you have. Each book is it's own folder containing relevant chapter folders with a custom book icon I made for each.
Yeah, I realize the level of ambition and every once in a while I wonder if I'm on a fool's errand. I've actually completed drafts for the first two books a couple times in the past already so I at least know I can get something from start to finish done even if I'm not satisfied with the quality. However, I've been working on this project for so long on-and-off again that every time I've revisited the material my writing's improved and the story has evolved enough that it warrants a rewrite. I've never lost interest in the story however, just simply been distracted by work and life unfortunately. I'm actually used to working on ambitious multi-year projects at my day job as a developer in the game industry and I've seen projects of large scale through from start to finish. Writing is obviously a very different medium but in terms of dedication to the process and putting the hours in I feel like I can draw upon my experience as a professional content creator in terms of task/time management and pacing myself. Still, I can always fall flat on my face. I know ambition and hubris can be one's downfall. With that in mind though and taking into consideration those forces that drive me I'm more convinced than ever that I have to try and believe I actually have a decent chance of pulling this thing off. Time will tell of course. My current schedule has me slated to be finished with the first book and have the entire series outlined by June 6th, 2024, at which point I'll be looking at sending out query letters. I don't want to jinx it, but I'm currently ahead of schedule based on the milestones I set for the project. Also, it's not my intent to sound dismissive of your concern because I appreciate candid advice that's meant to save unnecessary effort and time dumped into a lost cause. As someone who's worked in the video game industry for a while I remember years back after World of Warcraft had been released some of the starry-eyed ambition of aspiring game developers. I'd visit gaming forums where individuals or small teams of less than ten announced their intentions of making the next epic MMORPG with only a handful of developers. I can clearly recall passing along similar advice to those amateur developers. Making any video game, let alone an MMORPG, is an enormous tasks with much more involved than you can anticipate. I actually feel as though I've erred more on the side of caution than naivete in the past though but this thought does gnaw at me. I'm also expecting that I'll encounter several obstacles that I haven't anticipated. For this reason I've generously buffered my milestones so that if something comes up I hopefully won't slip. Even though I'm ahead of schedule at the moment I know I can't become complacent. Anyway, I really do appreciate the honest advice. I can always use consistent Bayesian re-calibration.
