Using bookmarks to tie projects together.

When writing a novel, a book series, or a research project you may have the needed information stored in several different Projects. You could create one massive project to keep it all together, but a more elegant and functional option is to use External Bookmarks.

Scrivener defines External Bookmarks as external files from your computer or the Internet. When you drag a computer file onto the Bookmark Manager Panel, or into the Bookmark Inspector window, then Scrivener will automatically add the file name as the title and fill in the path to the file on the computer. This works for individual documents in another Scrivener Project as well. However, if you move where your project is stored on your computer, it will break the bookmark. You can edit the bookmark to change the name or file path, but it is easier to redrag the file into Scrivener and let the program do the work.

Using External Bookmark links can help connect/integrate two projects, such as a novel in a series and your world-building project. The above image shows both projects (modified images) open on the same screen. However, in a multi-monitor setup the main project could be open on one screen and the research/world-building project set to open on another screen to compare them both as you work.

This external link to a file in another Scrivener Project will have a special Icon. (see below)

This is a unique icon for an External Link to another Scrivener Project document.

To create this link between one project and another, all you have to do is-

1. Open both projects either on the same screen as above, or on separate monitor screens if you have a multi-monitor setup. (Note: the Research Project is set to show only the Editor window by clicking the View toolbar icon and unchecking the Binder and clicking the Inspector icon to hide the inspector. You can do this manually when the project is open or choose a layout option to show this view.)

2. Drag the Editor Icon of the Research Project document you wish to link into the Inspector Document Bookmark list of your current Project (novel, etc.).

3. Decide how you want this document link to function when opened. (File > Options > Behaviors > Document Links- see below)

If the clicked document link is set to open in the Current Editor, then this will open the Bookmark in the editor window of the Research Project. You can set up the Research project to only be in the Editor view mode for easy comparison. Or you can have the external link open as a floating Quick Reference Panel. The advantage with this approach is that you can have several documents from the Research project open at once using this method. If you needed information on a location and a character on separate documents, then both could be open as QRP’s. How these document links open is up to you and may even change during different aspects of the writing process.

When you need constant and parallel access to the contents of the research project while writing, you can quickly access the layout that works in this situation using the View Icon. Clicking this toolbar icon shows all your available layouts with the bottom Layouts pane to quickly configure the view you want for this type of comparison.

This allows a tight integration between a research project/World-building Project for a group of novels/Or a previous book in a series for referencing and your current project (Novel). As you write, then quickly drag icons from the research project into the Document Bookmark window of the Inspector to create a list of files in your research project to be available at your fingertips as you write/edit a file. These can be added to Project Bookmarks as well to be available to any document in your project. If you doing this, then consider using Bookmark Linking Files. What I mean by this is you could create a Character Link document in your research project. This one file would contain links to every character profile on the research project. So opening this one file allows you to quickly open any character profile document from one place. This could be done for locations, or various aspects of your World-building as well. Placing these link files in your current project allows a few files to provide links to wide swaths of the research project. These link files could be saved either in Document or Project Bookmarks on current project without overcrowding those lists.

Note: External Links do not preview in your current project.

Thus each document/scene/chunk of text can have its own list of needed Document Bookmarks to the research project to allow tight integration between both projects.