Using Scrivener - Find and Replace

I should probably be in bed, sleeping for a long day of part-time work followed by mandatory overtime at my job... but I went on Facebook and I saw a need...  So for this Scrivener tutorial, we're going to cover (very briefly)...

Find and Replace in Scrivener Projects!

Okay, let's pretend for a moment that you're like I am... You write 30,000 words on a young adult novel, and you've had the perfect name selected for your perfect character all this time. You love it. Your friends love it. Your beta readers love it. Heck, even your mother loves it, and she won't read your novels anymore because you've put her through 8 completely different versions of the same dang character from High School Mystery story to a story in another world with androids and aliens...

You're 30,000 words in to version 17 of the story because obviously you can't just edit a completed version of the novel... you've changed "the" somewhere and suddenly your plot imploded and aliens abducted your character in the prologue, and now you just have to sit there and wonder why, when, where, and how these blasted aliens came in or came from.

Laugh all you like, but it is a true story and it has happened to me. It has happened to me since my Nettie novel began in 2001. (I finally stopped trying to ask questions, in case you were wondering. Now my characters have full reign over my impetuous fingers...)

Anyway, you're that far into your story and your character suddenly digs their heels in and says, "Look, you idiot writer... Do I look like a Regauldo Dramorphus to you? Do you see this stern chin? The way my nose arches just a bit? Or how my eyebrow twitches when I am angry - and I am angry at you, you nincompoop! I hate my name! I never liked it, and you won't write another word unless you change it to something I like!"

And now you have to pick up your fantastic Razer Mechanical BlackWidow Ultimate Keyboard up and smack it on your head just to hear the fantastic clicking of the keys in unison as you attempt to knock yourself out all to ignore Reggie's whining over a name you painstakingly spent several days and weeks selecting for him.

Why? Because dang it all, you're going to have to spend another several days and weeks selecting a new name! But since you can't use the Cybermen from Doctor Who on Regauldo Dramorphus without turning your original piece of genius into a fanfiction (DELETE, DELETE), you need a quicker option.

Scrivener can be a little tough for Word users because we've been using Word for so long that all of its keyboard short-cuts are typically stock short-cuts for Word knock-off programs too. Scrivener on the other hand seems to have a motto going for it, "All or Nothing". It works, but it also means we might require a tutorial or two hundred in order to fully utilize all of its potential.

So, let me very quickly explain how to Find→Replace with Scrivener.

Screen capture of Scrivener
select image for larger view

First, at the top bar of the screen you'll see the following list:

• File
• Edit
• View
• Project
• Documents
• Format
• Tools
• Window
• Help

Select Edit to open the drop-down menu using your left mouse button (unless your mouse is configured for a lefty person). Locate Find. As you can see in this picture, at the time of writing this tutorial, it is second to the bottom of the Edit drop-down menu. Hold your cursor over "Find" until a second drop-down menu appears. If it doesn't appear within a second or two, select "Find" with your left mouse button to open the drop-down menu manually.

There will be a list of options. The two we will discuss are...

Find things in Scrivener files individually

Find... (keyboard short-cut is Ctrl+F) You can use this to locate within individual files in your project to find and replace something. This makes it easy to replace something in one file of the project without altering the rest of the project simultaneously.

Full project find and replace

Project Replace... (No short-cut available) Use this to locate all instances of "Regauldo" and "Dramorphus" to replace with a name of Reggie's choosing. Reggie will be so much happier if he doesn't have to listen to Barmagupp tease him about his name... It's a nice feature since you can organize everything in Scrivener and you won't worry about missing details in project notes or anything that you hate going back over again.

Well, that's that, then. I hope you enjoyed this small little tutorial and that it becomes very useful to you in the future! And now that I have done something productive, I can crawl into my bed and watch ridiculously addictive foreign dramas and avoid being productive on my Camp Nano project. (Honestly! Yi-Ru is falling for Shi De and Shi De loves her, but she inadvertently lied to him about having cancer because her family told her she had cancer just so she would go on vacation! Meanwhile, Yun's a writer and her number 1 fan is a stalker who wants her to love him back, but her stalker's ex-fiancee is getting married after only 6 months separated and...hehehehe... I swear, I could stop watching any time... it's not a problem...)

If you liked this blog, please let me know. If you have a different Scrivener feature you would like me to do a tutorial for, please comment or message me on Facebook. Somewhere on my blog there should be a link that will take you to my Facebook page. If I was incorrect on anything, please let me know!

Or even just comment and tell me about a writing experience or share this with a friend. Either way, I hope you enjoyed it!