Labels, Labels, and Labels in Scrivener

If it’s in the Binder, you can assign it a label, but only one label. That seems rather limiting, don’t you think? Well, yes and no. Let’s explore a little bit.

Groups Within Labels

Here’s the set of labels in one of my current projects.

I’ve pencilled in some dividers because I use them for three different things in three different parts of the binder.

1. Major categories for everything EXCEPT those in the Manuscript (or Draft) folder.
2. The categories I assign ONLY in the Manuscript (or Draft) folder.
3. Here are the categories I recently added to track submissions to agents and publishers.

To see these in use, here’s a picture of a small part of the Binder. Note they are in three different sections (areas) of the Binder.

“Execution,” “Witness,” and “Run, Run, Run” are scenes in the Manuscript folder for this project. The “Characters” folder and its content have been given the “Character Notes” label. And the various agents inside the “Tracking” folder have labels indicating the status of submissions to agents. (So far, I’m striking out. Insert unhappy face here.)

So, labels don’t have to be all in the same category. In my case, I have three kinds (groups) of labels, and they’re used in three different parts of this Binder.

Summary

In summary then, if it’s in the Binder, you can give it one Label, but you don’t have to use the same Labels everywhere. You can have multiple kinds (groups) of labels. Best of all, label colors can be turned on in the Binder to help you spot things (like those nasty Rejections).

By the way, if you need to tag one thing with multiple attributes, that’s what Keywords are for. You can assign Keywords to parts of your manuscript, to your Character Notes, Research folders, things in Front Matter, anywhere you like, and any number of Keywords to any thing. But that’s for another post.