Suggestions for Overall Manuscript Feature Enhancements and Streamlining for Publisher Submissions
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Suggestions for Overall Manuscript Feature Enhancements and Streamlining for Publisher Submissions
Feature Upgrade · Manuscripts · Created by Roger Denton
closed
Manuscript Backups Publisher-Submissions Monetization Article-Creation Document-Upload Manuscript-Formatting
This is a multi-part suggestion which is aimed at making the manuscript feature more accessible, to allow for existing work to be more easily put into Word Anvil, and allow for work to be formatted correctly for publisher submission directly within the Word Anvil manuscript feature. The pverall idea is to streamline the manuscript feature enough to allow it to function entirely as a stand-alone tool for authors and role-players alike. Ideally, users would be able to toggle between the current "Chapter" view of the manuscripts feature and my suggested "Word Processor" view. Also, the major highlight of the last two sections is that the features within them would allow creators to more easily put their work into Word Anvil for monetization. The specifics are as follows:
Allow for greater formatting options and presets in style, such as the first paragraph in each new scene and chapter not being indented and specific page margins being set. This is required by many publishers for submission and Amazon Direct Publishing, some traditional publishers, Kindle, Smashwords, and others all have their own formatting guidelines and it would be great if manuscripts written within World Anvil could be formatted for each just by selecting from a menu.
The ability to work on a manuscript as a single contiguous document like in a Microsoft Word, for example. To prevent lag, documents could either be progressively loaded as scrolling takes place or by loading 10-20 (or larger if possible) page sections at a time. With the latter, when the document progresses toward the end or is scrolled back toward the beginning of the section, an autosave could be triggered that also reloads the document centered on the desired section. Though, from my limited experience with the manuscript feature, it seems very stable and may be able to handle entire manuscripts as is without many issues.
-Allow users to hide the "Scenes" in the fast access menu for those who don't utilize the feature.
The in-document table of contents would be recognized as being such and would be updated as the document is further modified. This would provide a huge motivation for authors to take their existing work and place them in Word Anvil and could greatly expand the user base and those wanting to take advantage of monetization features.
Upon loading a new document into Word Anvil Manuscripts, weather by copying into or uploading, single characters with spaces before and after would be recognized as scene separations and would be reflected in the fast-access menu.
For pasting or loading content made outside of Word Anvil, it would be helpful if a search of the document could be done for any character names and locations that have already been made into articles.
Additionally, a search could be made for capitalized names not found at the beginning of sentences and they could be marked for review. This would be particularly helpful for authors who are putting entire novels into Word Anvil as it would allow them to potentially pick character names, locations, and many important details out. By reviewing these, a user could either choose to make them into articles, ignore the tag, or remove it. Other things could also be searched for like dates, or time references.
Another streamlined way for people to more easily make articles for existing documents is to allow them to highlight words, right click, and choose an option to link the selection to an article or make a new article about it.
The ability to upload documents back into the Word Anvil manuscript tool would also allow users to keep backups of their work and allow work to be done offline and easily updated by uploading.
While a Word Anvil app that can be downloaded and installed locally would be ideal, links to content within Word Anvil articles may be maintained by assigning special non-navigable hyperlinks to anything that is connected with an existing article. This would allow users to continue work offline while maintaining all existing links between their work and articles.
General Formatting
- Modify the manuscript feature so it is displayed as individual numbered pages. This will allow for writers to more easily track how long each chapter or overall book is.
Migrating Content into Word Anvil Manuscripts
- Going with the previous bullet, copy and paste auto-formatting would be helpful. In other words, when a document is pasted in, headers would be recognized as chapters, centered as headers, and would be linked with the fast-access table of contents for navigation. The existing quick-navigation view would still be available.
Downloading and Working Offline
- Being able to save documents in DocX and other formats commonly required by publishers and self-publishing platforms. This would allow people to more easily download and submit their work.
Follow up
Here is the URL for discussing since it didn't seem to load: https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldAnvil/comments/176oyf1/suggestions_for_overall_manuscript_feature/
The Team's Response
Thanks for compiling this list of suggestions. We'll take them into consideration, but please understand that this is a full specification for a feature rather than a single suggestion. In the future, please be more specific so we can directly respond to it. Thank you!
Current score
14/300 Votes · +2500 points
Votes Cast
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-300
by Pete Nelson
on 2023-10-31 04:58It sounds like you want WA to implement a fully featured word processor. If you want all of these feature, why not just use MS Word or whatever your favorite editing software happens to be, then export your document/manuscript/whatever as a PDF, then upload that to WA? Some of the things you are asking for seem impractical, like displaying contents as numbered pages. Pages of what size, in what font, with what font size, spacing, etc.? What you are asking for her would be an *enormous* amount of work to develop and debug, especially within a browser environment.
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+100
by LoreParmenter
on 2023-10-28 22:00 -
+300
by Xerolo44
on 2023-10-28 20:16 -
+300
by Atriakitz
on 2023-10-26 17:25 -
+300
by B-Casey2
on 2023-10-21 22:28 -
+1
by A Roaring Mlem
on 2023-10-20 18:09 -
-1
by Michael Chandra
on 2023-10-18 22:05I am only downvoting because this sounds like a dozen suggestions in one.
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+100
by Tijmuhn
on 2023-10-17 14:03 -
+100
by PaddedFiction
on 2023-10-17 13:12 -
+300
by B3ast
on 2023-10-16 23:53 -
+100
by Mimmi48
on 2023-10-14 08:28 -
+300
by Jordan T Higa
on 2023-10-14 01:44 -
+300
by Kbignell
on 2023-10-13 18:41 -
+300
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+300
by Roger Denton
on 2023-10-13 03:19
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