The Critiques folder is a place to store any critiques or comments you get from friends, fellow writers, work-shoppers, etc. And you never know, those things that you cut may prove useful in some future story. It gives you a completed record of everything you wrote.
Instead of deleting it permanently, I’ll move it to the Deleted Scenes folder. Sometimes, there is a scene or paragraph that is well written, but just doesn’t work in the story. The Deleted Scenes folder is a place-holder for any scenes you decide to remove from your manuscript. The research folder is a place-holder folder for any research notes and documents related to your story. If there is only one scene in your story, one one scene document is required. The template uses separate scene documents to indicate the proper scene breaks within the compiled manuscript. Into the story section goes your scenes, where the actual writing happens. This template will fill in this information automatically from Scrivener’s metadata settings. In standard format, the first page of a short fiction manuscript contains information about the author (address, phone number, etc.), approximate word count of the story, and the title and byline of the piece. The first page header document is designed to take the meta-data in your Scrivener document and generate an appropriate first page of your manuscript. This same list is included in the About This Template document in the template itself. The net result of the template itself is that it takes what you’ve written and produces a document in standard manuscript format without you having to fuss over the formatting. “SFWA” stands for “ Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.” But you don’t have to be a member of SFWA or even a short story writer to use this template. I call it my “SFWA Short Fiction Template” because most of the stories I submit are short fiction (officially, those pieces under 40,000 words) and they are submitted to SFWA qualifying markets.
But I’ve also included this information below, as well as instructions on how to install the template. The template now includes an About This Template document that describes all of the features.
So, Scrivener users who want the 2.0 version of my short fiction template can download it here: The original template was downloaded over 1,100 times! The new one is now available just in time for NaNoWriMo. I finally got around to taking the revisions I’ve made to my own short fiction template that I use within Scrivener, and updating the short fiction template that I produced more than a year ago.