At this point, we’ve covered all of the major features of Scrivener. If you haven’t done so already, then soon you are going to want to create your own project so that you can start work. Generally you will want a separate Scrivener project for each writing project you are working on. To create a new project, select “New Project…” from the File menu, which will open the project templates chooser panel. From there, you can choose a project type from one of the categories (novel, screenplay, thesis and so on). Once you’ve done so, click on “Choose…” to specify a location at which to save the project. Scrivener project folders end in “.scriv” which might seem a little strange. This is to maximise the cross-platform compatibility of the project. When viewed on a Mac, the folder will look and act like a single file. You will need to open Scrivener projects by double-clicking on the main project folder and then double-clicking the file ending in “.scrivx”. That file is not your entire project, it is the master control file that keeps track of all the pieces. If you wish to copy your project to another computer or back it up, make sure to send the whole folder ending in .scriv. You can also open .scrivx files using the File > Open… command, or if you’ve worked on the project recently, it might be listed in the File > Recent Projects sub-menu.
Note that the “Blank” project type is the basis for all other project types. That is, all the other project templates were created by starting from a blank project, adding some documents and changing the settings relevant for the project type, and then saving the resulting project as a template. If you find that none of the existing templates are quite right for the sort of writing you do, you can create your own project templates in the same way, like this:
	1.	Create a new project—either from the Blank template or from any other template—and edit it so that it contains all the elements and settings you will want in a new project whenever it is created from your template. This can be as simple as you like, maybe just a few tweaks to Blank.
	2.	Select “Save As Template…” from the File menu.
	3.	From the “Save As Template” sheet that appears, enter a title and description for the new template, and choose a category and icon, then click on “OK”.
	4.	Go to File > New Project… You will find the template you just created available as the basis for new projects. At this point you can delete the project from which you created the template, if you wish.

Okay, on to Step 20, the “And Finally…” bit.