I’m editing/engraving a violin concerto that includes short paragraphs of spoken text for the orchestra. I entered it as system text, but the fermata measures they are attached to are not big enough, so I’m having to do a TON of horizontal space changes, system breaks, etc. Is there a better way to do this? The attached screen shot shows this at the end; there are also a couple of these at the beginnings of flows, which caused, if anything, more issues, such as moving the frame with the flow token up as close to the previous movement as possible…
This doesn’t exactly solve your issue, but it might make it easier: I would suggest that the instrumental parts don’t need to see the narration; they just need the fermata (and to watch the conductor).
For adding the narration to the score, I posed a similar question. I wound up going with the #2 suggestion in my post, making the measure wider in the score with a note spacing change and then adding a text frame with an opaque background.
They do need it, since they’re going to be speaking it – or rather, whispering it.
Ah, sorry, I read your post too quickly – thought it was spoken by someone else.
I have also had the question you reference about narration, and I didn’t try the text frame option with opaque background, but I will be!
I’m not sure that text frames would work well for you if you need this in every part, since you’d need to place each frame in each part. (In my case, it’s just the score.) Staff or system text is probably a better option, but maybe my suggestion for changing note spacing in that measure to widen it will be helpful for you.
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I really wouldn’t recommend the text frame option, because frames are tied to individual pages, not to the music - you’ll find you have to create them in each Layout separately.
I know it’s less than ideal, but are you aware that System Breaks/Frame Breaks and for that matter Note Spacing Changes (at least the ones from the Engrave menu) can be copied and pasted between layouts? If you put a System Break at the downbeat of bar 1 in, say, the Flute 1 part, and get all the other System Breaks set for your fermata bars in that Layout, you can - in Write mode - select the System Break at bar 1, type Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-A two or three times to select all of the Breaks within the Flute 1 layout, then Ctrl/Cmd-C to copy. Then switch to e.g. the Flute 2 part, select the downbeat of bar 1 and Ctrl/Cmd-V to paste. Rinse and repeat for each of your other Layouts.
Frustratingly this only works for one Flow at a time, so if you have multiple Flows you’ll need to do this in multiple passes, once for each Flow. Equally frustratingly is that the “Include System Formatting” option within Propagate Part Formatting looks like a shortcut to quicker results, but often isn’t, as it makes all of the Casting Off explicit (that is to say that if there’s a natural system break at the end of bar 1 in the Flute 1 part, because the first bar of Flute 1 is extremely busy, Include System Formatting when propagating to the Flute 2 part will put in a System Break at the end of bar 1 even if the Flute 2 starts with 100 bars’ rest).
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I will certainly try it. I have to do the whole thing all over to format for a different size, so I’ll get plenty of practice… 
One alternative, though - dependent on where you’re at with laying out your parts - is to use e.g. your Flute 1 part as a sort of master layout. Delete all of the other part layouts, then right-click the Flute 1 part in the right side of Layout Options and click Duplicate Layout. Then assign the Flute 2 Player in the left panel and unassign the Flute 1 Player. You now have a Flute 2 part that has all of the manual formatting work you’ve done to the Flute 1 part, across all flows (sadly apart from the manual positioning of system-attached objects such as your “Antonie” and tempo marks).
Rinse and repeat for each of your other players.