With NaNoWriMo 2015 half on its way I decided to say a few words about my favourite word processor. While I understand there’s a learning curve and a writing challenge is probably not the best moment to try a new software, there’s no doubt that Scrivener makes the life of a writer much easier.
Why? There are many features, but these are my favourite:
- You can switch from outline to full content edit with a click, meaning that at any time you can have a full view of where you are with your story (btw: I’ve used it to write a non-fiction book, and it worked equally well. However, I will use my NaNo-novel in this post as an example). This is important, especially if you are, like me, a control freak that invests a lot of energy plotting first, in order to relax later. With the outline feature, everything is under control, and you can have at a glance the whole picture.
- You can easily move – in two clicks – sections around the text and see how they work. This is often important with sub-plots – where is better to put them? – and so on. You don’t have to remember and /or cut & paste. If you have done your homework, and set up, as you should, a different page for every scene, and used wisely folders, it will be a walk in the park.
- In the section Research you can attach all webpages, jpgs and sources you need for your work, so to have all of them immediately available, even offline. Incidentally, if you use the split mode, you can keep one under your eyes for easy reference, while you write a section.
- You can give yourself word targets, completion targets, and other metrics that tell you how are you doing. For example – this is more valid for non-fiction, but it’s always useful – I try to keep my chapters /sections roughly at the same length. Scrivener makes it easy for me to know how near I am.
- With the Content feature, you’ll have access to a full screen, write-only platform where nothing else pop on. Good when you need concentration and you don’t want to be distracted.
- Once you’re done with your work and you’re ready for the final touch, you compile it in the format you like the most – pdf, docs, odt, pages. I generally use Word at this stage with my .docx nicely compiled, but I do it only when I am sure it is just in need of some cosmetic intervention and nothing substantial.
There are many more features I haven’t covered here (citations, snapshots, outlining, grammar checking, narration just to mention a few) but I guess you got the idea how powerful is the tool. To be fair, once you’ve started there’s no way back.
This is a basic video by the software company, Literature and Latte, about Scrivener.
To try it: Download a 30-day trial copy from the official website. NaNoWriMo 2015 winners enjoy a 50% discount, that you can claim here.
(Disclaimer: I am not in any way associate with this software, apart from being a buyer and a user since two years. These are my views only).
I am still very old fashioned, I guess, since I prefer hard copies, especially of research that I can have next to me, write on, or hang above my desk. I also prefer to revise on hard copies first, then enter the changes into the Word file. Doing things by hand rather than on the computer slows me down, forces me to think and re-think, and I feel more confident that I’ve looked at all the angles I could think of. Cinda
Hello Cinda, I understand what you mean, and I can relate. Personally, the only thing I still use paper and pencil for is my charts (when writing fiction. For non-fiction I’m 100% computer-based). But for SF I often need to study orbits and doing some maths, and this, hard to believe, I much prefer doing in the old way…! 😀