Are you a writer? Well, if you love to write, then you’re a writer. Have you ever heard of Scrivener – the word processor? Oh my – what a discovery!
The tool you didn’t know you needed…..
It’s almost too feature – rich to appreciate. You can try it on a 30-day free trial but after a couple of days I just went ahead and bought it. For $45. ($38. as an educator), it’s real buck-banging value. I didn’t have to uninstall a trial version and download a second paid-for version. You get the same exact program as a trial but upon payment, you receive a serial number. That unlocks the 30-day time limit.
Financially, I get zip for recommending Scrivener beyond mere delight in sharing an excellent find with my friends. So here’s why I love it and think it’s an awesome find.
To be fair, the learning curve is kind of sharp but stick with me here. I wrote a typical 50,000-word NaNoWriMo novel in Word one November. Learned pretty darned fast how woefully inadequate Word is for anything longer than a paper. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried moving text chunks in a 250-page book from Page 1 to Page 250. And forget about stepping back for a long view when you can see only one page at a time.
Amazing Features
Scrivener organizes your work in a Binder and acts just like a loose-leaf notebook. You can move pages and blocks of text around, as well as images and any other medium your work might contain. The Binder allows you to handle your work in manageable pieces, rather than one humongous 200+ page document.
It might be more accurate to think of Scrivener, not as a word processor, but an entire writing workstation. It has at your disposal Research Folders. Here is where your random ideas, notes, brain droppings, illustrations, photos – basically things that are part of your book that haven’t found a home yet. There’s no limit to the types of files the Research Folders can contain, or subject matter.
You can create labels for any part of your book (or whatever you’re writing). This is handy for tracking details on the side. Like sticky notes stuck in your work-in-progress (WIP). There are many ways to use this feature, limited only by your needs.
A Corkboard functions as a blank wall on which you create virtual sticky notes that you are able to place at will as a means to organize your story arc, scenes, and other progressions. The images are of index cards pinned to a corkboard, but I feel this image is dated, as sticky notes are commonly used for this purpose. Index cards, not much anymore. I hope the powers that be will update this feature in the near future, and call it a Wall.
As if the corkboard weren’t valuable on its own, Scrivener features an Outline. Everything on your Corkboard is also viewable (and edit-able) as an Outline. Cool, huh? The Outline hearkens back to Junior High English Comp classes. Because they work! You can use whichever format you prefer.
Your WIP can be viewed and edited in Split Screen mode – vertically or horizontally. You can choose any two sections or modes to view in split screen. No more scrolling through a huge single document. Or worse, printing it out just so you can shuffle pages around.
If you get distracted by internety things, Scrivener has a Distraction Free mode. It hides everything on your computer except what you need to see in order to stay productive.
Word has a word counter, yes. But Scrivener has a Progress Bar. It tracks your overall progress and how close you’re getting towards your goal. Not only that, it tracks your session progress. Nothing like those little wins adding to your big win to keep you motivated! Writing a whole book is like driving cross-country – long and grueling. When I did NaNoWriMo, in order to reach the 50,000-word goal, I broke each of the 30 days into 1666 words. I would have LOVED to have a daily Progress Bar to cheer me on!
The Snapshot feature allows you to take a screenshot of your WIP before you begin any kind of surgery. JUST in case! You can put things back again, nice and neat.
Exporting. Genius – you can export your work in a bunch of different formats, which is especially valuable for publishing in Kindle and other ePub formats, Word, and Custom formats. You can even create a synopsis based on your outline.
A new Scrivener feature is the iOS app. While I haven’t tested it out yet as I do all my work on a MacBook and love it, I understand the app has most of the functionality of the desktop version. That’s pretty dang powerful! Files sync easily with Dropbox. Now you can write anywhere. No more excuses!
Invest some time, reap the rewards
Scrivener is one powerful writing tool. It’ll streamline your tasks so you can concentrate on writing with less effort. The download comes with a couple of manuals to help you get the hang of using it. My advice is to jump in and use the features. It takes an investment of time but gives back so much more.
Scrivener is available from Literature and Latte.
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2018 Ellen Clarke
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