If you follow my twitterings, you have figured out I am a HUGE fan of Scrivener*. Many people wonder why I don’t just use Word or something more mainstream. It’s a long and emotional story. The short story is that I lost 4 months of revision on Soulchaser (180K words).
An outline of my manuscript
I was having some issue where Word stopped saving my changes in my documents. After a lithe research, I determined that scrivener was the most versatile editor for my needs. and used my discount from NaNoWriMo to buy Scrivener for Windows*. The 3-4 hour tutorial was a bit intimidating, but I worked through it while still on the trial and fell deeply and passionately in love. after some issues with windows 10 deciding to crap all over dropbox, I am using Scrivener 2 for OSX* on an ancient Mac.
Often, I am asked what Scrivener does that other word-processing applications can’t. That’s a boggling question since I haven’t discovered its complete capabilities.
My favorite things:
- Create summaries and outlines, storyboarding, and organizing easily.
- Make internal links within notes.
- Special collections based on search criteria that won’t change the order of documents.
- Almost infinite ways to organize your work.
- Use meta data to sort to create collections.
- It will render your ebook files, along with just about any file time you might want.
What I don’t like:
- No iPad app-Oh wait there is one now! It’s only on iOS though.
- Windows version is not as good as the Mac version.
I have 4 major projects I am working on right now: Soulchaser, Tempest, Waterloggedapp, and Wordcrafting. For the blog, I am using a pretty simple monthly template. The books needed a bit more depth.
There are a lot of good templates out there, but my favorite so far is Belinda Crawford’s World Builder Leviathan. I have tweaked it to give me a place for all the backstories and now I have a pretty detailed timeline leading up to the story. I work on the timeline in Aeon Timeline.
Build what you need as the need arises. If you cannot figure out how to compile something or organize it, the community around Scrivener is very supportive and helpful.
I recommend picking up the trial and setting a few hours aside to work through the tutorial. Then come back here and let me know what you think. If you love it as much as I do, please use my affiliate links on this page.
Buy Scrivener 2 for Mac OS X (Regular Licence)
Buy Scrivener for Windows (Regular Licence)
