Thoughts on Scrivener

[T.Allen.Smith]

My 1st impression after viewing the full video tutorial was "overkill".

Maybe I'm missing something but the functionality doesn't seem much improved over the simple organization you can do with MS Word.

Anyone have experience with this?

 

[Ankari]

I use scrivener. Its a great tool. The best part is that you are able to organize your work all under one program. If you use Word you either have to scroll through your pages to find the scene you want, or the character list you created. With Scrivener it's all organized and easy to see. It also compiles your work for you automatically. You can export any chapter, scene, or reference material into Adobe. I haven't done it yet, but you can even print to e-book format.

 

[Helen]

Just FINAL DRAFT and save yourself ALOT of hassle.

 

[Ophiucha]

I haven't found anything it can offer that I can't get Microsoft Word to do. Word's completely capable of creating a directory for all of your characters and worldbuilding notes and certainly chapters. It just gives me a lot more tabs I don't use and weird visual formats I don't care for, like sticky notes. The only benefit I see to it is that everything is in one file - from your drafts to your notes - but, I'll be honest, having to tab between them on the sidebar is pretty much equally convenient as just having each draft saved as TITLE_draft1.doc and creating a folder on your computer for it.

I mean, all things said and done, it's just another word processor with a sticky notes app added on to it. Personally, I'm fine with the Microsoft Word or Google Docs. I can create a table of contents for easy navigation of my notes, and use annotations for roughly the same purpose as the sticky notes if I, for whatever reason, actually wanted that on my document. I've yet to see a compelling reason to pay for a weirdly formatted version of the same service, but some people swear by it, so clearly it must do something for them.

 

[JCFarnham]

If I couldn't have gotten money off it I wouldn't have bothered. I won Nano, so I got 50%. Well worth it really all things considered.

Sure Word could do most of the things Scrivener (minus the God send that is the compile feature), but if you're like me I'd rather not bother spending hours trying to index my work, when I can get it done "like that". Having to do everything manually would be such a distraction in my case that I'd procrastinate. I already spend entire days compiling my series bible as it is.

I should be writing

Visually, everything is there and easy to find in Scrivener. I don't have to go through the hassle of learning how to creatively use headers. I'm a very visual person. If I didn't have the nested side bar list of all my files I wouldn't be able to organise, with the program I can instantly see what needs to be cut in relation to other scenes. Whereas I wouldn't find it as clear using the windows file structure. Lets be honest, anything over 3 levels and things can get rather confusing.

I know I could just use Word, but its not quite "made for writers" in the same was Scriv is. I don't know...

Oh, and the word count feature on most standard word processors can be more than a bit screwy. NEVER trust them for accurate word counts. Scriv isn't perfect, but the algorithm is much closer to the mark for me so far.

 

[Steerpike]

If you do all the things that Scrivener makes easy, like all the research notes, writing in segments as small as scenes, where you want to change the order later, and so on, Scrivener is certainly a lot more efficient than MS Word or other regular word processor (if you're content with how you can approach things in MS Word, you should probably be using Libre Office instead - it is free).

 

[Ophiucha]

Really? Last time I used Libre Office, the Table of Contents feature didn't even include a hyperlink/quick scroll feature, let alone a Document Map. Libre Office is certainly quite nice as a free word processor, but for a writer, I've yet to find anything to compare to Microsoft Word. Google Docs, though, is free and has a more functional Table of Contents feature (not to mention the fact that it's already part of a cloud, so everything is backed up and accessible on all of your computers/public computers). If it had a proper Document Map, I'd probably never bother opening Microsoft Word again.

Though, let it be said in Google Docs' favour, the 'open collections' feature is a close facsimile and reminds me a lot of Scrivener's sidebar. You can keep multiple documents (or tables, spreadsheets, images, etc.) in a sidebar together, with a description of what each is, and separate them into folders as you please. So... yes, if you want something free and potentially nearly identical to Scrivener, you could easily set Google Docs up for it. Depends on what format you'd like it in, really.

 

[Steerpike]

Everyone has their own preferences, of course. Creating a linked table of contents (and even various other links within the document itself) is easy in Libre Office. I was doing that years ago for gaming supplements using old versions of OpenOffice. I don't use a built-in "table of contents" feature in either MSWord or anything else, so that's not really an issue for me.

 

[Ophiucha]

I'm just too lazy to use something that doesn't do the work for me. Scrivener has too much happening for me to use it properly, and I'd probably never keep anything organized with Libre if I had to hyperlink everything myself.

 

[Steerpike]

I have the linux beta of Scrivener. I don't use it that much. I have never used hyperlinks in any of my fiction documents, though if I did, the easier the better.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Scrivener offers a free 30 day trial so I'm going to give it a whirl.
Question for experienced users though.... If I'm working away from my office on a laptop and want to transfer an updated document to an already established scrivener document, do I have to erase the Scrivener doc and replace it or is the transfer simpler?
I want to be able to easily swap works back & forth between my desktop & work laptop (which I can't put Scrivener on).
Can I save Scrivener files to a USB drive & transfer?

 

[JCFarnham]

Would you be able to use some kind of Cloud?

 

[Steerpike]

The easiest thing to do, in my view, is simply set up a Dropbox account and make a directory there for saving your Scrivener files. Then you can access them, either via Scrivener or other programs, from anywhere. The USB option would work as well.

 

[JCFarnham]

But yeah, Scrivener itself doesn't have a sync function.

 

[Christopher Wright]

I currently use Scrivener, the windows version, running on wine in Linux. It's a great tool, and for the most part I really like it, but I might wind up heading back to LibreOffice for a spell.

The great advantage of Scrivener is that you can keep all your information in one place. Pre-Scrivener I had multiple documents for various things--there was the story, there were notes on characters, there were notes on the world, things I would jot down as I went along. Then there were various *versions* of the story.

With Scrivener, I have all my notes tucked away in one area of the tree and I can view them quickly and easily. I can keep my draft in one tree, and new rewrites in successive trees, and I can view both documents side by side if I want. It can give me automatic word counts per chapter *and* per tree, *and* per entire document.

And that's just for a guy whose a pantser. If I wanted, I could make more use of its outlining features, but I'm not that fiddly.

Microsoft Word *can* do pretty much the same thing, and more. But it's not organized as well (in my opinion) and it costs $300 whereas Scrivener costs about $45.

If I can get wine to fix the font rendering problem I reckon I'll keep using it, simply because its organizational tools are so handy (again, it's not that LibreOffice/word/whatever don't have the same tools, I just find the way they work more convenient). But I don't swear by it in the same reverent tones others do.

 

[Steerpike]

Christopher - why not try the Linux version instead of running via WINE?

 

[Christopher Wright]

Steerpike, I run 64 bit linux and spell checker is broken. I... need spell checker...

 

[Steerpike]

Ah, yes, I think you mentioned that before

You can get it working if you install the 32-bit libraries for it. But that's not the most desirable option when you don't need those libraries for anything else.

 

[Christopher Wright]

Actually, it still doesn't work, it just doesn't work less. Spellcheck will run but it will mark any word it doesn't recognize as mispelled, and it won't use the default word libraries that aspell uses. You can then right click on a word and add it to the library... but it won't remember those words, so the next time you open a document it does it again.

 

[Penpilot]

I love Scrivener. I used to do everything using Word, Supernote Card, and Wikipad. Now I do everything in Scrivener. One of the best features is the ability to take multiple snapshots (versions) your scenes/chapters with a simple click of a button. You can revert back to a previous snapshot. You can view and compare the various versions without having to go through a song and dance. The program takes care of formatting your manuscripts into standard submission formats and output them into what ever type of format you want.

It's all there, and for me at least, it's all simple to use and fits my needs almost perfectly.

Sure you can do what scrivener does with a different program or programs, but scrivener puts it all into one package.