Discover what’s so great about Scrivener!

Scrivener, Scrivener, Scrivener.

You’ve been hearing about it from a lot of writers, including me. In fact, I recently taught a workshop on using Scrivener at the Called to Write conference in Pittsburg, Kansas.

You may be wondering what’s so terrific about this software and why you should consider using it.

So let’s take a look at it.

Templates

Scrivener comes with 5 basic templates: blank, fiction, nonfiction, scriptwriting, and miscellaneous. Within each of those except for blank, there are additional options.

Main Views of Scrivener

• Scrivenings view, the primary window you’ll be using when you write, which is pictured above.
• Outline view allows you to view your manuscript in an outline-type view. Here you can easily move scenes and chapters, and view important data such as word count, a synopsis of each scene and chapter, whether that part of the book is completed, etc.
• Cork board view allows you to see your project with index cards, and lets you do many of the same things as the outline view.

The Binder

Think of the binder just like you would the 3-ring binders you used when you went to school. Here is where you see your project’s organization. But you can also manipulate your project. You can move whole sections with drag and drop ease. No more cut and paste to move a chapter or scene to a new place.

Here’s an image of the binder from my current fiction WIP.

Notice those colors? They tell me whose POV that scene or chapter is in. You can customize your project to tell you whatever is critical for you to know in one quick glance.

The Cork Board

Many of you may remember the days of index cards and writing out basic info about each scene of your story. Many may still use that method. Well here’s Scrivener’s answer.

• You can drag and drop them until you have exactly the sequence you want.
• You can also update the info you include on each card as needed.

Additionally, the color of the push pins tells you important info about each document (whatever info you choose), and those words “First Draft” tell me each of those documents is just the first draft. If an item were completed, it would read “Done.”

The Inspector

You’ll use the inspector for entering and viewing data about your project such as document synopsis, labels, status, footnotes and endnotes, entering meta-data, keywords, overall general notes, and snapshots.

The info you get on your cork board index cards is pulled from the inspector.

Snapshots

You’ll never be afraid to revise again!

Snapshots save the most recent version of your document. Then you can revise to your heart’s content. If you don’t like what you end up with, you can retrieve the previous version with the click of your mouse.

You can also take a snapshot of your entire project all at once if you wanted to.

Research

Each template has a research folder, appropriately labeled “Research.”

Within this folder you can save

• web pages directly from the web,
• import media (video and audio), text, and image files.

Just imagine having all your research in one place and in the same file as your book!

Project Targets

Because word count is vital to writing, Scrivener has Project Statistics. These allow you to see the word count of your story, and much more.

You’ll see from the pic that I’ve set a 75,000 word target for the completed book. The color bar shows my progress and underneath that bar I see the exact word count I have completed toward my 75K target.

In addition I have set a 300 word target for each time I sit down to write. As I write I can see at the bottom of my document the exact words I’ve completed as well as a color bar. I’ll also see my progress in the project targets window.

But what if I’ve already started my manuscript in Word?

Don’t worry. Importing your file into Scrivener is easy.

I’ve only skimmed the surface here. For writers I think Scrivener is the best thing since the advent of word processing.

Scrivener is available from LiteratureandLatte.com

• Cost: $40
• They offer a free trial version for 30 days of actual use and tutorial manual you can work through
• Is UK based so there are templates for both UK and USA users.
• Is available for both Mac and PC, though there are some variations between them.

Have a question about how to do something in Scrivener? Put it in the comments and I’ll do what I can to answer it.