Scrivener The best Software for Writersmac20q.com /2015/03/scrivener-the-best-software-for-writers/

David Allen

Getting started with Scrivener

On Mac 20 questions the website many times I have talked about how I love to useScrivener. In the Mac 20 Questions podcast I interviewed the main developer of theapplication Keith Blount. I’ve written many thousands of words within the applicationfor my blogs and I have a lot of words in Scrivener projects for books. What iscompletely baffling to me at the moment, is how come I haven’t done some sort oftutorial about Scrivener. How come I haven’t created a really long post going intodetails about the application, commenting on all of the excellent features for writers.Scrivener is quite easy to use, in-as-much as it’s so intuitive. On account of theapplication being so competent with many excellent features, it does need someexplaining for all of the things you can do with it. Let’s start with a comparison withMS Word and an overview of Scrivener and then get into some details.

Scrivener versus Microsoft Word

The Microsoft Word application is a huge monster of a word processor and has beendeveloped and designed for use within offices and business. Word has its goodpoints, but it is also true to say that it has become bloated over the years. You canwrite novels within the application and many people do. It isn’t the best tool for thejob though. All of the marvellous things you can do with it to create great lookingdocuments are not really helpful for the specific task of writing a novel or even for a

non-fiction work of book length.

Twelve of the Best Reasons to get Scrivener

One of the things about using Microsoft Word is that when people are using it, theyare tempted to mess about with the formatting and the look of the document. Ratherthan actually getting the writing completed. Writers will mess about with the font size,headings and anything to do with how the document is going to look when it is finallyset to whatever output. When you’re using Scrivener you just set the look of thedocument as you are writing so that it is easy to read. Forget about how thedocument will be when it is finally finished until it is time to compile. There is even adistraction free mode which clears everything else away from the screen apart fromthe window you’re writing in. The controls for that mode slide away from the screen tobe hidden, so you can concentrate just on your writing.

There is a movement to use distraction free writing applications and to usemarkdown syntax for writing. I think this is a very good idea and I like to useapplications such as Byword. These applications give you limited scope for twiddlingand fiddling and make you concentrate on getting the words out of your head andonto the page. This is a great way to go and could be a step along the way towardsyour larger document, especially if you are doing part of the work on your iPad. Youcould write 1000 words in Byword on your iPad and using iCloud those words will betransferred so that they are immediately available when you open up Byword on yourMac. For those longer documents which could be a very long blog post, a short story,a novella or a complete novel, this is where you need to start using Scrivener.Scrivener is your funnel into which you put all of your various bits of writing and youorganise it so that it makes sense. It really depends upon what sort of writer you areand what sort of workflow you like to use. You can write directly into Scrivener andyou can use it as a one-stop shop for your writing.

Scrivener was designed specifically for the writer and author. The reason for it beingcreated and developed was that the developer was looking for a tool, an applicationthat would scratch his own itch. Many of the best applications available have startedlike this. Scrivener was designed by an author to be used by authors. So what does ithave, that makes it so good?

The way I use Scrivener

I am a user of DragonDictate, this is thespeech to text software that turns my wordsinto text on the page. I use this applicationbecause I can write so much quicker and Idon’t have too touch the keyboard. After two orthree years of using the application I havefound that it works better if I dictate into aDragonDictate window. There are someapplications I can dictate into and it works quitewell and then others it’s okay to start with and after a while it becomes less accurate.So this is why I do my writing in a different application from Scrivener and then copyand paste it after the first dictated draft. Occasionally I will dictate directly intoScrivener for shorter pieces of writing. I can usually get away with it for three or fourparagraphs.

If I have written something that is may be a couple of thousand words long I can putit into one text section in Scrivener and split it up afterwards. I can split it up usingkeyboard shortcuts or by choosing menu items, I usually prefer to place my cursorwhere I want to make the split do the equivalent of a right click on the MagicTrackpad and choose the context sensitive command of Split at Selection.Sometimes if I have headings within the text I will select the heading and use thecommand of Split with Selection As Title. At this stage I can do any rearranging of theorder of the sections of text in the outliner.

I tend to do most of my outlining in the binder and I have added the icons in themenubar to make it easy to move part of the document up or down in the order. Ialso have the icons in there so I can make one or more sections I have selected tobe child documents of another. An example of that would be where you have thescenes being child documents of a chapter.

Outlining in Outliner View

I sometimes use the keyboard

When I am doing the editing of the text in Scrivener I usually do that mostly using thekeyboard. Mostly this is to make changes of the grammar with the addition ofpunctuation etc. I might be adding some words or maybe a whole sentence here orthere. I also use the application Hemingway to analyse the text for readability. I willcut and copy out and paste back in when finished that stage of the editing. I work onone section of the text at a time and when I have finished that part of the editing areusually change the icon in the binder so I know which ones I have edited. I can alsodo that in the information part of a window on the right-hand side as there is a sectionin there for specifying the status. So I could change the status from being first draft toedited.

Writing to atarget numberof words

A tool I like to use isthe project targettool. I can decidehow many words Iwould like to have ina project and withinthose settings I canset a date for whenthe project is to befinished. I can setwhich days I expectto work on the projectwhich is usuallygoing to be Mondayto Friday. Scrivener will then show me in a pop-up dialogue box the word count forthe whole project and the target for the day. The target for the day is variabledepending upon how many words have been written to the point you have got to so

far. An example of this would be for the NaNoWriMo so you would set your projecttarget to 50,000 words. If you expect towrite for each day of the 30 days ofNovember your daily word count will be1666. If on the first day you write 3000words when you look at the target for thenext day it will be something less than1666. Same thing if you have a day off,the next day your daily word count will behigher.

Being organised and using thesynopsis

The synopsis for a section of text which you can see in the corkboard view on thecards, in the outline view and also in the information area is a useful tool when youare being organised. Being organised and planning your work is one way to be moreproductive and effective with your writing. If you are a professional writer I think it isprobably inevitable that you will do some outlining even if you do like to write by theseat of your pants. With the zombie novel I am writing at the moment I started that offby writing the first couple of chapters just by free writing. I had the ideas in my headand they needed to be captured and turned into text as quickly as possible. So I justlet the words flow to be the starting point for the project. I could possibly move ontothe next chapters not knowing what’s going to happen and the story could have a lifeof its own. The trouble with this sort of writing is that you could end up wasting a lotof time by writing yourself into a dead-end. My plan is to plot the rest of the story outand start by writing a synopsis of the end of the book. There could be the last chapteror it could be the last couple of chapters. I want to know how it finishes. The bestplace to do that is going to be in Scrivener and I could do that in the Cork board bycreating a card and make a little outline of what I expect to happen in that finalchapter. The next thing to do will be to create cards for the basic three act structureand to start adding chapters to cover the various plot points. The general idea will beto make things as bad as they can be during the first act and then make things evenworse for the second act. My notes in the synopsis can cover how I expect themindset of the protagonists to change after what I have put him through. I can havenotes about how I expect the seemingly unsolvable problems to get sorted out inorder to bring the novel to a conclusion in the final chapters.

During this process I would highly recommend using the Good And Geeky WritersWorkflow and to make use of mind mapping applications such as iThoughts on theiPad and iThoughtsX on the Mac. This is a great way to gather ideas together and tolet the brain working away that it works best. Use all of the ideas from your mind mapto populate the synopsis for each of the chapters in your book.

Twelve of the Best Reasons to get Scrivener

The next stage of the process

The key to creativity is a combination of using organisation and planning andallowing for flexibility and just going with the flow. So followed by some organising weallowed ourselves to have some free writing freedom. Then what happens, is thatyou get all excited about one of the ideas you have written down as a synopsis for apart of your story. What else can you do but to jump right in there and turn thosefantastic ideas into words and stories. I think it is this combination of being organisedand going with the flow that is the perfect storm of creativity.

The Birds Eye view is art – The nitty-gritty is a to-do list

When you look at a book as a whole can’t help but thinkthat is the epitome of art. When it comes down to it artsand creativity is nothing more than a series ofdecisions. The ability to make those decisions is an artwhether it is good art depends upon the quality of thedecisions. I believe it is true to say that making adecision to love the way a happy accident turned outand to develop it, is just another one of those creativedecisions we make along the way. Writer said to makerecently that he thought having software designedspecifically for writers was a creativity killer. This samewriter is using Microsoft Word to do his writing. I’d bethe opinion that using software more suited to creatingbusiness documents and less suitable for creative workwould be more of a creativity killer. I love the way that Ican use Scrivener in a number of different ways and allof the options are available because that’s the waywriters work.

A view of your world – The writers world

There will be times when you’re working on your projectand you want to see all of it as a whole. You can do thiswith Scrivener. So instead of looking at just one of thesections of text or all of what you have in on chapter,you can see the whole thing. Maybe you want to seesection of text that are not next to each other in thebinder, that works too. That would be cool if you havemade a collection of all the parts that have mention ofone of your characters. You can go through it to make sure the character is properlyrepresented in each part. You can make sure the character has the right descriptionin all scenes. Save the search in case you want to get back to it later. You coulddecide you want to make the character look string and more vital in the story. In thecollection you’ve saved you can read through it all and make the necessary changes.Collections in Scrivener is a handy tool to keep track of some things in your writing.

Synchronise with apps on mobile devices

It is not something I do often but you can sync up between Scrivener and a few

different mobile applications. I prefer to leave what I have in Scrivener alone andfeed more text into it from where ever I have created it, such as in Simplenote orIndex Card. Daedalus is an interesting text editor and also works with Scrivener. Youcan Synchronise with a folder with Scrivener and if that is a folder one of your mobileapps works with you can move between Mac and iOS with relative ease.Synchronisation is not an easy thing though and you alway have to be careful thatyou don’t overwrite something. This could happen if you leave something open andunsaved/synchronised on either side and start working on the project on the otherside. The system won’t know which one should be the one to keep.

To be honest I am not keen on the sync out of Scrivener text. I much prefer to havetext being funnelled into it from Byword or Drafts on iOS. I have tried out these syncoptions and of them I prefer syncing to Index Card app.

Twelve of the Best Reasons to get Scrivener