Scrivener: Should I Do It?

[DGriffin]

Software that has a complicated interface feels forbidding. I bought Photoshop and used it long before I understood everything it could do. It wasn’t until I equated photoshop layers with layers of see-through tissue paper that I started harnessing its power. Meanwhile, I became familiar with the interface and learned as I went. Twenty years later, I still don’t know everything photoshop can do, and yet I consider myself an advanced user.

Scrivener is a lot like photoshop: much of its power rests under the hood. Photoshop is to Preview as Scrivener is to Word. You can edit and make changes in all of those softwares. With Scrivener and Photoshop you can optimize your process.

Many of Scrivener’s muscles won’t be available for you right away, but the learning curve doesn’t have to be a barrier.

You can think of scrivener like a restaurant menu:
• on the left are the menu categories and items (titles, chapter headings, organizational aids)
• in the middle are the descriptions (what you want your reader to read)
• on the right are private notes, culinary advice, receipts—whatever helps the chef (the “secret sauce”)

Pretty simple, don’t let the interface alienate you!

[amarie]

It seems many writers like using Scrivener. I kind of liked it, too, before it crashed. During one particular writing session, I had worked hours revising a hard scene, and suddenly, Scrivener shut down. I tried reopening the chapter and its backup copies, but the application kept shutting down. I tried everything. Hours later, I resorted to contacting Scrivener’s tech team. I sent a lengthy explanation and got the standard “we’ll followup in 48 hours” reply to my email. I didn’t have the luxury of waiting that long, so I prayed and found an earlier version of the file somewhere. The file didn’t contain all of my revisions, but it was better than nothing. So, I moved that chapter to MS Word, continued writing, and haven’t looked back. Several days later I finally got a reply from Scrivener—no explanation, just a request for me to send them a “screen shot”. Well, I didn’t want to use up my valuable writing time troubleshooting with Scrivener, so I stopped using the software for good and moved everything to MS Word. While using Scrivener made me feel accomplished and organized, my content is what matters most. Using MS Word isn’t as rewarding as using Scrivener, but I’ve found it to be reliable. And if I should have any trouble, Microsoft’s tech team is readily available.

[Rike]

I use Scrivener and libre office (the free version of Word.).
Scrivener has many, many possibilities and with a little knowledge in programming even more. That is on one side very cool, if you are tech savvy, but if you are not ( like me), Scrivener becomes overwhelming very fast.

So for short texts I still prefer libre office (=Word).
The only plusses I could see for writing a short story in Scrivener are that Scrivener has an auto- compile possibility to standard manuscript format which may come in handy for applying to magazines and, maybe, the possibility to organize your shorts into a book easily and compile it for ebook and print.

A novel length manuscript on the other hand… that is the strength of Scrivener.
Especially in the plotting/ drafting stages, even if you only use the most basic features like I do.
You see, in Scrivener you do not write one big text like you do in word, but small parts like chapters and/or scenes and Scrivener saves them all individually, but shows them to you in the order you designate.
So if you want to change that order, you can just drag and drop everything into it’s new place. You also can change a scene to a chapter and vice versa with two clicks.
And you can combine and split text as you see fit, also with only a few clicks.
When you compile everything,you can decide every time what chapters/ scenes and notes will be put into the compiled document and which ones not. And you can change the font, the headlines and everything for the whole novel in a menu instead doing it in the text.
That alone makes me use Scrivener for long projects.
And the possibility for notes, folders with charactersheets and locations and the possibility to link sheets to text passages ( a feature I have not mastered yet) make it even more worthwhile.

[Rike]

@MattDWells22: thanks for mentioning that!
Since I am German, I do have the German version and love it, but I was not aware that an English version existed. . If I can combine the two languages, then: good bye scrivener!