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Scrivener

edited March 2018 in Writing
Can anyone tell me a bit more about this software is it worth it and is it easy to use and whats the cost of it.

Comments

  • I know you can do a free trial.

    You either love it or can't work with it. Writer friends have fallen into both camps.

    Not tried it myself.
  • Thanks carol I normally use Microsoft word but I know a lot of people have changed over .
  • There's lots about it online. No personal knowledge as a user. Hate it as an editor - it introduces problems when it's transferred out (which might not be relevant to you).

  • There's a thread about it on this forum which might give you more information. I'll try to post the link but if it doesn't work, just type scrivener into the Search facility.

    https://www.writers-online.co.uk/talk-back#
  • I used it to write my novel, and am using again for the next one. I am sure I don't know half of what it's capable of doing, as it is used by people who write theses or business documents with all kinds of added gizmos, not just prose authors. I look on it like having a washing machine and only using the four programmes I need, not the other twenty.

    Some people simply don't get on with it: the terminology is unique, for one thing. The best way to find out if you'll like it is to do the free trial, where you write your piece in Scrivener, rather than trying to understand the whole thing first, and learn as you go. I'm no techie and I found it worked for me - keeping the whole book, with notes and research, available on the one screen in a contents list, colour-coding the tabs, and being able to scroll through entire chapters of split scenes, that sort of thing. You may be better at Word than I was when I started Scrivener some years ago, so you simply may not gain anything from it.

    The compiling for Createspace and Kindle caused some problems - spacings were off, for instance, and my em-dashes all turned into hyphens, (which taught me, as I went through the entire 400+ pages, that I had over-used them); and don't get me started on the dropped capital at the start of each chapter, which seemed like such a good idea when I did it for the paperback version. I'd changed it to a Word document before uploading it, but something inside it didn't translate.

    If you do the trial and you want to continue, you pay a 3-year subscription which covers several machines in the same household; so if you write on a desktop, and then have a laptop which you take away with you on holiday, you can access the same document and add to it from either end. (Though read the instructions!) You can back up to Dropbox or to your computer or other device, and it does its own auto-backups constantly.

    If you don't want to continue, you don't lose your work: you just send it back to Word and carry on.

    It was originally (and still is ) written for Mac, not Windows, and there are differences in the two versions, so be sure to choose the right one. The Windows one lags behind the Mac in terms of development. There's a FB Scrivener Users page, which is often far too technical for the likes of me, but they will answer questions in words of one syllable if pushed.

    Simply - if you're writing in Word and can master the art of split screens and so forth, you may not want to pay the extra for Scrivener.
  • Thanks carol I normally use Microsoft word but I know a lot of people have changed over .
  • I don't use Scrivener myself, but a friend of mine is very keen and runs a blog which includes lots of tips and advice about using it – https://www.scrivenervirgin.com
  • I love it, it helps you to keep all your out of order scenes together. You can create a pin board type plan and keep all your notes alongside your work in progress. Take a look at the tutorials on youtube and https://www.scrivenervirgin.com/ if you want to see the benefits of it and try the free trial. They usually do discount for winners of National Novel Writing Month (that's how I got it years ago and now using it regularly and learning the features) probably for this April's Camp NaNoWriMo too
  • I use it and do all my writing with it.
    Am quite certain that I only use a small fraction of its functions and capabilities but am impressed with it.
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