After about a year, I’m switching my system for writing yet again. First, I went from One-Note to Campfire Pro, now I’m changing from Campfire Pro to Scrivener - but not only for my outlining. How did that happen and why did I decide to give up Word for my novels and other long projects, too?
It began with Campfire Pro. One evening, after having plotted a new story with the help of my Scapple whiteboard and Campfire Pro, I went into the file I have for “Theoretical Necromancy” to look at things and found an outline that was severely corrupted. It wasn’t the first time that happened to me and this time, it was hard to do damage control - let alone completely remove the damage. I was annoyed - there were two full outlines in there I hadn’t turned into written works yet. I needed a new program to do my outlines with and keep them in.
A few days earlier, after buying Scapple, I had looked at Scrivener, an all-in-one solution for writers, which is by the same company, “Literature and Latte”. Then, I’d installed the program, which comes with a ’30-Day Trial,’ and just thought I could dive into it and see what it was all about. I was wrong. Opening a blank project without any pre-made entries, I couldn’t even tell what that was all about, much less make heads or tails out of it. I uninstalled it right away afterwards, thinking I had what I needed.
After the corruption of yet another file, I installed the program again and this time was clever enough to dive into the tutorial first of all. The tutorial project led me through all important functions, explained to me how the program works, what I had to do or could do with it. With the tutorial, I could get into the program much more easily and see what I could set up on my own. I played around with my ‘Test’ project and loaded one of my fan-fiction files in it, so I could experiment with something which wouldn’t endanger any of my releases.
I rather quickly realized that the program was worth the price to me. As I bought it, the price for the Windows version (which, unfortunately, always gets new functions later than the Mac version) was 54 €. An up-to-date MS Word version (I’m, still working with the 2007 one) would certainly have cost me more and delivered less functions. Under the circumstances, I decided to invest that much in my future work.
The ’30-Day Trial’ of the program is extremely fair, to start with - it’s not ‘30 days after you’ve first opened the program,’ it counts down the actual days on which you use the program. You can also use the licence on several different computers, provided you need to work on different ones. Yes, not getting all functions at the same time as Mac users isn’t nice - that might not even be your problem, though, if you work on a Mac. Apart from that, I must say that I do really like the program.
Why, though, did I decide to abandon MS Word (except for blog posts, letters, and suchlike)?
Well, Scrivener is a word processor as well as a way to organize your stuff. It’s a word processor first and foremost, but it allows for easily accessing different files all the time. It’s also a word processor where every file and folder can have its own synopsis, which is where you can easily outline.
Unlike MS Word, Scrivener has a lot of options when it comes to bringing all the files and folders of a manuscript together (you can split the content of your manuscript right down to a scene or a similarly small unit) and actually creating a file to hand over to other people. Among the many different file formats aren’t only .doc and .docx, the Word formats, but also .pdf, .epub, and .mobi (the last two being regular e-book and Amazon e-book format) and many more. It will probably be able to format the finished file in any way that a publisher, reviewer, or professor might ever demand. Yes, professor. Scrivener is a good program for handling a large amount of text, that includes non-fiction works as well as fiction ones.
Now, it is revision month for me right now - I’m copy-editing “Ignition Rites” for publication -, so I have other things to do than to write in my new program. It has turned out, though, that being able to copy-edit every scene of my story separately does wonders for my work ethics. Instead of looking at a huge amount of words in one file, I’m only looking at a scene - that might be a full chapter, but usually it’s about half or less.
I found it very useful to use Scrivener for this. In addition, Scrivener can compile the full manuscript to .epub, as mentioned above. That means I can take more control of how my e-books are formatted, both for Amazon and for D2D (strangely enough, if you want to publish on Amazon, you can upload an .epub file, but not a .mobi file, despite this being Amazon’s own e-book format…). Over time, I now plan to go over my old books again, put them up on Amazon in new formatting, and bring it all together. My first few releases certainly can do with some more editing by now…
Scrivener is an all-in-one solution for writers, too. In addition to being a word processor, it also allows for direct outlining (as mentioned above) and for keeping all kinds of notes and even external files (like a PDF or a website) in the project folder to look them up when needed. The binder includes the manuscript folder, where everything is gathered for compiling (‘Front Matters’ and ‘Back Matters’ are the only exceptions), but can contain as many additional folders and files as you want (‘Research’ and ‘Trash’ are there from the beginning, but you can also make your own ‘Template’ folder for specific file setups and create as many other files and folders as you want, which enables me to keep my series together in one project for each). There’s a possibility to split up the screen into up to four windows to refer to your notes and suchlike while writing or editing.
What I really love about it are some other things, though: the autosave which saves my project after a certain number of seconds of no action (I’ve set it to 1 second, 2 is standard). The automatic backup in a .zip file every time I close a project (between 3 and 20, depending on the setting, are kept). The typewriter mode which keeps the line with the cursor in the middle of the Scrivener window while I’m typing, so I don’t have to look down that far - my head is comfortably lifted and facing forward. Being able to apply labels and statuses to my files and folder. Having a display of how much I’ve written that day in that project without having to highlight it all or do some maths. There’s also a lot of other comfort functions which I don’t remember right now or haven’t found yet.
It will take a long while to transfer, re-format, and re-edit my stories, but it will be worth it in the long run. Being able to reference my old stories in my series whenever I want without having to search around a lot and without having to open up an additional window will certainly be worth it. As it will be to work in scenes now and get things done in a different way. You can try Scrivener out for a long time, if you wish to, so check it out and see if it will be a better program for you long-term as well.
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