Scrivener Experiences

It’s been well over a year since I switched from MS Word to Scrivener now, so I think it is a good idea to talk about my experiences, about what I think of the program now that I’ve used it for quite a while — and for everything from plotting to writing to editing to doing my blog posts. Yes, this very blog post, like all for the last year, was written in Scrivener. This should, of course, already give you an inkling of how I feel about it. I would hardly have stayed with the program for so long if I hated it. I still do have Word, I could always go back — but I won’t.

Before I dip into the meat of it, though, I want to start with an aspect which has nothing to do with the program as a such, but all with the mindset of the people behind it: the 30-day trial period. A lot of programs have something like this, giving you the chance to try out the full program, not a limited demo version, for thirty days before you need to decide whether to buy or not. Yet, the makers of Scrivener go the extra mile here.
Generally, a 30-day trial works like this: you install the program and this is day one of the trial period. Every day which ticks by lowers the number of days left by one, no matter whether or not you get to make use of the program. Say you install the program on a Monday, then this Monday is day one. On Tuesday and Wednesday, you’re doing other things and have no time to work with the program. On Thursday, you get around to it again — and three days have ticked by, you are now on the fourth day of the trial. Depending on how your life is going, half or more of the trial period might tick by without you being able to really try out the program.
For Scrivener (and the whiteboard software Scapple by the same people), it’s different. You install the program and this is day one like in the case above, but it changes afterwards. The day-counter of the trial only counts days on which you have actually opened the program. In the example above, it would work like this: You install Scrivener on a Monday, so Monday is the first day of the trial and there’s twenty-nine left. On Tuesday and Wednesday, you don’t get around to opening Scrivener because there’s a lot of other things to do. On Thursday, you open Scrivener and you’re on day two of your trial period with twenty-eight more ahead. With Scrivener, you get thirty actual days of trial — not that I needed them, I bought the program after trying it out for about two days. Yet, if you tried it out next NaNoWriMo, for instance, you could do your project in Scrivener without buying it at all.

I also love the way the projects are organised in Scrivener. Instead of one big file that could become corrupted (I did originally change to Scrivener because some of my projects in Campfire Pro had become corrupted), you have a folder with sub-folders and files to work with. All files are in an .rtf format which means they can be read with every kind of editor, even the simple Windows notepad, so even if the Scrivener file should become corrupted (not that it happened to me in over a year now, even with the big ones), you can still access your files and can incorporate them easily in a new project if you wish.
In addition, you get a backup whenever you want to, as you can set both when a backup is made (upon opening, upon closing, or at a certain time of the day) and how many backups you want to keep. You can even send your backups into a cloud save automatically which really keeps them safe, of course. Then there’s the fact that the program automatically saves your project after changes are made. You can set how long after you stopped typing this happens, but it always will and that means no thinking about ‘when did I last save my stuff?’
I also love how all of your files and folders are available within the program through the binder space. It’s so easy to switch between different scenes, to bring up notes or research material you have gathered, to fill out the bible I keep for each of my series like that. The binder gives me the chance to see everything at a glance while the file-and-folder structure allows for me to split up my stories into scenes which are easily found, read, or moved when need be. It’s much better than having to work with one large file in Word or having to keep several windows open at the same time because I need to reference different parts of a project.

One of my more recent discoveries is the composition mode which I have ignored for most of the year, working in the regular Scrivener window. There’s nothing wrong with that, mind, but having the composition mode where everything else is pushed in the background and you have a large space to write in with the typewriter mode automatically activated is much better.
Composition mode can be started and ended by pressing a key, although I usually use the icon in the Scrivener window to start it — yet, I usually end it with the escape key. Dropping into and out of it, therefore, is really, really simple and fast.
I’ve found this a pleasant way to write, especially long passages, such as full scenes and chapters. For short writing, or writing while I have to consult my notes a lot, I use the regular window — most of the time, that is. Composition mode helps me focus and makes doing my writing much easier.

Compiling in Scrivener isn’t easy. That is a simple fact. The compiler is a powerful tool which can create files in a lot of different formats and powerful tools are rarely easy to use.
I’ve needed my time to get more familiar with the compiler and I still have situations in which my files (normally .epub) don’t come out the way I want them to. It has helped, however, that I have made myself my own release format which is saved as a general format and also as an external file I can put up again, should I be forced to move between computers again (as I will be in a couple of years, I guess, but not any time soon).
By now, most of the time I get what I want when I compile a story. I still check them with the Kindle Viewer to see if they’ve been formatted the way I wanted them to, but I rarely see surprises.

Overall, I’m glad I’ve switched to Scrivener. It was hard work to bring all my projects to the new program, but it has paid off. I have found a program which is better suited for my work. That doesn’t mean that Word is a horrid program — for the office applications it was meant for, such as writing business letters and reports, Word is pretty good. I never had a problem with extremely long files (one of my Knight Agency novels has over 100,000 words), either, not on the technical side. Yet, I am a writer and not a businessperson and I’m glad I have a program which was made with someone like me in mind. A program that’s an ‘all in one’ solution for a writer, letting me keep all I need in one place with easy access. If you’re uncertain, check the program out, it might work for you as well — and it has a very fair trial period, too.