So I’ve been thinking about trying out Scrivener for a while now, but I’ve only just gotten around to doing it (spurred by Anna Staniszewski’s blog post about structuring a manuscript). After discussing the pros and cons with my writer friend Peta (who has a lot of experience using Scrivener, though she’s now switched to using Mac’s Pages program) I downloaded the program yesterday.
What I was doing before was using Word and saving my manuscript in one file, my outline/to do notes in another word file (in notebook mode), and all of my research in yet another file (also in notebook mode). I wanted to see if having everything in one file might help things a bit more (and I like playing with new software). I had also hoped Scrivener would help with my outlining, which I like to do as I go along. My husband pointed out that I *could* use Word’s outline view but I don’t find their outline view to be aesthetically pleasing (which is important to me).
Since you can do a 30-day trial with Scrivener, I’m going to do a day-by-day update on how this program is helping/not helping to help other writers decide whether this program is useful for them or not.
Day One:
Spent several hours reading the tutorial and then uploading/reformatting everything from my current project (at least I haven’t gotten very far yet). Then I spent a few hours revising some scenes in my current project. So far so good. Not quite sure what to do with the “Labels” feature yet. I added a Sketch “Status”, but wish I could do colored index cards by Status rather than Labels in corkboard mode. Have added some characters as keywords (as suggested by the tutorial).
Day Two:
Still getting used to using separate text files for each scene. I usually just keep everything in one long file. It’s easier organization-wise for them to be separate, but not sure it’s easier for me visually. Some people feel less pressure if they only see one chapter at a time, but that’s not the case for me. It does have a function to see them all at once though, but each scene has a different color. A little annoying, but might be able to work through this.
Love full screen mode and anticipating using the split-screen function for things.
————- PS: Scrivener has posted a special trial version for NaNoWriMo that has a longer trial time than their usual 30 days (I didn’t notice this until today). They’re also offering a 20% discount for the next two months.