Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

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A friend of mine recently put me on to Scrivener after finding out about my old fashioned reliance on things like pens, paper, notebooks and cork boards for all the planning and note taking and structuring. I'd never heard of it. I downloaded the free trial tonight and have been playing with it, plugging my current project into it and seeing how it all works.

After only a couple of hours playing, I'm still reserving judgement.

Anybody else used it or currently uses it? Opinions on it? Thoughts?

I use it for first draft to penultimate draft - it makes rewrites, reshuffling and edits a lot easier. For a final polish I tend to put the whole document into word (in a slightly different font) as changing programs makes spotting errors and typos easier - tricking your brain into thinking you're reading new text. I also like it for planning although most of that happens in my head and I make very few notes. It's a great program but I know some people find aspects of it distracting. I wouldn't format an ebook from Scrivener. As I find formatting manually easier. I don't paper edit at all now.

I'm thinking of skipping the paper-edit phase, too. It's frustrating having a book nearly done and then having to wait a month for CreateSpace to ship it over. Or, I could stop being mean and shell out the extra $20 for expedited shipping.

Every time I look at products like this I end up concluding that for me they're more trouble than they're worth. It's kind of like learning to use any new software...

First there's the time spent learning what the software will do. You begin knowing nothing and assuming everything. Then there's a period of frustration when the software doesn't work as you thought. Slowly you start to realize your concept of how it works was all wrong and you have to mold your brain around how the software actually works...This can be a total of a few days to several months or a year, depending on the complexity of the product.

Then there's the time spent learning what features you will actually use. I've gone through this with music production software and usually end up finding I use less than 10% of what's possible to use. (I'd say that's probably true with Word, Excel and just about any big software product.)

Then there's the time spent setting up whatever project you're working on and trying to optimize your file systems for the new process.

Only then will you start actually using the software.

As far as this software goes...IF I were writing non-fiction (where there's a lot of book-specific research involved), and IF I usually find myself slicing, dicing, cutting, pasting, and rearranging passages a lot...I'd be more inclined to put in the effort needed.

But I tend to write linearly and not move sections around a lot. The only thing this program might help me do is document ideas and world building items. But I'd need that to work in a cross-book setting: keeping terminology, technology, geographic locations, and other world building info in an organized central location.

Not sure it's good for that. I've tried using Evernote for that but...just not feeling the love there.

I simply use Microsoft Paint to make a star map, so I can see relative distances, and Microsoft Notepad to list the characters' descriptions and certain other items that I need to refer to now and then. Both came with the computer. I haven't tried to make a topographical map with Paint yet, but I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult. Those are pretty simple to use, and they've worked so far.

I'm on much the same page as Ken and Micah, though I use Photoshop Elements as illustrations are important to me. For character and plot ideas, I use real-world index cards, 3 x 5. Elements is only £50 or so, Ken, much better than Paint!

I use my tablet for editing and Keep (a free post-it type app from Google) for note taking. I looked into Scrivner and realized that it wouldn't work for someone with my type of OCD. I would end up spending more time organizing than writing.
I'm going to borrow your change fonts idea, J.A. I always upload my drafts to my Kindle app for a more natural reading feel and I use the note and highlight features to catch issues as I read.

For me I have to say Scrivener has been pretty much the best thing that ever happened. Way better than Word, but like I say that's for me. The way it allows me to organize my book - characters, scenes, locations, etc - is just great. But like all things it comes down to whatever works for you. For me, I can't do without it.

I have looked at Scrivener, and it sounds like a very interesting program, but I haven't seen the point in buying it. I mostly use Bean for writing, it's simple and hasn't got very many features, but it has everything I need for writing. I'm even so eccentric that I occasionally use a typewriter for writing.

Reading a review of it now...http://www.pcworld.com/article/236615...

"Combined, all of these attributes let you perform fine-grained searches: Find all the "second draft" scenes that have both Hodor and Bran that take place outdoors. That's something you just can't do with a bunch of text files in a folder."

I have NO clue why I'd ever want to do that!

My criterion for starting a chapter is that I can sum up the action in my mind in a single sentence. That level of analysis certainly isn't the way I write.

Another neat way to help with editing and typos I found was plugging sections/chapters into a text-to-speech program and then following along. It has its quirks but it works pretty damn well.

As for the program, I've had it recommended by a friend. I'll probably demo it at some point and figure out if it's useful to me.

Scrivener is the best thing that ever happened.

I tend to jump around a lot when I write - scene here, note here, scrap of dialogue here. Scrivener is organized in such a way that it's easy to write whatever I'm feeling at the moment.

The searching is a nice function if there's a scene that I need to fix and I only have one word or a set of words.

Then there's the Project replace. Renaming characters has never been so easy.

The compile feature is nice too; I can put the draft together and stick it on my iPad and read through a version.

Then there's the word count targets for each chapter and word count targets for the day. It's a little reward system when I hit my goals every day (not so helpful in editing)

And then there's the way you can have an entire series in one file, organized into folders, so you can jump around in the series.

And then...and then... and then...

I know it's probably not for everybody, but I can't say enough about how it's helped me organize and write my books.

I'm about to go to a Scrivner workshop in Houston at Looscan library on December 13. I don't have scrivner now because I've got two writing programs that I never use. So I'm going to the workshop with a limited time download of the program to see if I could use it. I like what I've heard about it.

I feel as though those of us who aren't using Scrivner should be replying with 'I prefer not to.' Or did I just dredge up a bunch of English Lit trauma? ;)

I love Scrivener. So much easier to rejig scenes/chapters. I use it from first draft right through to producing the final product.

I'm very big on Scrivener too. My first novel really bogged down in Word around 30,000 words... Scrivener got me past that block for good. The organization of a big work is just crazy.

There's a million possibilities of what and how you can use it, but you can use only the ones you really want and need (until someone tips you off to other amazing things it can do.)

I love having several different places on the side (literally little windows top right and bottom right) to put different kinds of notes, as well as a research folder with all my setting/character/whatever notes/pictures/maps all in other folders within the same screen... and you can split screen to get what you need, or copy things over to those notes docs.
I also use several documents in the research section to record any editing notes/ideas/changes while I'm writing, so that I can go back on my first revision pass and deal with them, rather than break my writing flow.

I write in scenes, not chapters, so I post my initial scene beats in the Document Notes (bottom right), for each scene, tagging it with keywords for POVs or subplots.

Next I write all the scenes.

At some point in the editing process I go back through each scene and mark off notes of where/when/who/conflicts/important info... kind of a reverse outline after the fact.

Then I'll rearrange a bunch of scenes and organize into chapters.

I compile from Scrivener to Word for at least one round of revision and seeing what green and red squigglies Word serves up for me.

I'll also compile to Word for editors to use Track Changes.

I also compile direct to e-pub from Scrivener for one of my proofreaders, and to Mobi for my wife and I to both read during revision/markup passes on the Kindle.

But all those edits that come out of those processes get promoted back into Scrivener, because I direct compile from there for all the e-books. Once the e-book goes live, then I'll also compile to Word and do the final print formatting. When I get the proof, any other little niggly details I find I'll fix in the Word doc, and also in Scrivener if there's a text change (rather than just formatting).

Also incredibly useful is how quickly it searches, using the search box in the top right. So many uses for that.

The fantastic thing about Scrivener is that it gives you 30 free usage days to see what you think (and the tutorial walks you through using the program features in real ways, with all the info held inside Scrivener, not some artificial training environment). And then it's pretty reasonably priced even after that.

I can't imagine writing without it now.

I do put notes/ideas into Google Keep/Evernote from my phone as I have them randomly, but eventually copy them into Scrivener documents for future ideas/edits/etc.

I've tried a few but keep coming back to Word because I write both on my Windows laptop and my iPad. I bought Scrivener for the laptop, but they've taken forever to release the iPad version, so I can't easily trade files back and forth. I bought Storyist for the iPad, but their computer version is only available on Macs. So again, I can't trade files back and forth.

So, ultimately, I returned to primarily using Word. I use Storyist on the iPad, and then export as normal text files when I switch back to the laptop. If Scrivener eventually launches their iPad version, I may switch to that exclusively. It's a great program, but I need something that's available on multiple platforms.

I can't imagine writing a novel without Scrivener.

I've been using Scrivener for a few years (since the PC version as released) and have written a novel and numerous short-stories with it. For the most part it works very well for me and my approach to writing.

The organizational features are good for longer pieces (novels etc.), as is the ability to keep notes and ideas all together. It's my primary writing tool now.

That said there are certain aspects I just never use: Labels, Status and Icons. I never use the outline mode either, but the corkboard I find useful. I've never figured out the point of Collections so don't use those either. I also never looked into the script editing parts as I don't write scripts.

The compile feature is good. I use that to create versions formatted for editing/critiques/submissions as well as one's formatted for eBooks. Which is very useful. I also like the fact that you can set up your own templates and use those instead of the defaults. I also figured out how to run it from a memory stick so I could use it anywhere I could get my hands on a pc.

Like all software it has it's quirks. The default autosave settings have me baffled and made the software unusable in my opinion until I changed them. Everyone is different, so use the parts work for you.

I use other tools depending where I'm working (pc/phone etc.) I also sometimes write in a paper notebook, but everything goes back into Scrivener. I also do a paper edit on all my work after the first draft and then subsequent edits on screen. I find the paper edit lets me "see" more and gets me a much cleaner draft sooner.

Cheers

Dave

David wrote: "I also figured out how to run it from a memory stick so I could use it anywhere I could get my hands on a pc."

I would love to know how you did that. I sometimes get time at work to do stuff during my lunchtime, but I can't install Scrivener on my work laptop. Running it from a memory stick would solve that problem for me.

@David: Outline mode is really cool if you change the headings so it shows word counts for sections, and other things you might want to compare.

I use POV-color coded labels/keywords, sometimes for subplots too.

Collections are fantastic when you're setting up different front and back matter groupings for different formats.

Everything there is useful to someone, and often it just takes someone mentioning it before you consider adopting them too. :)

Thanks Jamie. I can see how the color coding would help on the POV, I never thought of using them like that but I mostly write from one POV.

I'm sure it's all useful to some people - it's so feature packed that I suspect most people use a subset of what it can do.

Hi Andrew

Running from a memory stick is fairly easy, as long as you are okay to accept some limitations.

Basically all you need to do is copy the install directory to your stick of choice and then double clicking on the scrivener.exe file will open it up.

The limitations are that you need to register the software on every pc you run it on so the demo doesn't run out. You also don't have access to templates etc. that you create on one computer on another one, unless you manually copy them to each PC when you first use it, which wasn't a problem for me as I don't use the templates that much.

The only other thing I had a problem with was speed. That's how I found the crazy default autosave setting in fact.

Every time the autosave kicks in it saves your documents to the disk - when your on a pc it slows things down but not really bad because you have a nice fast hard-drive to work off.

A memory stick on the other hand is magnitudes slower than the HD so I found that i'd pause to think then when I tried typing again Scriv was "frozen" while it saved everything (which shouldn't really happen at all, but that's another story).

Anyway the way round it is to make sure you get a high speed memory stick, then you'll be okay or you could try disabling the autosave. I got a 32gb high speed one for about $50 a couple of years ago (Kingston Ultimate G2).

David wrote: " You also don't have access to templates etc. that you create on one computer on another one, unless you manually copy them to each PC when you first use it..."

Could they be stored instead on Dropbox and thus used by whatever PC you run it on? I don't know how they have the templates set up, whether they need to be in a specific file location or if you can set a default.

I use Dropbox to store all my writing projects so I can edit them from wherever and not have to transfer them manually between machines.

Hey Micah

Storing them on dropbox would give you access to them or you could copy them to the stick.

The problem is that Scrivener defaults to looking for templates in the -

\Users\yourcomputername\AppData\Local\Scrivener

folder and I've not found a way to change that - it seems to be hard-coded into the program. So you'd still have to copy them to that location.

Cheers

Dave

possibly the best way of managing this and what I usually do is create a blank Scrivener project with everything you want in it. Then when you want to create a new project just load that as normal and do a Save As. That's kind of what I do. That's basically all the template files are anyway.

That's the way I work in Word, to get around Microsoft's obscure template mechanism. Feels scary deleting all the text of the previous book, though!

That's why I suggest setting up a specific blank project. Though I have to confess I usually do the "scary" option.

I thrive on living dangerously! ;-)

David wrote: "...it seems to be hard-coded into the program..."

That's what I was afraid of. It's funny how software in different industries do things differently.

In music software almost all programs have a preferred location but allow you to set your own default. But in writing, not so much.

Richard 2060 wrote: "That's the way I work in Word, to get around Microsoft's obscure template mechanism..."

I get around it by not using templates.

I know they could be somewhat useful, but doing w/out them's not really that big of an issue the way I work.

You're right Micah. As am ex-software developer, my position is that everything regarding file locations should be configurable.

I have Scrivener, and used it to create my upcoming book of shorts. However, when I compiled it and got my proof in the mail from Amazon, the fon is terribly tiny and the margins are way off. As I compiled again after having tried tweaking the fonts, I'm just not sure if it will look right or not. At least with Word I can tell better. Any advice?

Does Scriv let you export to Word for final checks? I'd see it more as an authoring front-end than a production system, not that I know it well.

It did, yes, and I did that last night. I also found that I can add in some custom fonts that way easier than I can on Scrivener. It's just that they tout it as the cure all for the headache of the full process, and it wasn't for me. Although I think it might be, if I could figure out the easiest way to work the margins and fonts. I wish it had a print preview option LOL.

There is a print preview option. Never really checked it thoroughly though. One thing to remember is that when you compile to RTF (to bring it in to word) there are a range of customization options for fonts etc. Charles you may need to look at those or use a different preset.

I do my editing in Scriv, compile to RTF and then do a final check in Word. I've never had a problem with font sizes though. I compile with multiple formats depending. One for editing (double spaced etc.) and others for ebook, print etc.

Oh wow, thank you David. I will try the RTF route. :)