Have you heard of Scrivener? If you haven’t heard about it on the writerly grapevine, first: what’s your secret for brain organisation? And second, if you’re struggling with exactly that, and if you’re a writer, this post might land. Maybe you have heard of it and are wondering: is Scrivener any good? Is Scrivener worth it? Doesn’t Microsoft Word or Google docs do the same thing?
Well, in short: Yes, it’s good, it’s worth it, and no, other software doesn’t offer what it does; while other software has many of the same features, none of them have quite the same package as Scrivener does.
Scrivener is one of the best (read: unrivalled) writing tools there is, and it’s not just about getting the words on the page; it’s great for research and storing notes in most formats, and its ability to take a project from the early stages of raw notes through to finalisation. Scrivener has the quality of a clean interface (even more polished in version 3) with robust features beneath the polished surface.
Now, the sceptics among might be thinking: A writing tool? An expensive piece of software that’s supposed to help you WRITE? Pfft. Charles Dickens didn’t use Scrivener and he did alright for himself.
Well… I hear you. In fact, I was also skeptical. As far as I was concerned, the only thing I needed to write was my over-active imagination and a pen… I’d have written my entire novel on my arm if I’d had to. Of course, these days, when I say pen, I actually mean the expensive devices which have become extensions of my actual brain and body. Back then, I thought I didn’t need fancy software. Microsoft Word had been good enough for the last ten years so y’know, if ain’t broke… but when someone shared a link for a deal (Scrivener! Half price!), I clicked it. I still don’t NEED this, I mumbled to myself. I’m a real writer.
HA.
Scrivener has changed my writing process—wait—let me be specific: it has massively improved my writing process. The learning curve is a little steep and it isn’t a magical fix for writer’s block, procrastination, or general avoidance. Nor is it a fairy who will finish your novel overnight… (Wouldn’t that be great? (Not really. I’m kidding. I’d fictitiously murder that interfering fairy!))—but…
Scrivener has some brilliant features to make the writer’s job a little easier, and set the writer’s mind a little more at ease.
Here are eleven of many brilliant features in Scrivener:
1. Binder Organisation
Scrivener’s ability to organise your work will revolutionise the way you write. Gone are the days of highlighting chunks of words and cutting and pasting a scene into what you hope is the right place within your manuscript. Fifth time’s the charm, right? In fact, I remember actual cutting and taping during a hard-copy edit. *shudder* Scrivener allows you to simply craft each scene as a new text document and drag-and-drop at will. While you can recreate a similar setup with separate documents in Word, the difference with Scrivener is that having each scene or chapter as a separate document doesn’t mean having to click away and open each file in a new window. Everything you need is within a single screen; you need only select your scene from the Binder to view it. Another advantage of this is being able to tackle your story in bite-sized chunks instead of being faced with a 50K-word-strong document (or six notebooks, if you’re old-school) every time you sit down to write. Every little helps.
2. Research Folder
This feature is an absolute gem. All that planning, and brainstorming, and collecting of pictures and random notes—there’s a dedicated place for it within Scrivener. Once again taking organisation to new heights, the Research section means you have all of your random brain sneezes in one handy spot whilst still using a hierarchy of files/folders which are accessible on one main screen. I use mine for character profiles and images, world building and maps, plotting, outlining, actual research notes, website clips and screenshots and videos—there’s no limit to what you can keep in this section and no limit on the type of media either (unless you’re syncing to the cloud and you’ve surpassed your limit there). It’s also worth noting that later versions of Scrivener will allow insertion of images directly into any document within your Binder (not just the Research folder); version 1 did not have this capacity.
3. Labels, Status, and Custom Metadata
Here’s where Scrivener shows off, and rightly so. For every scene or chapter you write, you can label it and give it a status. I use my Labels for POVs (point of view) in fiction projects and triage labels such as keep, merge, discard, publish, etc. for non-fiction projects, and I use Status to refer to the stage in the writing process: to do, in progress, first draft, first revision, etc. If the idea of this bores you to tears, rest assured, it’s entirely optional, and you can still achieve organisation with bare-minimum input. If you enjoy next-level organisation, rest assured, there’s more… Alongside Labels and Status, you can also customise Metadata. (Meta whatnow? Basically, you can create a custom label for anything you wish to track. It’s like data for your data.) For instance, within my current fiction manuscript, I track characters and location. This might seem excessive but if I enter this information as I’m writing or editing, I can come back to it later and with only a simple glance in Outliner mode (see image 2 below), I know exactly where each scene is taking place, which characters are involved, and—it might seem random, but it isn’t—what season it was within a scene. I can do this without having to wrack my brain and/or read the entire piece. You could also set up something similar for time of day/week to easily track your timeline (I’ve done this, too). The possibilities are endless.
4. Versatile Modes
Scrivener has a number of tools you’d have to otherwise recreate outside of your manuscript’s file. For instance, I’ve seen other writers create storyboards using post-it notes, corkboards, flashcards—you name it. This is great if the manual act benefits your creative process. On the other hand, if you do it because you believe there’s no other option, I have good news: Scrivener will do it for you. And you need only enter your information once to view it in a number of ways—or even side by side.
A) The Corkboard
This is brilliant when you’re beginning a new project. Simply create a new index card on your corkboard for each new event and plot point in your book. As you progress, you can add more, outlining entire scenes and dragging-and-dropping to your heart’s content. You can modify the appearance of the index cards as well, and choose whether you’d like your metadata to appear here and how, for instance, the light blue colour on the left side of the cards below indicates a character POV, even though in this instance, I haven’t filled out additional character meta-data for the document itself (listed on the right).
Alternatively, if you already have your project half-written, all it takes is pasting it or importing it into Scrivener and for each separate document, simply type a title and synopsis for each. These will become the content on your index cards, so you can have an overview of your project.
B) The Outliner
Everything you’ve written on your index cards is viewable as a project outline in this mode. You can select which additional fields are displayed by selecting from the drop-down arrow (from Title and Synopsis to Word Count, Status, and Keywords). This is where all that custom metadata comes in really handy, creating an excellent overview of your entire project.
C) Scrivenings
If you really prefer to view your project in one long scary flow of words, there’s an option to do that. You still get the benefits of the Binder but with the familiarity of a more traditional interface, with line-breaks to indicate different sections, and the satisfaction of organisation, and the ability to easily locate any passage within your project.
D) Split View
For the writer who wants to have his cake and eat it, there’s split view. Here’s an example of it in image 1 (Scrivener v3)—with a vertical split screen between Corkboard mode and the Editor. There is an option to resize the index cards in Corkboard view so you could potentially have more of them on the screen as with another example in image 2 (please note this image shows Scrivener v1 but the features here work the same way for both versions). Split View mode is also a great way to compare different versions of your text, and more recently, I’ve used it to play audio in the left-hand side of the Editor while checking the transcript on the right-hand side. It keeps the work-flow contained and organised.
5. Distraction-Free Mode
Speaking of work modes, there’s a handy little tool for full-screen composition mode. You can even modify your background (in Project>Project Settings) with a picture of your own to keep you inspired, and you can adjust the size and position of your editor to suit your needs and change the transparency of the background. You can access a number of features in this mode, including the Binder for navigating between scenes, but ultimately, this is where you can knuckle down and bang out those words (with fingertips not foreheads).
6. Progress Bar
Whilst you’re banging out words, Scrivener has a neat tool to track all that hard work—and provide a little extra motivation. The Project Targets function has two separate trackers. The first is for your overall project target and the second is your session target. For every session, the bar fills as you type. This is a small feature which might not appeal to everyone but for those of us who love trackers, having one that’s already built into our writing program is cause for celebration. For me, word count trackers are like personal cheerleaders. Writing a book is a long, sometimes gruelling process; during the times it feels like I’m getting nowhere, trackers help to make my progress measurable. The project targets icon can be added to your main toolbar for access at any time, or you can access other target features for a specific document at the bottom right of the Editor when viewing or working within that document.
7. Comments, Notes, and Scratchpad
Comments, annotations, and footnotes all work in similar ways as MS Word’s comment system but with simpler reliability. Turning on Inspector (the blue i icon), you can view a list of them on the right hand side of your Editor (image 1). You can add an icon to your toolbar if you use any of these features often and there are keyboard shortcuts for these as well.
Alongside comments and annotations, Scrivener also has a Notes feature which displays below the synopsis of a single document at the bottom of the Inspector (image 2). For any given document (scene/chapter/rambling notes), you are able to jot side notes without affecting the main text.
Scratch Pad is another notes feature which is brilliant in that all notes created here (in a separate, smaller floating window) are stored independently, which means you can access them between separate projects, making it handy for notes pertaining to multiple projects. It also serves as a place to bookmark research for later additions, and there is even a function to append text to the end of any document within any open project or add the new notes as a subdocument of an existing one.
8. Snapshots
This is another feature within the Inspector. If you hit the + button on the Snapshots tab, it’ll save the current version of your scene (a snapshot) before you whip out your ‘knife’ to begin carving. Does this seem redundant? Perhaps. But it also means that even after you’ve edited and/or deleted several paragraphs, even after you’ve saved and overwritten and backed up your project, you could still come back weeks later, having changed your mind, and be able to view or roll back to the initial version of that scene. Cool, huh?
9. Icons
This one might not be groundbreaking but I love it. Scrivener allows you to edit the icons of every document. There are already a lot to choose from (not all shown below) but you can also add your own custom icons. Within my research folder, I tend to choose icons based on the type of document—character, place, world, magic (some previously customised during procrastination.) Within most of my projects lately, I find it handy to use icons related to the status metadata. I do this with colour-coded flag icons or simple tick/check boxes.
10. Export and Compile
Scrivener can export your work in multiple formats including MS Word docs and ePub files. You can export your entire project, or select only certain documents for compilation. From the Compile menu it’s even possible to compile a (detailed) outline built on your synopses of each document and you can use this for quick referencing throughout your writing process. When compiling your manuscript for ebook, you can tweak the formatting (this took me forever the first time around) and create your own customised exports. For print books, I needed / wanted to do further formatting within MS Word (you can also use InDesign or a similar program). Not having the capacity for this extra formatting within Scrivener 1 was the only drawback for me, but it’s an understandable trade-off; other software specifically geared for book formatting is an option. Having said that, I haven’t yet used the Compile feature in version 3 of Scrivener, but even at first glance, I can see how much of an upgrade the feature has been given. I will add an update when I’ve fully used this feature in Scrivener 3.
11. IOS App Syncing
Finally, as a bonus point: mobile functionality. The Scrivener app for iOS was a long time coming and it was well worth the wait. The app is powerful and bug-free. It syncs seamlessly with Dropbox so all your projects can stay up to date across all devices. While there are several features which, understandably, did not make the move to mobile, Scrivener iOS has all the main functionality of the desktop version and happily, it has put my novel at my fingertips while on the go (or—let’s be real—even in bed). No more excuses!
So, is Scrivener worth it?
Yes. It is a powerhouse of a writing tool. It can be daunting when you first venture in, and unlike most word processing programs, the learning curve is quite high. I’ve been using it for ten years now (on and off) and there are still things I’m just learning to do because I defaulted to the mobile version for so long (and I’m relearning the desktop features in the new version (3)). I’m sure there are many features I’m yet to discover. Then there are the amazing features I haven’t mentioned, like the robust search function, Collections within the Binder, Quick Referencing, and the standard features of a word processor that are expected—and delivered. If you have Scrivener and you’re put off by the sheer number of functions, I’d say: muddle through anyway. The hassle is well worth it. Once you get to grips with it, you’ll wonder how you ever organised your writing without it.
You can get Scrivener at Literature and Latte and you can get it at a discounted price if you’ve previously purchased an older version.
For tips on using Scrivener, here are some resources that were helpful for me and free at the time I used them:
Learn Scrivener Fast
Gwen Hernandez
I am not affiliated with Scrivener and this is not a paid promotion. I just really, REALLY like the software. If you’re a writer, you might agree that anything that legitimately helps to get our stories written is worth knowing about.
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Excerpts of this article was previously published 28.03.2017 as: Is Scrivener Any Good? 11 Reasons Why Writers Love Scrivener. This article has been reviewed and updated by the same author (me! Hi.) All images and inclusive text also by Shona Clingham