My Favourite Things About Scrivener

My favourite things about Scrivener

1. Navigation. You can see all your chapters, scenes, character & setting planning at one glance and switch between them very easily - compared to scrolling up and down in one long word processing document. Every file can also be a folder, so you can have collapsible items underneath it.

2. Word count targets. The “Project Targets” are particularly useful for NaNoWriMo so you don’t have to keep looking back at the website to see how you’re doing for the day, but more so outside of it, when you want to keep yourself working to a target but don’t have Nano’s charts and daily word counts. It also gives you a nice ding when you hit your session target.

3. How many pages? I only recently discovered this, but it’s very nice to be able to see in Project Statistics approximately how big your manuscript would be in pages without worrying about formatting. 

4. Outlining. Scrivener has two methods of outlining - one is Corkboard, which is exactly what it sounds like, a digital corkboard with notes pinned on it that represent your chapters/scenes with their summaries. The screenshot above is called ‘outliner’ and lists collapsible chapters/scenes with various statistics you can select as shown in the tick menu. Generally I prefer Corkboard, but Outliner is useful if you just want to see everything in a clear order. 

5. Full screen. I get distracted very easily when writing, so the full-screen writing mode is wonderful for me to avoid that - but you can still choose certain windows from the normal Scrivener view to show up. I have my targets and my summary, so I can stick to my plan when I’m writing and also see what progress I’m making.

6. Notes. No screenshot, but it’s a simple post-it note style box to the side of every document (chapter, scene, character etc.) that allows you to add notes. This may sound very simple, but it’s far more useful than I’d expected. During NaNoWriMo when I’m not meant to be editing at all, but I know something needs fixing, I will jot down something in the side like ‘Take out the horse’ so that when I go through again to edit I know exactly the things to focus on immediately but which would have taken too much time before. It’s linked to the scene so I don’t just have a pile of notes in one document at the end and then have to work out where it needs fixing.

Overall

I downloaded Scrivener for the first time two years ago, and now I can’t imagine working without it. It’s so nice to have the planning and the writing all combined into one place where I can easily switch between the two. I haven’t yet got as far in a novel created in Scrivener to use the compile features so I can’t comment on those, but so far all my experiences of it have been good.

One thing to note is that if transferring project between a Windows and a Mac version of Scrivener, it’s generally best to zip the file first.

[Screenshots from my current novel Kindling Ashes using the Mac version of Scrivener - some features may not be available in Windows yet.]

horses are inherently funny because they come in so many sizes. like draft horses

this looks so fake. this horses skull is bigger than the dudes entire torso. this horses NECK is thicker than the dudes entire BODY.

and then at the opposite end of the spectrum you have shit like this shetland pony which ALSO looks fake

what the hell happened to this thing who bred this line of ponies to be so ridiculous

okay but seriously

when i want a hug what i really want is a Ghibli hug.

because i mean-

Ghibli

Hugs

Look

Like

The 

Greatest

Hugs

in the WORld

AU where all of Homestuck is some sort of tv or movie series where all the trolls and humans are actually trolls and humans, but they’re all just actors dealing with the bullshit lines they have to do..

Karkat yelling himself hoarse for all of his lines and constantly needing to take lozenges and water and stuff because he keeps straining his voice in character.

Mituna just getting frustrated over all his lines being so nonsensical so he just bullshit ad-libs more than half of it into gibberish nonsense, yet it still makes the cut.

Supreme pun characters like Nepeta, Horuss, Feferi, and Meenah collaborating because they’re just told to read the scripts and force in as many puns as they can think of.

Eridan and Cronus constantly struggling with their wwavvy vwawvy accents being kept in place while they’re talking. (ws and vs are hard. it’s hard and no one understands)

Dave having to stop constantly because he keeps losing his stoic face and voice from so many of the lines he has to say. Same with Jake who constantly mocks his own character when not on set.

Gamzee tripping over his own lines because he’s getting the way his words are pronounced screwy because he talks so weird.

Damara actually speaking Japanese and she sometimes just speaks Japanese off-set to screw with people and they aren’t sure if she’s flirting or just messing with them in character.

Fucking Kankri having to memorize entire monologues of text when he speaks and having to stop because he’s just so done with so much of what he has to say. Plus deals with the same voice exhaustion problems Karkat does.

baby……..