As an aspiring writer, I struggled to find a platform that will allow me to completely customise it to my needs. I’m pretty finicky when it comes to how I organise myself. I needed a go-to, all-inclusive tool, that looks good, and helps me straighten out the cavalcade of information that I come up with. Then one day, by chance, I happened upon Scrivener which, at its core, is all you’ll ever need.
Buy it once, have it on your PC for life. Just hold on to the licence code you receive upon purchase, in case you’ll be changing to a new computer and you’re sorted for the foreseeable future. 👍🏼
🧐 Why use Scrivener?
I used to think that Microsoft Word was all I needed to write. That is until I discovered Scrivener.
It is a customisable platform so you will only see what you need, once you set it up (I’d always recommend doing this first, even just to familiarise yourself with everything). Change the background colour, set up your manuscript plan, play around with the menu. There are possibilities everywhere with this software!
As I said before, Scrivener is an all-inclusive platform, meaning that you can pour into it not just your story, but your research, your images, your inspirations, your notes, your lessons, your character templates and more.
If you’re using it for anything other than a writer’s tool, you’ll still be able to customise it for all your notes, research and whatever else your projects may need.
🤔 How Scrivener works? (A basic overview)
Scrivener is useful for manuscript writing, playwrights, screenwriters, but also for anyone who has a project that they want to write and need all aspects of it in the same place, such as a PR proposal, or Event Proposal, etc.
Whatever you want to write, Scrivener is definitely the go-to word processor.
Your corkboards are your guides, so when you’re writing a chapter, for instance, you can work out your scenes’ and chapters’ synopsis (picture above, upper right corner). You can also add your notes, references, thoughts or anything else, even links that you may need.
View Your Plans: You have a choice to look at your work as a corkboard or to see the title and synopsis together, or yet again, see it as a written W.I.P. (work in progress).
Set your Target: Set your word count target, scene by scene, chapter by chapter or by manuscript/document length.
Adjust your settings, just as in word. Font size and colour, underlined, whatever. It’s all here too.
Include all your research, your beat sheet, other notes, all your character info and more into your virtual binder.
Everything goes to one place only and you don’t have to remember another sign-in password and username (you write offline). I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s a plus.
You can drag and drop anything into it and make your notes up alongside your story as the ideas strike you, or change the order of any chapters as you go.
Assign a backup place, and you’re golden.
NaNoWriMo Friendly! 📝
To my biggest surprise, Scrivener released a NaNo-friendly feature this year in time for National Novel Writing Month 2021.
The best part? Now you can update your wordcount on your NaNo profile straight from Scrivener!
How to get started: https://scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb/features-and-usage/enabling-the-update-nanowrimo-word-count-feature-in-scrivener
Can I convert it? Yes! 🙌🏼
To export your work, once you’re done, follow these steps:👇🏻
- Highlight the correct document in Scrivener’s Binder view.
- Click File > Export > Files.
- Choose a location to save your exported file and choose a document name (if you want to change it for some reason).
- In the “Export text files as:” drop-down menu, choose your file type. 👇🏼
You’ll have many choices to convert your final product into, as you can see.
So you don’t have to worry about such things either when you want to send on your work to the next stages, whether it needs to be edited, proofed or you want a read-only copy to send on to someone as a PDF.
🤑 Is Scrivener worth the money?
Scrivener is currently on its 3rd version and is available for €53 as a Standard macOS or Windows licence for personal use, or for €45.05 as an Educational Licence for macOS or Windows.
At the end of the day, the price is relatively low cost for what you get out of it (yours forever, no update costs, etc.) so I think it will be worth the investment.
Purchase Scrivener go to Literature & Latte – remember, once purchased, your licence will go a long way!
To get a discount before 30th November 2021, join the fun that is NaNoWriMo, find your region, and get a 20% discount with the code NANOWRIMO21.
Why you should do NaNoWriMo this year? Read my article 5 Things to Know about NaNoWriMo to learn why is it fun, and why is it great to join.
Did you like this review? Let me know your thoughts below 👇🏻 and give it a like or share it with your friends in doubt.
If you’d like me to review anything else that is a writing-related tool, let me know, and I will look into it in a future blog post.
May we always have satisfying conversations. 🙌🏼