Monday, April 27, 2015

Thoughts on Scrivener, by: Marissa Burt


Photo Credit: Barry Gregg 2011
I am knee deep in revisions on my yet-to-be-titled fourth book, the sequel to A SLIVER OF STARDUST, The writing process for each manuscript has been very different. For my first novel, STORYBOUND, I wrote snippets on the odd afternoons I had to myself, patching together a myriad of scenes to make the final book. The drafting of my second novel, STORY'S END, is a bit of a blur. My husband and I had just moved across the country to a two bedroom apartment with a four-year-old, one-year-old, and a newborn in tow. What comes to mind is frenetic sleep-deprived writing marathons fueled by coffee in the corner booth of the Panera near our apartment. Out of all my books, STORY'S END is probably my favorite, not least because I remember the writing of it so foggily that it's like reading someone else's work.

I drafted my third novel, A SLIVER OF STARDUST,in small chunks of writing time, 30-45 minutes a day, but, having learned from the endless rounds of revision STORYBOUND needed, I did work from a general outline. I wanted to try a different approach with this latest book. I wasn't ready to work from a heavily detailed outline, but I did want an alternative to my cluttered stacks of Post-its and spiral bound notebooks full of scribblings. So I turned to Scrivener.

And then as soon as I watched the tutorial I turned off my computer and quit for the day. Seriously. The tutorial is daunting and makes it seem as though writing a novel with pen and ink would be easier. But, having already invested my $40, I forged ahead, and I'm so glad I did. I am quite certain I don't use even a third of all the features (that would mean revisiting the tutorial - gasp!), but the ones I do use I've found to be a great help and want to highlight them here:

The visual layout. I love that the screen is customizable and includes the Binder View which I use to organize scenes within chapters.


The corkboard feature that allowed me to stay with the general Post-it outline that's worked well for me in the past and yet include much more detail.




The way I can import content from the internet that I want to reference while worldbuilding.




The templates for setting and character development were very helpful in the early stages of drafting. As my story got going, I used these features less, but they helped with unwelcome writer's block.




The project targets window that allowed me to see my total word count creep up and my session word count go down.




Editing within the project was very streamlined. Because of the outline structure, it was easy to move whole scenes around without worrying about losing text or having to skim through an entire document to find the scenes.

At the end of drafting, I compiled and exported my manuscript to MS Word to do a final read through there. While the process itself was streamlined, there were a few odd formatting things that ultimately needed attention. I'm guessing that if I revisited the tutorial I could remedy this, but I think I'll save that for the next book. Because, yes, I liked Scrivener enough to use it again. In my opinion, it's well worth it.

What about you, fellow writers? Any Scrivener users with tips to share?

16 comments:

  1. I have yet to try it, but I do hear great things!

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    1. Give it a try! I don't think I'll go back now that I've drafted in it.

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  2. I'm a Scrivener convert. It was a pain converting a manuscript from Word to Scrivener, but well worth it in the end. Working from scratch has been much easier.

    I live and die by the project target metrics. I love that kind of motivation for tracking milestones.

    My number one tip for Scrivener users is to take advantage of the backup feature in the preferences. If you use Dropbox, or a similar back up utility, change the default location of the backups to a folder that gets automatically backed up to the cloud.

    I can't post a picture in this comment, but here's a link that shows what I mean:
    http://heyjimhill.com/images/scrivener-backup.png

    The developer has a YouTube channel that can be very helpful in learning the app as well:
    https://www.youtube.com/user/davidmj13/featured

    Finally, I found the book Writing a Novel with Scrivener by David Hewson to be an excellent resource.

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    1. Great resources, Jim! Thanks for the links and the info about backups. I always end up e-mailing myself the saved file, which is laborious, but satisfies my "just in case" worrying, but I think a backup would be much better.

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  3. I LOVE that first photograph, Marissa. That was how my writing life felt like in the early days too!

    I have been wary about Scrivener, thinking it as too complex to learn. But you have given me a different perspective. Maybe I'll take the plunge!

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    1. ha! Isn't it great? That was taken about four years ago. Needless to say, it's one of the only photos I have of me writing during that time. ;)

      Yes! Give Scrivener a try!

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  4. I love the corkboard, the happy shift every day from red to green on the Project Targets scale, the access to my research . . . . For first drafts, Scrivener is absolutely fabulous. I have a little more trouble making it work for revisions, though. I still tend to revise in Word. I'd love to hear any revision tips from Scrivener fans! Oh, and don't trust "compile"--sometimes it eats pages (at least in my experience).
    Plus I must say: that photo of you and your boys is one of my all-time favorite favorites. :)

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    1. I'm with you, Anne. I'm working on a revision mode right now, and I'm doing it the old way of cut-and-paste in MS Word, but it's so cumbersome. I'm thinking of revisiting Scrivener and transferring everything back in there as a revision tool. I'll let you know how it goes.

      And, yes! I love that photo as well - not least because I am the only one posing...the others are just doing their thing. ;)

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  5. Wow, Marissa, I feel so connected to this post. I could have used this advice starting back last year when I was knee-deep in pieces of sticky pad paper, backs of kids old homework, and circular notes written around windshield flyers that were the only thing in the car when I had to pull over with an idea. I'd send myself text messages that I later could not decipher. Argh. Now 400+ pages into YIG BOOK 3, I'm still floating on notes. But am I too late to transfer? I have loads of maps and diagrams and old photos, too, that could use a good place to be. But I'm closing in on the final chapters and might be stuck.

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    1. Eden, yes, I think you can start now! You've got to get it all typed up anyway. This would help you categorize and move things around easily as you type it up. I would highly recommend using it even now.

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    2. I agree! I'm toying with the idea of transferring this revised draft back into Scrivener and using the process as a tool for revision. I'm hoping that if I have to organize everything to fit in Scrivener it might help with the internal structure of the story. I definitely think you could make the transfer! But, depending on your deadline, it might take a lot of time...there's always the next book! ;)

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  6. Marissa, I am like Michael and not sure about Scrivener. It seems daunting but I may try out. The only thing is that I love to spread my papers around me and handle them as I write so I'm not sure a screen-based management tool would be right for me. But so many others praise it! I've started a new novel and that may be the way to go in trying Scrivener rather than converting a current manuscript.

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    1. I think it's worth a try, Donna. I was pretty ambivalent at first, too. Especially because I absolutely love shopping for Post-its and other supplies before drafting a new novel - ha! But the ease of the features converted me pretty quickly. I suppose you could also organize everything in there and then print things out if you wanted. ;)

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  7. I love Scrivener! I'm like you and use just a fraction of the features, but it helps me to envision the book scene by scene and to add or move things around so easily. I haven't even been aware of the targets feature! I'll have to give it a try.

    I too have had problems with the export. Anyone have any advice for keeping the formatting the way you want it??

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    1. Oh, you will love the target feature! It's like a word-by-word sticker chart. :)

      I don't know about the export. I had strange things happen to my question marks and indentation. But I didn't really customize any of the export, just picked the basic settings. I'm guessing the key is to really set the settings properly. But I didn't mess with it, because I was so excited to export, because it meant I was DONE drafting... ;)

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  8. I was told it was super intuitive, so I gave it a try. Didn't get it. Watched the tutorial. Overwhelmed. Wrote the first half of Blue Birds with it. Each time I exported it was different. I really, really wanted to like it, but I just don't get it!

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Thanks for adding to the mayhem!