Is Scrivener the Right Solution for Your Writing?

Would you like to make your writing easier, more efficient, and take it to the next level?

Well, perhaps it’s time to consider graduating from Microsoft Word, to software just for authors: Scrivener.

So, have you heard of Scrivener? If you haven’t, here’s a very quick introduction:

Scrivener is a writing, idea management, note management, research management, and text organization tool specifically designed for writers.

Here are the particular strengths of Scrivener, when it comes to your writing:

The longer the document, the more Scrivener shines. Instead of desperately trying to keep track of notes, ideas, research, and storylines over dozens, even hundreds of pages, Scrivener helps keep everything organized and on track for you.

With Scrivener you can have notes and research right next to your writing. So rather than jumping between documents, or sticking dozens of Post-it notes to your monitor, the notes on whatever you might be writing about right at that moment are always directly next to each other. This helps you stay productive, and keeps your writing as accurate as possible.

Scrivener makes it an absolute cinch to move large or small sections of your document around. So if you’re reorganizing chapters, or even sections of chapters, Scrivener makes this incredibly easy with just a little drag-and-drop.

And here’s one further huge benefit — the software exports into multiple formats convenient for authors, so there’s no need to deal with multiple pieces of software or pay extra for format conversion. Plus all of the guesswork is taken out of the process for you, so you can easily export directly from Scrivener into ePub and Kindle format.
Sounds great, right?

It is! But, it’s not necessarily all smooth sailing. There are some things it’s vital you keep in mind:

Scrivener isn’t free. Well, we all need to eat, right? Even the authors of fantastically useful software! But, there is a remarkably generous free trial. You can try it out for 30 days. But — not 30 days from the moment you install it. 30 actual days of use. So if you only use the software once a week, you can then end up using it for over half a year before you actually need to buy it!

And it’s not the easiest software to use in the world. But along with this article, there’s also tons of free tutorials on YouTube, so just with a little investment of time you can get up to speed very quickly.
Here’s a Crash Course Into Scrivener…

So now that you’re convinced that Scrivener is a much more suitable (and productive) solution for you than Word, especially for longer documents, let’s dive into some of its easier functionality that you can start benefiting from immediately…

Let’s run through some key features…

Organization of Chapters

Whatever you’re writing, it will be broken up into chapters of course, or at the very least, sections.

Scrivener allows you to create an outline of all your chapters, and the sections that make up those chapters, and easily rearrange them however you choose and whenever you choose.

Now, at this point we’re still at a level of functionality that’s also available in Microsoft Word. But, that will very shortly start to change, as you’ll see…

So not only do you get a clear outline of your book/document and can re-arrange it very easily, it allows you to set “flags” for your chapters/sections so you can clearly mark the current status of each.

For example, once you’ve written your first very rough draft, you may choose to change its color to yellow. Then once you’ve created the second draft that’s ready to be sent to an editor (or for finalization if you’re doing it all yourself), you may flag it as green. Click here now Scrivener discount coupon

As mentioned, a chapter can be made up of any number of sections. A section could be as big, or small, as you like, depending on you like to write and organize your content. And since each of those sections can be set up with flags too, with a simple glance you know the exact status of whatever it is you’re working on.

Notes and Other References

Your research has its own section in Scrivener. Here you can write notes to yourself, include links to resources, or even copy and paste straight off the internet and into Scrivener, so you have the contents of a web page right there for you to refer back to at any time without having to click out of the application (since there lies the danger of being distracted).

Plus, just like every part of Scrivener, your notes section can be organized into categories, so however you like to structure and refer to your notes, the software will quite happily accommodate that.

And importantly you can have the research section of Scrivener and your writing window open at the same time. So no need to constantly click from one part of the software to another, you have your research directly in your eye line as you write, which makes referencing a lot easier and quicker.