What is Scrivener you may ask yourself, though I imagine many of you will have heard of this fabulous piece of kit that allows you to write your chapters and sections separately, jiggle them about so they suit you when you’re editing, then bring them back into one smooth document when you’re ready. Apparently this wonderful piece of kit was simply for Mac users but they have since provided a version for us lowly windows uses.
As I’m preparing to do NaNoWriMo, I became even more curious about it. Below is a screen shot from the site Literature and Latte, giving you some idea of the things it can do. What I think is great is that I shouldn’t get in a pickle working from one difficult unwieldy word document that is constantly shifting as I change words in a chapter and makes it hard work to change chapters around.
Now if you go to the wonderful site that is Literature and Latte you will find that they do a 30 day trial for Mac user and Windows users alike to trial. This isn’t a normal trial. The thirty days does not run as you’d expect it to, from day one to day thirty. The very generous people at L & L have set it up so that it runs out after 30 days of actual use. So if you start using it one day but then don’t go near it for six days, you’ve still only used one day of the trial. Great I hear you say.
But! That is not all. If you want to trial it for NaNoWriMo, which I intend to do, then you can download the special NaNo trial version and have it working from now, right until, something like the 7th December, at which point, if you have won Nano, (completed your 50,000 words) you get 50% off the price of upgrading to the full package of scrivener and if you don’t successfully complete the 50,000 words required, you still get 20% discount just for attempting. How great is that!
I have downloaded it. I still need to get my head around it, but it certainly seems a great piece of kit to me.
Will you give it a try? You will find the NaNoWriMo special edition here.
I’m thinking about it I have to say lol 😉
Xx
It’s worth trying the trial 🙂
Rebecca – I’ve heard of this but not (yet) tried it. You’re tempting me, though…
The trials free, it’s definitely worth trying.
I’ve heard others say it’s great, but I think it would mess me up even further to have it all separated.
You’re the only person that has made me query this Alex. And it is a valid point, in that I like to sometimes read through a couple of chapters on the screen in a rolling straight line, just to catch up with where I am. I’ll give Scrivener a try though because I like that you can move chapters around and this is something that is a pain in the arse working as I am at the minute.
Just to say, you can view the separate scenes in one screen as well. They don’t have to be consecutive scenes either – for instance, you can select all of those from the protagonist’s point of view only and see it as a single rolling document without merging it all together. If you want the instructions on how to do this give me a shout. Very best of luck with Nano!
Wow, Rebecca, you are going to be a very busy lady! I look forward to reading about your progress and how this new software assists:)
I think I’m going to meet myself coming backwards!
This sounds like a great idea for you. I know some people who use Scrivener and really like it. I’m kinda boring and reactionary, so I don’t do NaNo or change my Office 2003 program, but I wish you good luck on your Scrivener/NaNo adventure! 😀
Thanks Lexa. I’m sure I will update you some point through the trial as to how it’s going. It’s a very comprehensive piece of kit and I’m sure I will only be using the basics in the first month as I’ll be so busy just trying to get words down. If you’re comfortable with something and it works for you, there’s no reason to change what you do though. Sometimes, things change just for changes sake.
I’m happy with Word. For NaNo I’m planning to start each day in a new file – whether I’m at the end of a chapter or not, and I’m also planning to do each day in a different font just to keep me wanting to put more words on the screen!
That sounds like a good plan Annalisa. You sound very organised. I’ve not even had a practice on Scrivener yet!
I took advantage of the Scrivener Nanowrimo trial last year after reading about it on David Hewson’s blog. I now think it’s the best tool a writer could have! It’s a very powerful piece of software, which I didn’t realise until I started reading other people’s hints and tips. A good book to read and learn from is David Hewson’s ‘Writing A Novel With Scrivener’. He provides a free template as well to get you up and running with your novel. Once I’d spent a few hours ‘playing’ with Scrivener, I was then able to concentrate on just getting the words out so it helped me enormously, as it kept track of the daily word count, different point of views, dates and locations etc. Use keywords, they’re very helpful. You can then group all the scenes together in one document of a POV, for example, to check for consistency – but not during Nano though 😉
Good luck with Scrivener and with Nanowrimo – let’s all come out on the other side together!
Thanks Jan. I think there is a lot more to Scrivener than I will experience during the period of NaNo. I will be concentrating on just getting those words down. Once I have completed it (and I mean Completed! it. I’ll look up David’s book as I’ve heard many good things about it. Thank you. Wishing you lots of luck on NaNo also, we can do this! 🙂 ….. I hope 🙂
Do I have to use the provided template? Or I can use my own template to write 50.000 words. How do they know we reached 50.000 words or not?
I don’t think you have to use their template for NaNo and I think they know you’ve won because you get a code from the NaNo site to give to them confirming winning. I’m giving it a try. I’m not sure I will win with the full 50% discount, but at least I’ll get the 20% because I’m giving it a good try 🙂
I am one of the dissenters. I tried Scrivener twice. Both times I found it needlessly complicated. Perhaps some people will find all the features helpful, but I much prefer a word processor that just gets out of my way and lets me write. Worst of all from my perspective, I was fumbling around with Scrivener and trying to figure things out instead of writing. I know it works well for a lot of people–people rave about it so much that I thought I must be missing out (which is why I tried it twice). But it doesn’t work for me.
It does have a lot of fans, but because we all write so differently, we are never all going to agree on what we like to use to write. I’m trying it because I’ve heard good things. The main attraction is the ease with which I can move chapters around. I won’t know if I don’t try it and I can’t think of a better time to try it. Trying twice though, that’s definitely giving it a run for it’s money.
Henry, at the bottom of each of your cards, there is a word count. And yes, there are ways to read things together, separately or however you want to arrange. I find it awesome and amazing, but like Brendan stated, it doesn’t work for everyone. If you have not yet tried it, it is definitely worth the try to see if it works for you … i had so many notes so many places, Scriveners trial helped me organize my thoughts and have quick reference to my notes as needed, all conveniently in one place. It was also a great planning tool for preparing for Nano, so when yesterday hit, I was ready to roll. I <3 it.
Thanks for that Laura. What I’m finding helpful are the synopsis cards for each section I’m writing. Like you say, it’s good for keeping track of your thoughts.