Follow the white rabbit.
That’s how the Scrivener tutorial should begin. After reading their tutorial and practicing all their little exercises, my mind turned to a fine paste and I required a nap. It’s not as if it were the hardest thing in the world. Although when you are finishing up the tutorial near the witching hour, well… probably wasn’t as focused as I should have been. I did learn a tremendous amount about my story simply because of Scrivener’s folder systems and quickly realised where I thought the chapters ended weren’t always the best place. The majority of my chapters seemed to be between two and three thousand words, and then suddenly one chapter ended off at roughly eight thousand (Mind you, my story is only ninety nine thousand, so roughly one tenth of my book).
I must admit I haven’t been enjoying converting my story from Pages to Word and then into Scrivener, but I do believe it will be worth it. On their website, I stared longingly at their packages for both Mac and PC. Personally, when I spend fifty dollars, I like to have something in return. Buying digitally sort of feels like voodoo to me, unless of course it’s free, but buying something completely digitally at that price feels strange. That day though, my will had broken. After toying with the trial for minutes at a time over the course of many months, my mind was made up. I would never ever commit a story into it while it was in trial mode. Fear of losing my work and organisation kept me at bay. The tutorial was a fantastic sales tool and I could see the value I was getting. After a long staring competition with my monitor, I decided to buy Scrivener from the App Store, a marketplace I had already trusted with my multiple purchases.
As the store loaded up, I found myself browsing the main screen for deals. I’m a sucker for a sale, the more I save, the more my brain believes in the value (even if I never use it). Link after link, image after image, finally my mouse came down upon a small button marked “Explore Your Creativity”. Well of course I’ll explore it, this button was made for me; so I thought. First thing to catch my attention was the Scrivener app, marked at twenty nine dollars. Fifty percent off. The value. Oh the sweet, sweet value. Before I knew what was going on my brain had already directed my hand and wallet into a purchase. Not that I was complaining… after all, I had already resolved to buy it at over fifty dollars! Savings for the win!
Now the gruelling process of converting and organising my novel continues. My lovely partner is still performing some edits on the copy she has, however without her edits I already know that breaking my story into chapters has completely unbalanced the story and pace. While I wrote it as one continuous story, with the only breaks separating the change in character, it seemed to flow properly. Now I’m realising though that the breaks I had placed into the story gave some scenes less attention then they should have. I must say though, even just trying to organise this into chapters through Scrivener, I have learned a tremendous amount about how my story reads and working on balance. I’m actually really excited to dig into the further features such as Character and Location breakdowns. I could also use a Magic dictionary of sorts to keep things consistent.
All in all, Scrivener is one of those tools I’m sure I could live without as the many other successful writers do. Although I will say this as a budding writer who looks for help anywhere he can get it; this is the most helpful tool I have downloaded. It teaches you structure, balance and gives you some general guidelines and helpful organisation strategies in your quest to become a novelist. Not only those but you also get a singular place to keep all of your research, inspiration and insane scribblings (or notes) that are pertinent to your current concept or story. Also, the ability to organise individual chapters by note breakdown or organise your trilogy into one cohesive work is immensely helpful for the beginner or inexperienced writer.
Now for those of you out there who don’t have it, get it! No matter the cost! The rest of you… what do you think? Is Scrivener worth its code?
I do think scrivener is worth its code. Ever since I started using it, big projects are not nearly as overwhelming as they used to be. I can use the program to think through large tasks and actually reach a conclusion. Much better than drawing bubble maps and/or timelines in a notebook, which is what I used to do.
I’ve never managed to get my head around bubble maps, timelines made me feel too restricted. The only thing that worked for me (in getting a novel written) was breaking down my story into a target word count and setting twenty thousand word goals. This gave me the ability to develop the characters how I wanted, while advancing through those five plot points. Worked okay until I’ve been entering into Scrivener!
Also, thanks for sharing your own experience!
I love Scrivener. It’s not ideal for final formatting, and even for editing I prefer Word’s Track Changes feature, but for early drafts and sorting out your structure it works like a charm. Another tip: if you don’t have one yet, get a dropbox account and put your Scrivener project folder in your dropbox. That way it makes a backup of your work constantly as you write. And if you have Scrivener installed on more than one computer, install dropbox on that computer as well and it will automatically sync your files so you can stop working on one computer and just continue on the other.
Hmm, Dropbox hey? This is the first time I’ve felt that gap in my knowledge where my brain said “What’s a Dropbox? Aren’t all the kids using that these days?” I do like the concept of a backup that’s up to date (which is why I did the majority of my writing between Google Docs and iCloud). In fact Scrivener has me considering swapping out my electronics in exchange for a Macbook Air. Although going from the 21.5″ Mac to an 11″ or 13″ screen… yeesh. Thanks for the tip though… looks like I’m going to have to get in the know with this Dropbox voodoo. 😛
Dropbox is great, especially if you’re like me and can work on stuff at home and at work (on my lunch hour, of course). Then it’s always available.
Dropbox is another cloud-backup system, similar to Google Drive and iCloud, so if you’re already using those they should work as well. I’ve just found Dropbox works very well as it syncs the moment Scrivener auto-saves, so even if your computer lets the blue smoke escape in the middle of a sentence your online backup will be complete (provided you’re connected to the web the whole time while working).
I got the free trial download of Scrivener when I did NaNoWriMo last year, and liked it a lot. I loved it when I won and got the discount for the full version. I too use dropbox to sync files between computers. It was great for all the prework i did on my NaNo novel, as everything I needed was right there in the many folders I created, even images.
I’m currently importing my Big First Novel that’s in Word into Scrivener so I can finally finish it. It’s taking a while, but it’s been worth it for all the other myriad of projects I’ve had over the years, and making them available on dropbox.
Side note: I’m also adding to Scrivener all those nifty writing exercises I’ve been doing in a new project. All this organizing is totally worth it to a organization junkie like me. 🙂
I actually failed NaNoWriMo (shh, don’t tell anyone) despite the fact that the story idea I started became my novel (at roughly 100k words). I probably would have leapt all over that discount, but it seemed fate had other plans.
I’m becoming more organised thanks to Scrivener, although I’m still curious as to using a wiki for just idea mapping. I like the concept of linking to other articles in the way wikis do, keeping all of the notes connected.
Glad to know it’s doing other writers some good, means my money is worth investing into it! Thanks for sharing, after all, sharing is caring! 😛
If you like, I can send you screenshots of how I organized “Shifters” for NaNo. Or for any of the other series I’ve got in the hopper and waiting for me to finish something so I can get back to them. 🙂 I don’t mind bringing others to the dark side of organization, especially in writing. *evil laugh* Thing is, I find it fun!
I’ve been using Scrivener for over a year and think it’s one of my best writing investments. It help keep my thoughts organized and keeps me on track for editing chapters and scenes. (I used to fall into the trap of editing and re-editing the beginning.) I know I haven’t unlocked the program’s full potential yet, but am thrilled at what it has helped me do. (Kudos to you… I don’t recall even checking out the tutorial) Best of luck with your conversions 🙂
I’m not sure there is a single person who has unlocked the potential within Scrivener. After doing the tutorial, my mind was the brain equivalent of mashed potatoes and I learned a lot which I forgot almost immediately as more impressive things came to light.
I do enjoy “free writing” as it allows me the ability to just pound out words and push through the adventures without worrying too much about where I am in regards to plot. However, this will allow me to organise myself and ensure all those wonderful character building scenes are still pushing the plot along. Thanks for the well wishes, and all the best in your own writing!