Why You Should Work In Scrivener

Why should you have Scrivener? 

Are you a plotter? A planner? Someone who needs to see the entire book? Maybe you care about the pace and need to see the spaces of your chapters. Do you want to keep all your work in one place without a mess?

My reason? It's awesome. 

Not to sound shallow, I shall explain. I write using note cards. Oh yes. Very messy. But fun, kinesthetically pleasing, and visually-stimulating. I move the cards around the table. I pick colors at random to keep my brain from washing out. 

I'm not getting paid for this. 

Maybe I should. 

I'm saying this because it has saved me tons of time organizing my book. 

Check out this website: Literature and Latte. 

Download Scrivener. Do it. Do it now.

After you get through and open up Scrivener, take a look around!

Starting off

Chapters/Scenes are like note cards.

Revision Mode! It's like Beast Mode for writers!

Character template is customizable.

Handy dandy Compile means it'll put it into manuscript format for you.

I used to write in Pages. My first book was "posties" on a wall. Don't believe me? Ask my family. My poor, poor family and the giant eyesore of creativity on the entire living room wall. We lived in an apartment at the time. I needed the huge visual to see exactly where the scenes were placed, where I should have filled in the holes of the story, and what I should have taken away. Then I pulled the posties off the wall and wrote them in the computer. Then started on the story.

My first book; my first pickle out of the jar. It was a pain. I devoted my time and tried to get in three hours every day, but I had a lot of stuff going on at the time. I didn't make my personal deadline, but I had gone farther than I ever did in my life. I finished the book after my last move. Whew!

Learning from all the turmoil of writing and organizing, I found note cards are the best for me. Then I discovered there are writing programs that allow you to switch around your chapters if you want. My friend and parents' neighbor told me what he uses, but when I couldn't get it for my computer, I needed to find something else. Found Scrivener. Haven't been happier (well...at least not since I got out of the Navy).

Still skeptical? It's worth every penny. Here's a video from L&L. They pronounce it "Scrivenah" cuz you know...Brits.