Writing Tools

[przed]

I first gave Scrivener a try about ten years ago. There was a sale, and people had said good things about it, so I thought what the heck. But then I found it had far more features than I really had a good use for, and I was comfortable using Word, so I kinda bounced off it.

Cut to now.

I'm putting the finishing touches on the Stucky story that I've been struggling with for just about two years now. It's 38K words, has two timelines, and I needed to break it into manageable chapters for posting. I set up a spreadsheet with page numbers and scene descriptions to try and work out where the chapters breaks should fall. It was a major pain in the ass that was giving me a headache. Also not giving me joy is Word constantly trying to upgrade me to their subscription version. No thank you, Microsoft.

I idly think maybe this would be easier in Scrivener. And notice Scrivener has a deal if you've got an old license, which I do. So, what the heck, I take the plunge.

And WOW! I don't just like Scrivener now. I love it! Having the ability to see your scenes in card format made it so much easier to see how to structure it all. And the research folder is going to come in handy for the next big thing I want to work on (Stucky in the Pacific theatre, which is going to need a metric crapton of research material.)

Consider this my endorsement for Scrivener. It's not super cheap ($67 CAD) but it's 40% off if you have an old license, They have a 30 day trial if you want to give it a spin.

And stayed tuned for 38K of Stucky set both in 1938 Brooklyn and 2018 Wakanda, coming as soon as I get the beta back on the final two chapters.

Comments

[potofsoup]

hmmm. I bounced off of Scrivener pretty hard 10 years ago, too. I think I found the card thing less intuitive than a bullet-pointed outline that I could adjust degrees of importance on, and I was using it to draft comics and with that, it's very much an outline --> fill in details linear progress. Can't really dive in and flesh out a scene there or a paragraph here because editing would mean redrawing, which, ew. And the image handling at that time wasn't that great. But I can see how it can be helpful for writing longfics. I suppose if I were to draw a longform comic again, it'd be handy for keeping character sheets, etc.

[przed]

The last time it seemed overly fussy to work with. This time I made a point of spending an evening going over the tutorial and playing with the various views of the cards, and it clicked for me.

Attaching summaries to the cards was really helpful for figuring out where to put the breaks. I was doing things like adding word counts to the card titles so I could see how long each chapter would be. And there’s even a mode where it looks like it’s all one document.

I’m going to start throwing the fragments of the Pacific theatre story and all the research I’ve accumulated so far in there as soon as the current story is done and dusted, so stay tuned!

[kore]

YAY long chewy dual-timeline Stucky story, that sounds awesome!

I had Scrivener from the beginning but never used it because it seemed smarter than me, lol. But really, I just couldn't get the hang of it, especially the compiling, and it actually seemed easier to use paper cards and pens. I know there are people who swear by it for organizing, and if I can get a discount, I might try upgrading, but it still feels really alien to my process.

[przed]

This Stucky story has been kicking my ass for so long, I can’t believe it’s nearly done!

I know exactly what you mean about actual cards seeming easier than Scrivener. That’s definitely how I felt the last time I tried it.

This time I spent a whole evening going through the tutorial and watching demos, and it all fell into place. I think it definitely falls into the this is a thing that will work for you if you are the kind of person for whom this works, though.I just seem to have changed it the sort of writer it works for.

[sineala]

I can help with the compiling -- at least for AO3 -- if you ever want to give it a try again. *points downthread slightly*

[kore]

Ooh thanks! (I caved and re-upped -- with my discount, it was about $25)

[sineala]

I have bought Scrivener four whole times (version 1, 2, 3, and iOS) and I would buy it again in a heartbeat. At this point I don't write fiction in anything else; I've made a Scriv project for all my short fic, which I used to write separately in a regular text editor.

I started out just using the notecards to describe each scene but I eventually ended up making use of a bunch of other features. I really like Composition Mode. I use the research section for fanart (if I'm working on a BB/RBB), comics panels, PDFs, imported webpages -- you can fit a whole lot of stuff in there. I've done things like color-code scene labels by POV, which makes it easy to see how my POV is getting weighted. As I've edited fic I have changed the icons on the scenes to reflect their status. You can "snapshot" individual scenes as a version control system and then revert to previous versions if you've made edits you don't like. (Although honestly I just keep a doc in the Research folder of everything I've cut.)

You mention above about adding word counts to the card titles -- Scrivener will actually do chapter-level word counts for you on the fly. If you make folders within your draft, you can drag/drop scenes into folders, and if you're in the mode that lets you read something as a whole document, the live word count at the bottom will be the count for that folder; clicking on the folder will let you read that particular folder's documents as a single document. (The word count when you click on the Draft as a whole document will be the full count, as is the count when you mouse over the search bar.) So when I'm trying to figure out how to chapter a fic, I usually get out the folders.

A while back on Tumblr I put up a guide for how I've set up the Compile system to work with AO3. I have it set up now where I can just click a button and it will export a text file that is marked up with just enough HTML that I can copy it into AO3's HTML upload. Which I find very convenient.

(I wrote it for the Mac version but as far as I know the Windows version now has the same Compile system.)

[kore]

....NICE

I think I just couldn't deal with the earlier interface, wimpy as that sounds. This one looks a lot more intuitive at least to me.

[przed]

Your compile guide is genius! (I'm on a Mac.) I was thinking of looking into setting something up like that for AO3. I've always hand-coded the HTML for AO3 into my files, so it's cool to know that I won't have to do that. Getting rid of smart quotes is also a good thing. (I also hate smart quotes.)

Love the idea of marking POV with card colour. And I'll try that word count hack with folders. Sticking the word count on the scene title worked okay, but it would be nice to have something that displayed that automatically.

[dracothelizard]

I've been using Scrivener for a while now, and it's very useful! There's usually discounts around Nanowrimo time as well.

[moth2fic]

Glad you've found Scrivener helpful. I gave the free trial a go but didn't get on with it. It had too many bells and whistles for me and I don't really break my work up quite the way you describe so Word works OK. I kept feeling, with Scrivener, that it was like my school teachers who wanted planning notes, which I always (then and now) keep firmly in my head!

[przed]

I can understand not getting on with Scrivener. It didn't work for me the first time. And it's definitely on the complicated side.

I think it helped that Scrivener's features really helped with my current story. And that I'm about to start working on another one that's got a lot of moving pieces and research to track. I've also had my eye out for a Word replacement for a while now, what with MS really pushing the subscription model. (I tried OpenOffice a few years back, but it didn't have some of the features I wanted in a word processor.)