Scrivener: the ONE writing tool I couldn't live without
I recently finished my 13th novel and, as I write this, it is currently with my agent for her verdict (cue much email-refreshing and chewing of nails on my part).
Right before I sent it to her, I had to do something I hate doing: I had to export my manuscript into Word.
Yes, Word.
That horrendous, clunky, unwieldy and crash-happy piece of software that was absolutely NOT designed for authors to use to write books, which are great long things divided into chapters for a reason.
And yet, so many of my author friends have been held hostage by it. And so, they battle on, trying to write a novel using the worst piece of software in the world.
Ahem. Excuse my hyperbole. I have strong feelings about this, as you can probably tell.
So let’s get back to the point of this post. Which is a love letter to Scrivener.
Wonderful, lovely, amazing SCRIVENER*.
A piece of software that was designed especially for anyone who writes extensively - whether that’s novels, or plays, or dissertations or long-form journalism.
I ❤️ Scrivener.
When I’m drafting a book, I regularly post updates on my word count (so regularly that one of my best friends - who is not an author - recently made a snarky comment about my boring word-tracker screenshots on Instagram).
Here’s an example:
And every time I post one of these, I get someone asking me:
What software are you using? What’s that tracker thing?
That, my friends, is one of the very many amazing features inside Scrivener.
Scrivener has SO many clever, useful features that I reckon I only use about 5% of them. One day, if I ever have any time, I’d love to do a deep-dive into it and learn all the things it offers that I am not taking advantage of.
(Anyone out there offering a Scrivener course, please hit me up! I would love to take it.)
For that reason, this post is not going to be a tutorial.
Instead, let me just talk through some of the things it offers that I do know about. Things that mean I genuinely don’t think I could write a novel without it.
1) It actually understands how writers work
OK so the most important thing to point out is that most word processors are built for documents. But Scrivener is built for projects. Like novels!
I know that sounds like a small distinction, but it makes such a difference!
Instead of one long, unwieldy file, your writing is broken down into sections inside of a virtual ‘ringbinder’, and you can decide what those sections are.
Many of my novels move between different timelines, which means I can organise the ‘past’ and ‘present’ sections so that chapters within each are in different folders in the binder.
This means that I can easily jump between scenes instantly, reorder sections with a simple drag and drop, and see the structure of my entire book at a glance.
And I know, I know, there ARE ways to do something similar in Word but it’s nowhere near as intuitive and takes ages to set up and sounds like a massive clunky PITA.
In Scrivener, everything in your novel is inside of a ‘Project’. And within that project you can have multiple types of document: chapters, scenes, notes, research, character sketches, all inside one neat, contained workspace.
I keep a document at the top of the manuscript specifically for things like the blurb, the novel’s hook, plus any character breakdowns or editorial notes.
2) It keeps track of your targets
So as I said above, this is probably the thing I get asked the most about - the word count tracker. It’s super simple to set up and I use it with every single book.
I set a deadline, decide how many days of the week I want to write, and it automatically calculates how many words I need to write each day to hit the target.
If I write more than needed one day, it automatically readjusts the word count for the remaining days. And vice versa too.
I love this feature as I am very much a ‘word count writer’. I don’t write to a plan, I write to hit a certain number of words in each session, and this makes sure I am staying on track.
It’s also weirdly motivating - I always beat the daily target and finish my novel at least a day early!
3) It gives you the freedom to write messily
Here’s something I think doesn’t get talked about enough: Scrivener makes it easier to write badly.
And that’s a good thing.
Because when everything is compartmentalised inside its own little section, you don’t feel the same pressure to get things perfect before you move on to the next chapter.
You can draft out of order, leave placeholders, jot down half-formed ideas, and come back later without losing your place.
For example, if you want to skip ahead and write the ending, you can. You just create a new text document inside a folder, drag it to the bottom in the binder and go for it.
You can also create a separate space to dump notes or ideas that don’t quite fit yet.
Scrivener gives you a sense of creative freedom and a kind of expansiveness within the project itself, which you don’t get when you’re just writing in chronological order in Word.
3) Your research lives alongside your writing
This is another gamechanger about Scrivener!
It lets you store research directly inside your project.
I will confess that, even though I do use it a lot, I don’t make the most of this feature at all, and more fool me because I am sure that it would save me a ton of time if I was even more organised.
But you can save PDFs, images, web pages, character profiles, timelines etc etc, all within the project to hand, meaning if you want to check what colour eyes someone has, or how old your character is, you can quickly click on another tab with Scrivener, where you have saved all the info about your character, and there it is.
We all know what it’s like when you have to head over to the internet or open a separate research Word document just to double-check some detail - that’s the end of your focus and most likely a nice half an hour wasted getting distracted by your emails / social media.
For writers working on historical fiction, fantasy, or anything that requires a ton of research and world-building, having everything saved within the same program can save hours of time and a lot of mental energy.
4) Scrivener makes editing so much easier
Editing is basically 99% of writing and yet editing a novel in Word makes me want to stab myself in the eye with a rusty fork.
Scrivener is a bloody powerhouse when it comes to editing. I honestly HATE when my edits come back from my editor and I have to try to navigate them inside Word (and I usually don’t - but more on that in a second…)
Here are a few of my favourite features that make editing so much more enjoyable:
The ‘snapshot’ feature - this enables you to take a ‘photograph’ of the chapter as it stands, before you start editing it. There is also such a clever feature called ‘roll back’ which means if you decide you hate all your changes, you can revert to the version you saved in the snapshot with one click. You can take as many snapshots as you like of each chapter too, and they are all neatly saved and timestamped in one area. It’s so fab.
You can also turn on something called ‘Revision Mode’. When you’re working in revision mode, all your edits are a different colour (I know Word has something similar, but this is just a simpler and more useful version), meaning you can easily see what you’ve changed when you come to read it all through. You can also have multiple different colours for multiple different ‘revision sessions’. I use this feature all the time.
You can also colour-code all the different sections / chapters / parts of your novel in the left-hand Binder, meaning that at a glance you can see what stage each of them is at. For me, I colour each chapter Green once they are finished, Orange when they still need work and Red when they need serious work. It’s so helpful to quickly be able to look and see which sections I need to spend more time on, and I find it very motivating to see all the various sections turn green!
On the right-hand side of every text section, there’s a little notebook area. In here, I make notes on what’s working in the chapter and what isn’t. I also copy and paste nice bits of phrasing that I’ve decided to remove but can’t completely let go of - just in case. (The irony of this of course is that I barely ever reinstate any of the text I paste into here but I like to know it’s there all the same!)
You can also enter something called ‘Composition Mode’ which is when everything fades away so that you can only see the text on a full-screen ‘page’ against a black background. This is as close to reading a book on your computer as you can get and I find it very helpful to use this mode when I am doing my final read-through.
5) It makes it super easy to structure your novel
Scrivener has a feature called the ‘cork board’ and I have to confess, I don’t actually use this but I can see that for authors who write to a chapter plan, this is incredibly helpful.
With the corkboard feature, each scene or chapter has its own ‘card’ that you can label with a brief outline of what it’s about / what happens.
You can then move these around in the corkboard view, which is perfect if you’re someone who likes to ‘see’ your story take shape, and you want to make sure you are hitting all the right beats.
But if outlining makes you want to run in the opposite direction (like me!), you can ignore this element entirely and just write.
The flexibility Scrivener offers is another reason I love it so much. You can make it work for you, whether you’re a meticulous planner or someone who figures things out as they go.
6) There are a ton of formatting options & it’s easy to export to Word
One of the best ways to procrastinate as a writer is by fiddling with formatting. AMIRITE?
When I got my US book deal, my editor sent back my MS after editing and she had changed the font to Palatino, which BLEW MY TINY MIND.
It was so elegant! It was so delicate!
I had always been Team Cambria for drafting, but now, converting my MS into Palatino is like a final treat once the book is ready to be read by someone other than me.
Anyway, I digress… the point is fiddling with fonts, margins, spacing, chapter headings… it’s all very tempting when you’re trying to avoid a tricky scene.
Scrivener gently takes that temptation off the table.
You write first, then format later using the ‘compile’ feature, which lets you export your work into a polished document when you’re ready.
The compile feature also blows my tiny mind, because it’s so clever (and a little complicated). There are a ton of preset MS settings that you can compile too, or you can create your own, which you can then save.
It will then export your work (but not your research or your character notes etc) into the perfect format so that you can either self-publish or send to someone to edit.
It’s super slick and easy.
7) It’s not perfect
I won’t pretend Scrivener is flawless.
There’s a learning curve at the beginning, and yes, it can feel a bit overwhelming when you first open it. There are a lot of features, and like me, you probably won’t use all of them.
But here’s the thing: you don’t have to.
You can start simple like I did, by getting a feel for the intuitive way it structures things.
Then, as you get more comfortable you can explore more of the other options.
Recently, I discovered that it has a built-in ‘name generator’ which is so clever. You pick a gender, a culture and an obscurity level and it spits out a bunch of names for you to choose from. So cool!
Here’s a video explaining more:
8) I heart you Scrivener
Genuinely, Scrivener isn’t just a tool I use. It’s part of how I write and the thought of writing without it makes me feel quite sick.
I wrote three novels before I got a book deal, and I wrote all of them in Word. As I’m not a planner, I do often wonder if it was only when I started using Scrivener that something ‘clicked’ in my process - something that meant I was able to produce a far superior book, thanks to the freedom but also the help that Scrivener gives me as I’m writing.
It holds my drafts, my half-finished ideas, my messy notes, snippets of prose and the plotlines I haven’t quite figured out yet.
But mostly, it just gives me a sense of control without stifling my creativity, which is actually a really, really difficult balance to strike.
As we all know, writing a book is hard enough on its own. Anything that helps the painful, agonising, soul-destroying process along is worth its weight in gold!
So, should you try it?
Yes. 😆
OK, I know that sounds bossy but even if you are perfectly happy slogging away in Word, you should DEFINITELY give Scrivener a go.
Honestly. I am not exaggerating when I say I couldn’t write without it.
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