I’m such a fan of this programme that I recommend it gushingly to anyone who cares to listen. I’m a firm believer in using the right tool for the job and Scrivener has been developed specifically for writers. It’s a hundred times more useful when writing a novel than all the other word processing programs out there. Most of those were developed for short documents and office work.
I do have one caveat about buying Scrivener, it has something of a learning curve. At some moments when starting on the program, I almost lost the will to live and decide to give up. The handbook that comes with Scrivener is huge. I spent an entire day working through it only to feel like I was still getting nowhere. Fortunately, I discovered Joseph Michael, who runs online courses on Scrivener. His free one-hour introduction got me on track and working. There are layers to the program and no doubt a lot more that I could learn from a course. One day when I have the time and money I might even work my way through it.
Once you’ve figured the basics of Scrivener out, it works like a dream. Now you’d have to rip Scrivener out of my cold dead hands before I’d give it up. It’s a fantastic all-round writer’s resource. At the most basic level, it helps you organise chapters and scenes in fiction or chapters and subheadings in non-fiction. You can move scenes or subsections around as you need to without having to scroll through the entire document. It’s also great for storing your research as you can drag and drop web pages into the research section.
Finally, once you’re ready to publish, Scrivener prepares the output for a multitude of formats from Kindle and ePub to Word or pdfs at the touch of a button. Believe me, that alone is worth the price of the program.
Having said it’s software for writers, I don’t only use Scrivener for creating books. I also use it for funding bids, research papers, organising blogs and planning page content for websites.
Seriously, get this software. It isn’t expensive, under $50, and you can try it for free for 30 days before you commit, so it’s worth a try. It’s available for both Macs and PCs, so you have no excuse not to use it.
Click on this LINK, to check the software out!
As I said, I love this program, but if you aren’t a writer, chances are you have never heard of it. This is why I keep recommending Scrivener. I’ve done it so often that I decided I may as well earn some commission. All the highlighted Scrivener links on this page will get you through to Scrivener, and the commission I receive will buy me sufficient coffee to keep lubricating my brain.
If you do buy Scrivener, please let me know. I’d love to hear your experiences of the program.