Handy Writing Tool for Mac – Scrivener

Designed for folk working on huge literary project

What software do you use for writing?  Microsoft Word, right?  Nothing wrong with that, it’s a perfectly decent word processor.  But as with other Microsoft programs, its sheer ubiquity sometimes obscures the fact that there are other perfectly decent word processors out there, and some of them are actually pretty cool.

Personally, I’m a fan of Scrivener.  Stop reading right now if you’re a diehard PC owner, because Scrivener is only available on the Mac.  I know, I know, it’s frustrating.  But it really is a nice little piece of software, so for other Mac owners, or those who are considering dipping a toe into Steve Jobs’ waters (so to speak), let’s have a look at it.

Scrivener is designed for people who are working on a major piece of written work.  It’s no good for writing letters or shopping lists, but it is absolutely bang on for writing dissertations, fiction, poetry or features for www.geeks.co.uk.

You start with a project binder.  This is basically the structure within which you can store everything for a particular project.  So if you were writing a thesis, for example, you would create a project binder called My Thesis.  You then have three areas within each binder: Draft, Research and Trash.

In your Draft area, you can, unsurprisingly, draft your work.  You can have as many folders and files within your Draft as you want: for example, you might want a folder for every chapter of your thesis, and a separate file for each chapter heading.  The Research area allows you to import every possible piece of information you might need for your project.  Whether it’s a web page, PDF or picture, it can be stored in your Research folder, so that everyone you could conceivably need is at your fingertips.

Finally, there is the Trash area.  Every file that you delete from your project remains here until you explicitly choose to empty the trash, so there’s little danger of losing that all-important chapter.  So that’s a brief overview. But,there are other reasons that Scrivener has earned its place in my Dock.

Picture the scene.  It’s the night before your dissertation deadline.  You’ve done all the research.  You’ve written it all up. But something’s still not right.  Maybe you need to re-organise some of your chapters?  In Microsoft Word, you’d be setting yourself up for a tedious cut n’ paste bonanza.  But in Scrivener, you just click Corkboard.  This presents you with – well, a corkboard – upon which each of your files is arranged, just like a real board.  You can swish them about and reorganise them in any order you choose, until you’re sure you’ve got it right.

Having the attention span of a – no, sorry, I’ve forgotten – I also find the Full Screen button useful.  Click it, and everything other than the thing you’re meant to be working on will gently fade into the background, forcing you to focus on your work, rather than constantly checking Facebook or Twitter.

Version control is also a strong point of Scrivener.  Each time you start a new draft, or change an existing version, you can take a snapshot of your current draft.  There’s no limit to the number of snapshots you can have for any one document, and if you suddenly change your mind about the last month’s work, it’s easy to roll back to the original version.

There are many other useful features, like keyword attributions, a specific scriptwriting setting, simple document status options and so on.  There’s also an active online community which provides support and suggestions for users at www.literatureandlatte.com.  I’ve only found one downside to using Scrivener, and that only rears its head when I need to email a file to someone.  At that point, you need to step back into the world of Word, since most people can’t open Scrivener files.  However, it’s easy to export files, folders or whole projects into Word, so it’s no real hardship.

Here’s the bad news.  Scrivener costs $39.95, or about twenty-five quid in real money.  Now, I’m a skinflint when it comes to software.  I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve been moved to pay for a program, but I have to admit I don’t begrudge the Scrivener fee.  It’s made it much easier to manage my writing, and one day, when I’m a JK Rowling-style millionaire, it will all be worthwhile.