I’ve noticed a lot of writers pop up and ask questions like should I move to Scrivener, why should I use Scrivener, how is Scrivener better? Here are ten things for newbie Scrivener users – you can just do this:

Get a 30 day free trial on Mac or PC
There’s no reason not to give Scrivener a try. You can download a trial for free. Try this test – install it, open a Blank document, import (drag and drop, copy and paste, whatever) the thing you’re working on (or a part of it) and continue to write for 30 days. If you don’t find you’re working better and faster and happier, export it again and carry on with whatever you were using before. I’m sure that long within the 30 days you will have bought a full copy and taught yourself how to be even more efficient in Scrivener.

Import your existing writing
Whatever you’ve got sitting around, you can just import it into Scrivener easy peasy. If you have a document with a structure Scrivener will attempt to import that structure. Or you can add # markers to break your work into parts. You can even drag a file or a folder directly into Scrivener. If you drag a file that contains multiple parts into Scrivener you will get a structured document. Bingo. How easy is that?

Make templates and fill them out
Character backgrounds? Places? Events? Timeframe? Make a Template and fill one out every time you create a new person (or other thing). Then, split the screen and have instant access to this background information.

Break your long work down into parts and move them around.
If you’re used to working in Word or another word processor you will either have one very long document or a messy folder full of chapters. In Scrivener you’ll soon find that shorter is better. You can break that long document down on import, or do it manually. I find that I’m forever breaking parts of my novel down into smaller parts, then growing them again and then breaking them down again. This might sound a bit complicated, but it seems a very natural process. As I recognise the natural break points in the book, in the chapter, in the scene, I create a new part and split what I’m writing. It’s easy to join things back together again, but I don’t. Instead I find that I rearrange things to make a better flow. You can do this in the Outliner or in the Corkboard. Magic.

Set writing targets and track them
OK, we all need to keep on keeping on. How many words is this novel going to be? Where have you got to? What’s the target for this session? How you doing with that? Scrivener lets you set targets and tracks them, so you can set a daily target that resets to 0 at midnight. That’s very addictive! You can have your targets on screen all the time or you can look them up when you want. One of my favourite things is to set word counts for every section of the book (non-fiction generally) and show them all in the Outliner so I can do a quick visual check when I’m running up to deadlines. You can also check across the whole document or the current selection – how many words or how many pages have I written. And how about this – you can check any text for word frequency. Am I overusing particular words again? No. Phew.


Build a plan using index cards
So you like to plan your masterwork. I do too, though I find that if I add too much detail at the start it is pointless, the book goes on its merry way without the plan. What I end up doing is roughing out the story, starting to write and then adding notes on the Index cards as I go along. After a while these cards start to add up to a plan which I can look at in isolation. I can then follow the plan or rearrange it or rewrite it. Real time planning, I call it. But you’ll find that you can work the way you want. You can build a great hierarchy of index cards with your plan on and print them out for reference. Then you can reorganise them as you want, add notes to them, colour code them (one thing I’m good at is colour coding the PoV of scenes so I can see at a glance how the chapters are panning out.

Write in a distraction free environment
This is a simple one. You can blank out the background and you can add your own picture, maybe a view of the sea or the mountains to pretend you are sitting in a cabin in the Rockies churning out your masterwork (or a random image if you are me). Remember, the aim is to write and to think and to control what you write. Distraction is bad. At this point I would like to add that the worst distraction is not the background but the internet. I swear by a little application called Freedom, for Mac or Windows,that allows you to turn the whole internet off for a fixed period of time (that’s off from your perspective, not off for everyone else, that would be a bit unfair).

Split the page and see what you’re doing
You can split the page horizontally or vertically and put what you want in either side. So, on the left, in my working panel, I have the chapter I’m working on (or the fragment really) and in the right panel I can choose – the fragment before or the fragment after if I’m looking at how to join things. A page of research so I can read what I want as I write, referring back and forth, this is a lovely way to work and I really wish I’d had it when I was at university. Or you can put any other page or part into the ‘other’ panel – it just makes referring to what you done before so much easier. And don’t forget you can split horizontally if you want.

Keep everything in the same place
Scrivener will accept anything you want to throw at it, so you can chuck all your different kinds of files into Research folders and have access to them when you want. Pictures, web pages, screenshots, imports, word documents – anything really can reside in Scrivener. You’ll also find that everything you write remains in your project, even if you ‘delete’ it. Scrivener doesn’t throw anything away, it just puts it in the Trash and you can easily pull it out again. I make an ‘Extracted’ folder and I pull entire parts out but keep them hanging around for later us. They say you should never throw any writing away, and I never do. Try that in Word.

Never lose anything because of auto backups and manual ‘snapshots’
Scrivener backs up and backs up and backs up automatically, so your work is safe. You can do manual exports any time you want. When you start a major revision, just take a Snapshot, and you retain a copy of the original in case it all goes horribly horribly wrong. And yes, you can view Snapshots alongside the current version, and mix and match.

Export straight to the format you need including iBooks and straight to Amazon Kindle!
You can export everything to Word, RTF, Open Office, Final Draft or plain text. However, Compile is the powerhouse of Scrivener. Scrivener is about writing, not about formatting. But when you come to output you can use a range of preset formats or you can create your own custom output. Templates for compiling include Ebook, Outline, Novel, Script, Synopsis. You can export as above and also to eBook and Kindle .mobi files (or to MultiMarkdown if you are a smart person). You can choose precisely what to include in your compile from headings to notes to synopses to extra material and book covers.

All in all, Scrivener seems to give you all you need and  more. It’s comprehensive, but you can start quickly. Many writers find it addictive, in a good sense, that it increases their productivity and the quality of their writing. Can’t say better than that. Give it a try.