Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Anyone use Scrivener?

This is topic Anyone use Scrivener? in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Teraen (Member # 8612) on :

If so, what do you think of it?

1) [Big Grin]

or
4)

Sorry. Had to have fun with the Graemlins...

Posted by Owasm (Member # 8501) on :

I use scrivener for the MAC. I actually like to draft in Word and then move the words on over to scrivener. However, I put my notes, character sketches, scene sketches and worldbuilding into scrivener up front. I'll have scrivener up while I draft as well.

For draft review, I throw the text back into Word for spelling and grammar check and then put it back into Scrivener for archiving. I also put my MS into Word when I send it out for critiquing.

I use few of the Scrivener features, but I like the fact that I can store and quickly retrieve my notes while I write.

I give it a 2, but only because I don't use all of its features.

[ November 24, 2011, 09:50 PM: Message edited by: Owasm ]

Posted by Ken S (Member # 9010) on :

I've got the windows version so it doesn't have all the whistles and bells that the mac version does (yet [Smile]

).

I like it a lot. I tried it out in beta and it became my preferred writing platform overnight. I like that I can collect everything related to my story in one place. I use a view that keeps my folders on the left hand side of the screen so that if I need to hop into my research or character folders, I can do that easily and then go back to work.

There are quite a few other things that I like about it (the index card view, for sure) and in the interests of keeping this brief, I won't get into all of them. Suffice to say, I'd give it a:
[Big Grin]

and call it money well spent.

Posted by mrmeadors (Member # 6378) on :

Coming to this late, but wanted to say that I really like Scrivener. I've been using it for several years now on my Mac. I don't really use any other word processing software for my writing now. I like that i can write notes while I am writing on the doc, I like the way I can keep things organized, I can put my research right into the same file so it's just all right there. I REALLY like the formatting stuff. So I would give it a [Big Grin]

.

Melanie Meadors

Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :

I thought about getting it since my Word processor is like ten years old, but evidently I would need an older version of the Mac version.

The one I found is for the newer Macs with the New OS.

Posted by mrmeadors (Member # 6378) on :

Yeah, you might need the version I have (I never upgraded...I should, but I just never get to it! Plus I hate trying to decide if I should leave well enough alone. I LIKE the old version). Wonder if you can email Keith and see if you can get it?

Melanie

Posted by Osiris (Member # 9196) on :

Yes, I use scrivener, and I like it.

Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :

Mrm I should have asked this already but Keith?

Posted by Jeff Ambrose (Member # 9437) on :

Keith is Scrivener's designer.

I've used Scrivener for several years. Now, with Scrivener 2, it's my primary publishing tool. You can create ebooks on Scrivener with pure simplicity.

Composing in Scrivener is a different can of worms all together, and it depends largely on how one works. I like to write in Standard Manuscript Format and track my daily progress by pages (not words). Both are hard to reproduce in Scrivener.

So now, I write in Word, then upload to Scrivener to publish.

Scrivener has a 30-day trial. It's worth getting.

Posted by InarticulateBabbler (Member # 4849) on :

I beta tested Scrivener during NaNoWriMo last year, and loved it, but haven't been able to justify spending the cash on it, yet.

Posted by Wordcaster (Member # 9183) on :

I purchased Scrivener. Love it.

Posted by mrmeadors (Member # 6378) on :

There is an ebook called "Writing a Novel with Scrivener" by David Hewson some might find helpful [Smile]

.

Melanie

Posted by RoxyL (Member # 9096) on :

I love Scrivener and have been using it in beta for over a year. Got a 50% off coupon for completing NanoWriMo and just purchased the full version. Very much worth it.

Here's a warning, though. DO NOT save Scrivener files in Dropbox and then try to work out of them from Dropbox. I found out the hard way and lost my entire latest version of my novel - it's now unopenable. Luckily I had printed most of it hardcopy to edit, but I sure wish I'd known that technicality sooner.

Posted by micmcd (Member # 7977) on :

RoxyL - I'm confused as to your warning. Do you mean that you shouldn't save .scriv files in a Dropbox folder? Because I do that, and I've never had a problem. I should probably re-re-back them up on my other remote drive, now that I think about it, but I didn't realize there was an issue.

Did the issue only crop up for you by saving it in Dropbox on one machine, then trying to open it from another (which should work fine)? Just wondering if there are magic steps that can trigger this.

Posted by axeminister (Member # 8991) on :

I duplicated Roxy's error when I first used Scriv. I don't know how I did it, but after, I couldn't open my story. Fortunately I hadn't yet written anything, but I lost the time spent setting up the parts, and texts, and organizing my thoughts. Ok, well, I did write notes, but I remembered them.

I'm scared to do this again, now that I've written a bunch of pages in there.

Can you let us know what you did Roxy?

I believe Scriv saves automatically every x seconds, but I still hit file-save when I'm ready to close the program.

Should I export or compile periodically as a method of backup?

Axe

Posted by mrmeadors (Member # 6378) on :

I'm not sure what dropbox is (if it is a backup solution, I use time machine for that; I'm a mac user, so if you use windows, maybe it's a prob with just that OS version?). I've been using Scrivener for about three years now, maybe almost four? But I've never had a problem with files being messed up. I just save them in my documents folder, and Time Machine backs that up every hour into it's own little device's harddrive. And yes, scrivener autosaves very regularly, but you should file-save at the end of your session.

I don't think it would hurt to compile every now and then, but i never have (I'm not exactly the model citizen of back-uppery, though, aside from the TM).

Melanie

Posted by axeminister (Member # 8991) on :

After posting above, I compiled.
I'll probably just do that every few pages until I know what to avoid doing.

Axe

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Dropbox is one of the "cloud storage" places on the internet. You can get so many megabytes of storage space and then if you invite others to get some as well, you both get a little more storage space. You control who has access to your dropbox, and you can put a file that's too big to email in it and allow the person you want to send it to to have access to that file through dropbox.

Posted by axeminister (Member # 8991) on :

Hmm. Nope. Dropbox isn't what I did to lock myself out. Shucks.

Axe

Posted by KayTi (Member # 5137) on :

I've seen some chatter on the scrivener boards about challenges using dropbox as the ultimate "home" for where a scrivener file writes to. For people who need to switch machines (say from a laptop you use when commuting to a desktop machine you use at home) you should use the Scrivener "backup" feature and click the "save a .zip file" checkbox.

I've been doing that the last few weeks on final edits on a novel (50k words, 36 chapter files as individual scrivener documents.) It's worked beautifully, I save as backup, it saves with a date stamp so I always know which one is the latest version. I email that file to myself so i have it on the other machine when I'm working there, and then just have to do the same when I'm done on the other machine (backup, check the zip file box, email the zip file to myself.)

This way, too, I have a lot of extra incremental backups (at the end of each day's worksession) so I can always revert back to a recentish version if something went haywire.

Axe - it could be that you were working on a file on a trial version of the software, sometimes the transition from trial to paid is a bit rocky. Did you use the scrivener menus to find the file to open? Because sometimes where I think I've saved the file isn't where scrivener has saved it.

Good luck!

Posted by micmcd (Member # 7977) on :

axeminister - Did you open a project on two machines simultaneously, with the actual .scrivx file in a dropbox shared folder? I recently bought the windows version of Scrivener and when I tried to open a file in this manner (it was open on my Macbook in another room), I got a warning box saying that the file could be corrupted.

I have been working on my project on both machines, just being sure to have Scrivener closed down on my Windows box before opening it on my Macbook or vice versa.

Posted by axeminister (Member # 8991) on :

E-books?
No one said anything about E-books!

That wasn't it. I'm going to chalk it up to a glitch. I still have a folder on my desktop that had something to do with that story. None of the other ones I've created made a separate folder...

I still compile if I wrote more than a few pages tho. =)

Axe

Posted by rcmann (Member # 9757) on :

I tried Scrivener. But yWriter does most of the same things, and it's open source. I do most of my writing in RoughDraft anyway, since almost all of it is short.