Friday Favorite: Scrivener

As an aspiring journalist and student, I'm definitely interested in this. Any chance you might know of a latest version of Srivener?

I wrote some of my best work in Word Perfect 5.1, but even then I loved LocoScript. Since then, so many features have been added - I'm at a loss as to where to start.

All a writer wants to do is, like a dry stone waller, find well-shaped words and put them side by side with a bit of creative layering. Pretty soon, you've girdled a nation.

As much as I love fonts and appreciate layout, as much as I can see rivers running through paragraphs and offensive kerning and the lack of ligatures, this is all noise.

Before Scrivener, I'd spend too much time faffing around with paragraph styles and

The only thing that lets Scrivener down is, in my humble opinion, the Outline mode. It's not a good 'industrial strength' outliner like OmniOutliner. It does have an outlining mode, but it is tolerated rather than embedded.

But then again, that makes this sound like I'm really organised, rather than a 'pour a bucket of thoughts into a container, abandon things, then do the same later' kind of writer - which is where most of us are I guess. As far as being a bucket in which to pour words, Scrivener is absolutely great.

And should it not have been understood fully, the full screen 'green text' (or blue or whatever) mode is essential. Stop worrying about fonts, spacing, kerning, styles, outlines, everything. Just put one word after another and get on with it. Perfect.

Scivener's great. But for more complex data collection and organization I prefer Devonthink Office Pro. Scrievner offers better writing tools, but DVTP has many more options to monitor and assemble news sources from the web.

I agree with a previous poster who struggled with DVTP's documentation. But once you take the plunge it is just a matter of conceptualizing and integrating its formidable capabilities into your individual style. And, no argument here--that takes some time.

I bought CopyWrite a while back and entered some preliminary content and research for a histroical novel. Then I had to put the project aside. I'm ready now to pick it up again - should I change over to Srivener? Can anyone provided a comparison of Copywrite and Scrivener? Thank you.

Scrivener is one of my first Mac app loves. It's so sturdy and reliable and it helped me organize my magazine writing so much.

One of the apps I've used consistently over my 3 years as a switcher.

Thank you for the post. Seems like the program is like an all-in-one and makes it much easier to make a writing project come to it's completion. Thanks for the tip.
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Blimey - you guys have totally made my weekend. I wanted to stop by and say a huge thank you to Megan for such a nice review of Scrivener - thank you! And then I just got through reading all of the kind comments... Thank you all for your enthusiasm for Scrivener; it makes the long hours of coding 2.0 more than worthwhile.
All the best,
Keith
(Scrivener developer)

I cannot tell you how unbelievably useful and easy to use Scriviner is. It is the best writting tool I've ever used. It's indispensable.

I am always rather dubious of "writing software" as, really, little more than a text editor is needed and it's just as easy to fall into gadget-itis as a writer (or would-be writer) than any other profession or hobby. There are, of course, certain niceties that some packages do provide that I like to use, especially for writing researched factual items and longer form fiction pieces. Scrivener is, by far, the best collection of these niceties. The full-screen editor and the multimedia capable outline/collection/trapper-keeper functionality is my favorite and why I keep going back to it. I recommend pairing this with an ever-connected note-taking software like Evernote.

This article is great and timely. How have I not heard of this software before? I have a story I want to write, but I know it would work much better as a screenplay than anything else. However, I have never written a screenplay and don't think the $250 for Final Draft would be a worthwhile investment just yet. Scrivener might be just what I need to bridge the gap between straightforward prose to a more screen friendly format. Thanks!