Scrivener

I’ve always had an interest in the ways technology has effected writing. I used to write purely by pen and paper. Still do sometimes. However as I got older and started getting well acquainted with this thing called the “Internet”, I soon began to move towards technological means of writing.

I never was happy with it.

Word docs cluttered my hard drive and I could never find anything I was looking for. I’m sure I’ve lost several stories to the abyss. These days have been different. After winning my first NaNoWriMo I used my winners discount to buy Scrivener. And I’ve never gone back.

Scrivener has saved me many a headache when it comes to keeping writing organized. It probably is the main reason why I won that year, as I had been using the trial to keep things organized. But enough with all that, the thing I enjoy doing is reading about how people use Scrivener. It’s really fascinating to me. And so I thought I’d share it with you.

I basically use scrivener in two main ways: 1. as a content organizer / writers notebook and 2. as a way to keep all the bits and pieces of a single novel in one place.

The first bit is probably something most writers are familiar with in some form or another. The picture to the right is how I specifically organize it. Basically I keep all my writing bits under the first four; prompts & experiments, reviews and blogs speak for itself. But the notebook is where I keep papers from class, specifically creative writing and any short stories I come up with.

If you notice the elements and resources are pretty similar, but they serve two totally different purposes. Mainly elements is filled with my own ideas and the things I want to explore and expand. Early bits of novels can be found here, this is where they are stored until they’ve grown enough to warrant their own file.

Resources, on the other hand, is where articles I find on the internet go. Things that I found useful on the creation of characters and settings and everything else story related. Also I should mention that this idea was not something I came up with on my own, I repurposed it for myself from several of my fellow writers.

The second purpose of scrivener is a bit harder for me to explain, if only because it’s different for every novel. But generally they’re kept in two big folders, the manuscript folder which just holds the novel however it needs to be written and the Story Bible folder. Which is essentially the Elements folder minus the “Story Idea’s part”.

And that’s really it. I hope you found this useful in some way and you can feel free to add questions about this whole thing in the comments. Perhaps I’ll write another post about Scrivener if there is a need.

October 25, 2012 | Categories: NaNoWriMo, Writing | Tags: Arts, National Novel Writing Month, Scrivener, Word count, Writers Resources, Writing Exercises | 2 Comments