Scrivener – A Mac-Only Writing Tool

It's More than a Word Processor, it's a Writing Workshop

Jul 23, 2009 Philip McIntosh

Scrivener is a writing environment for Mac users. Writers of all kinds will find it useful for organizing thoughts, fleshing out ideas-and writing.

For a writer, a computer and writing software are as indispensable today, as pen and ink were a century ago. There are many writing tools available, but many writers stick with standard word processing programs such as Microsoft Word, Neo Office, or perhaps something else. Technical writers have long been fond of Nisus Writer.

Programs designed especially for scriptwriters, such as Final Draft and Scriptware, are out there too. Scrivener, from Literature and Latte, Ltd (UK) is an environment for writers of both prose and screenplays. It's more than just a word processor.

Using Scrivener

Scrivener takes some getting used to. It looks and works differently than a typical word processor. In writing mode it is similar to a word processor with a page view, or even a split view, and typical formatting options. The split view is handy when referring to one document while actively working on another. There are no separate pages though—your project is one long document with no distinction between pages (unless you have intentionally broken it up into different sections such as chapters).

There is a handy word-count target feature that shows a progress bar and an icon on the bottom of the working window. Set the word count target value, and you will have a visual queue as to how close you are to reaching it.

Scrivener Views

What really sets Scrivener apart from any old word processor are its views. There is a Corkboard view (Figure 1) showing each individual file of a project as a note card pinned to a, well—a corkboard. Click on a card and the full document it represents appears for editing.

Another useful view is the Inspector. The inspector opens in a side pane and offers a place for document information, notes, ideas and the like, to be associated with the file under edit. It's a great place to jot a thought such as "should I change Klemtor's name to Fluffy?" without it becoming part of the working text.

The Outline view (Figure 2) offers a project at glimpse for organizing basic structure, fleshing out ideas, or conceptualizing a work before writing it.

The binder is a side pane that shows all the documents that are part of a project. If the project is a short story the only thing that will probably appear there is the writing document (which, no matter what the project title is, is always labeled "untitled" unless it's manually changed it to something else).

There is so much more that the binder does. It holds reference documents, photos, PDF files, sound and video files, and even web pages, any of which will open in Scrivener with a click. This is super useful for more in-depth work such as research reports, or book length projects that have a lot of source material behind them.

If a project contains thirty chapters (perhaps a novel), each chapter can be started as an individual document, and can be navigated to with a click on the binder no matter where one happens to be working within the project. Anything in the Draft section of the binder can be put together to build a final product upon execution of an export.

Exporting From Scrivener

Once you have gone as far as you can (or want to) it's time to export the document for final formatting. Drafts print and look fine from within Scrivener, but there are some limitations. For example, a Scrivener document has no page breaks, so footnotes are problematic. The limitations have some advantages too—an author can concentrate on writing and not worry about the final format until the writing is done.

Exporting to RTF, html, plain text, or Final Draft format is straightforward. On the first try the document might not come out as expected, but with a little practice and some tweaking of the look of the Scrivener document before exporting, it works well.

Scrivener has been updated twice in recent months, indicating the developers are dedicated to continuously improving their software. Scrivener is stable too. The highest compliment of Scrivener is probably a phrase familiar to most Mac users—"it just works."

Note: The author has been using Scrivener for over a year.

The copyright of the article Scrivener – A Mac-Only Writing Tool in Resources for Writers is owned by Philip McIntosh. Permission to republish Scrivener – A Mac-Only Writing Tool in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.