Scrivener 2.0
November 1st was a big day for me. On that day, Literature and Latte, the company that develops my favorite word processing program, released the next generation, Scrivener 2.0. I've not yet fully explored all the new features, since this is a program that takes time to get to know and use — and I've been using it for all my writing for over three years, but I still wanted to share with our readers here my enthusiasm for this application. While version 2.0 is only available for the Mac, the folks at L&L are working on a Windows version. They have currently released an early Beta version of the Windows app, but it doesn't yet have all the functionality of the Mac version and as a true Beta, it has some bugs that need working on.
I have been a Mac user and lover of Scrivener for a long time. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this new big novel I've been working on would not have been the same book if I had not made the switch to Scrivener. I'll admit, I was frustrated by it at first. It took me months to get used to thinking differently about my work flow. But now, I would never go back.
When anyone is first contemplating writing a book, it seems overwhelming. I am the sort of person who has trouble seeing the whole big picture at once, and even after writing a couple of books, I would often feel as though the story were too big to fit in my head at once. I was often searching and scanning my 300+ page MS Word document trying to remember where a particular scene was. And my research was always collected in a big three ring binder. I have one for each of my four novels, but even then I would flip through my hundreds of pages of printed out websites and brochures trying to find the one document I was looking for.
Scrivener has changed all that by making each novel or article or whatever you are writing — into a project. On the far left side of the screen is a column that is called the binder. There you have a folder for your draft and another for your research. You can add more, so I've added one for characters, too. Now, in my draft folder, each of my chapters is a folder and the chapters can be broken up into scenes within the chapters. All of these can be dragged and dropped to rearrange the order as I write. If I want to write a chapter out of order, it's easy now and I will always remember it's there as I will see it in the binder.
On the far right of your screen is a column that you can choose to view or not, and this is the Inspector. Here, you are able to create a short synopsis for each chapter or scene you include in your project. The title of the chapter will always be the same in the binder and in the inspector and changing it in one place also changes the other.
The center column on your screen is the main viewing screen for writing your text or viewing a research article or photo. However, Scrivener has several other viewing modes as well. You can change to cork board view and then all the synopses that you have written in your inspector will be displayed on notecards on a cork board background. Moving them around in this view will also move them in the main document. And finally, there is a linear outline view that will show your complete outline with synopsis for every chapter.
The research folder can contain all my bits that used to go into my physical binder. I admit, that since this current book has straddled my Scrivener period, I do still have a paper binder, too. I used lots of texts that were not yet digital and I have some of that paper in the binder. For my next book, I doubt I'll have any paper at all. Anything not digital, I'll scan. In my research folder I have photos, maps, web pages, charts, videos, audio files, etc.
Now when you are working, Scrivener has a split screen option that can be used in many different ways. You can look at a photo of a place while you are writing a description. You can put an older version of a scene next to a newer one. Or, you can keep a research document next to the text you are using that references it, and you can split your screen vertically or horizontally.
So with all that, what could they possibly add to the new version 2.0? What I like most about this upgrade is that they have taken the things they already did well and made them even better.
The one thing I love is that I can now print out a beautiful version of my outline directly from Scrivener. They have a dded a new feature called collections that means I can easily keep all the chapters that take place in the past together for viewing as one story. They have added a fun name generator for finding character names and a cool quick reference tools that makes the Mac's Quick Look feature into something editable. They have greatly expanded the ability to comment on manuscripts which is something I am using more and more with my critique group, and the choices for exporting or compiling the manuscript have expanded to include the ePub format so Scrivener can now be used to prepare books for self-publishing to the Kindle or other eReaders. Finally, they have made exporting to Dropbox and Simplenote, both of which are available on the iPad very easy so now, I can really write on my iPad and bring it back into Scrivener without cutting and pasting
The folks at Literature and Latte have created a host of videos both on their site and on YouTube to introduce new users to many of Scrivener's unique tools. Check out the videos on Scrivener here.
Fair winds!
Christine
