No matter what you want to write, Scrivener makes it easier.
Whether you’re a planner, a seat-of-the-pants writer, or something in between, Scrivener provides tools for every stage of the writing process. Scrivener For Dummies walks you step-by-step through this popular writing software’s best features. This friendly For Dummies guide starts with the basics, but even experienced scriveners will benefit from the helpful tips for getting more from their favourite writing software.
-Walks you through customizing project templates for your project needs -Offers useful advice on compiling your project for print and e-book formats -Helps you set up project and document targets and minimize distractions to keep you on track and on deadline -Explains how to storyboard with the corkboard, create collections, and understand their value -Shows you how to use automated backups to protect your hard work along the way
From idea inception to manuscript submission, Scrivener for Dummies makes it easier than ever to plan, write, organize, and revise your masterpiece in Scrivener.
Growing up, Gwen Hernandez wasn’t brave enough to share the stories in her head with other kids, but they usually involved intrigue and romance. She was raised in the Army and Navy, and married an Air Force engineer, so it’s natural that her Men of Steele series features military heroes and heroines who must overcome danger to find true love.
The former programmer and manufacturing engineer also helps authors all over the world find the joy in Scrivener through Scrivener For Dummies, online courses, in-person workshops, and private training.
In her free time, she likes to travel, read, run/bike/hike, flail on a yoga mat, and explore her current home of southern California where she writes surrounded by houseplants. To learn about new releases and giveaways, join her newsletter, or find her online at gwenhernandez.com or ScrivenerClasses.com.
What is Scrivener? Scrivener is a word processing package that keeps your projects organized. It is basically setup like other packages with a menu bar, toolbar, etc.
“Scrivener’s core purpose is to help you write. It’s not intended to tell you how to write or force you to get the work done. Instead, Scrivener provides an environment in which you can keep your writing, character sketches, synopses, outlines, and images in one project file.”
“Scrivener For Dummies”
Many of us are familiar with the “…….For Dummies” format, with its “Tip,” “Remember,” Technical Stuff,” and Warning!,” icons, no difference here.
The book is divided into seven (7) parts:
Part 1 - Getting to know Scrivener – Creating a project and Scrivener Interface Part 2 - Meeting the Inspector – Understanding the synopsis, metadata, and notes Part 3 - Starting to write – Editor function, corkboard, and outliner Part 4 - Getting your manuscript out there – Compiling, exporting to eBook or Kindle, etc. Part 5 - Customizing your Scrivener experience – Word count, custom layouts, templates, etc. Part 6 - Getting the most out of Scrivener – Searching, snapshots, etc. Part 7- The part of tens – Advanced features and accessing more help
The book provides a step-by-step approach that takes one from writing and collecting information for your projects to compiling a manuscript ready for the publisher, eBook, or Kindle. Also, this is a great reference book. I have used it when I need to resolve a Scrivener problem.
The author also teaches an on-line Scrivener class at: http://www.wiziq.com/ There is a class for Mac and for Windows.
The danger of using Scrivener is that you will become a spoiled brat. Yes, it's that good. The problem, though, is that unless you're a technical guru or the kind of person who digs, digs, digs for information, you might learn the basics and be so content that you go no further. Hernandez' book makes sure you don't. She explains it in wonderfully easy steps and walks you through it so that you do learn.
Most books go too far one way or the other. Either they are too detailed and you find yourself skimming, or they are too technical and you get lost. Hernandez writes in a manner that lets you meander through at a leisurely pace, or race through, picking up only what interests you. She has managed to put this together so that you can jump ahead to what interests you, and go back to things you skipped at a future date.
I read the review that stated Literature and Latte's tutorial is sufficient and this book wasn't necessary, yet the reviewer admitted to not purchasing the book. So how does that reviewer know? I agree that Literature & Latte's manual and their tutorials are great, better than most, but I still found Scrivener for Dummies a bargain and more than worth the money.
I had gone through Literature and Latte's Outline Section several times and still found I didn't understand it well. After going through the Outline Section in Scrivener For Dummies, I'm no longer confused.
If you're using Scrivener, and you should be, picking up Scrivener for Dummies is a no brainer. Do it. You'll be glad you did.
I love Scrivener, but I LOVE this book. Ms. Hernandez has a lovely, easy-going style that explains the ins and outs of the sophisticated software program which I appreciate. I read it once, but now I'm going through it in more detail, trying tools I didn't even know were there.
This is probably the only reference book I have ever read cover-to-cover. It’s definitely the only one that’s ever caused me to cheer.
Most users would follow the expected method of looking up their immediate question in the index and reading only the relevant sections. I did that a bit when I first bought the book, but didn’t find it as helpful as I’d hoped even though that’s what it’s designed for. I think I wasn’t very good at defining my need well enough to search for the solution.
Scrivener is considered by many writers to be the best thing since the word processor. Now, after using the program for a few years, having worked through the tutorial, learned from some excellent free webinars and one of Gwen Hernandez’ paid courses, I decided to read Scrivener for Dummies to pick up some advanced knowledge – and to refresh myself on some of the basics I’d missed along the way.
Honestly, the cheering? That was for the discoveries about some of the program’s features. But I found the author’s explanations very easy to understand. She’s funny, too, which definitely helps anyone reading very far.
This is an approachable resource, intelligently laid out and with clear examples and screen-shots. Each section is self-contained, pointing to other sections where needed, for the person who dips in for a specific answer instead of reading straight through.
The book covers both the Mac and Windows versions, and while Scrivener has made some changes since 2012, enough of the material is the same. If you find something in the book that you want to do but your version of Scrivener handles it differently, if you can’t figure it out by poking around in the program, either the Literature and Latte forum or a Google search will find you the answer.
Gwen Hernandez is a romantic suspense novelist and Scrivener teacher, offering interactive online courses. I found her Compile course very helpful, and she was patient to answer our many questions. For more about the author, visit gwenhernandez.com. For more about her Scrivener classes, visit scrivenerclasses.com.
I'm not finished, of course. You never really finish a book like this. But I've been dipping in and out as I get my head around Scrivener, and this book has helped me all the way. This is my second attempt at Scrivener, and I think it's stuck now. While I'm still editing in Word (and don't see that changing), I'm now a convert for writing.
The book is easy to follow, simple to use, and I've learned a few tips and tricks to help me get the most out of the program. I'm one of those annoying people who will start reading the instructions, then throw them aside in favor of muddling through, and then whinging when it doesn't work. But Scrivener for Dummies kept me reading.
Recommended if you're serious about Scrivener (or want to be).
I have been a fan of Scrivener for a number of years now. It was recommended as a favorite Mac writing program and I took a look and then adopted it. To learn it then I spent time with the tutorials and knew then that I barely scratched the surface.
Still it was a much better solution then Word, and when Pages came along, Scrivener was still much better to write in. We each have the way we like to configure our space, but the research folder on the left of the main pane became a place to hold so many wikipedia pages that were relevant to my writing, or maps, or place names, and the right side where I could have long lists of places, people and things listed made the software invaluable.
Yet as I mentioned, there was more depth here.
So the Scrivener community embraced Gwens' book and for a new person it probably has much more detail that is useful than I found. That everything is in one book is handy. What is not is the transition of a Dummie guide where some steps are outlined with a great deal of slowness and formatting, yet assumptions are made about options in this, and not enough screenshots are given.
As I remember in the tutorials of the program, an example takes you from start to finish so you can see the use of the program. Gwen needed to do that with two or three different types of writing and as we tackled new aspects of the program in her guide, she could have shown how it all related. Instead she did the disservice of writing that you could use an element without showing how to use that element in such a way. This was clearly a time when screenshots of show don't tell would have been valuable.
It will sit close on my shelf when I need to compile, or look up how to keep track of revisions, but it could have been much better.
The book I read to research this post was Scrivener For Dummies by Gwen Hernandez which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. Scrivener is a writing software initially released for the Apple Macintosh and particularly for the OS X Lion operating system and I think the version in this book is a previous version which at the time had a cut down Windows version although in future both versions will have similar features. I did look on Google to see how much this software is and it is free for 30 days and $40 thereafter. The company that make it is literature and latte. It is particularly suited to writers as they can keep all there work in one place which it does with folders and subfolders. It also allows you to do e-books particularly in pdf and you can import your work including notes and annotations into Microsoft Word. There is a kind of add on at http://crowl.info which is a word counter useful for editing for things like magazines and newspapers. The book does a decent job of explaining how to use it although this software has been superceded by Scrivener 2 which hopefully there will be a follow up book on. The book explains where there are differences between the windows and mac versions although in the later version the features in the windows version are comparable. I really enjoyed reading it and think the price of the software does sound quite reasonable. I'd never heard of this software prior to reading this book and apparently the word scrivener is a fancy word meaning writer. It's an interesting book.
I'll have to echo the sentiments of other Windows users that this book is tailored to the Mac user (as it seems most documentation on this alleged revolutionary software suffers). The author makes a good effort of flagging differences in the two versions as she goes along, but it feels like that was done as an afterthought in editing. Other Windows users may feel, like I do, that I had to take my book and read it at the back of the class.
I'm not sure how many instructional books on Scrivener I've been through so far, but this one -- Mac bias and all -- should turn out to be the best. I feel like I finally found something I can use. At least I've got a hard copy highlighted at my fingertips I can refer to, while competitive books were Kindle only. I believe it will help me dive off the deep end into transitioning from traditional writing into Scrivener. If that turns out to be successful, we'll call it a victory.
I think I'll focus my gripes about all these instructional books being slanted toward Mac to the right place. Maybe it's my own bias, but isn't the problem that the software company creating this product did it in Mac, and then did a poor job in coming up with their Windows version? I should wait until I feel I'm appropriately accomplished at Scrivener before holding to that, but this is what it feels like now. Maybe a year from now that will be superfluous because I'll be so good at Scrivener. We'll see.
This is a great book for someone who wants more than the Scrivener tutorial and/or is too afraid to break something by just clicking on menu items and trying things out. There are step-by-step instructions to using the features and screenshots to help find what you're looking for.
The biggest thing that bothered about this book is that there was no distinction given whether a feature was only for the Mac version or both the Mac and PC versions. The author explains up front that she does not include this information and why. I understand her reasoning, but it's very frustrating to read about a great feature, then go to use it only to find out that you can't because you have a PC. I'd rather have known upfront I couldn't do that so I could skip the sections that didn't apply to me.
The chapter that explained the options of the compiler was very helpful.
I was looking more for a book that would show me how to use Scrivener's features to streamline the writing process rather than a book to hold my hand through each click of the mouse. I think Writing a Novel with Scrivener will be more what I was looking for.
I've been using Scrivener for years and know that it's an extremely comprehensive program with a ton of features. Knowing that I had probably used only about 50% of them urged me to rush out and buy this book.
There is a goldmine in here, in the familiar light-hearted, easy-to-read style of the Dummies series. Not only did I discover complete how-to's (with screenshots) for those mysterious features that I'd never grasped on my own, but I also read about things I didn't even know Scrivener could do! Gwen provides step by step instructions for everything, and mentions the differences between the Mac and Windows version at every step.
Finally, with Gwen's help, I grasp the sophisticated nuances of the compile manuscript settings and ebook formatting. Sure enough, I'd been doing many things the manual way. Now, after reading this book, I can make my life a ton easier.
This is a great book for anyone who uses Scrivener, beginner or die-hard, and I'll be thumbing through its pages for reference whenever I need to do some obscure but neat thing. Great value.
I am not a new user of the writing software known as Scrivener, but the program is so complex that I never felt that I was getting the most out of it. I have followed Gwen Hernandez's blog for at least a year and I had always found her advice on using Scrivener to be invaluable. When she wrote a book on the subject, I decided that I had to have it.
Scrivener For Dummies is a well organized, step by step instruction book on how to use Scrivener as a writer. Even though I was comfortable with the basics of the program, Gwen pointed out several ideas of how to use the program to do organizational ideas that I had not considered before. Now that I'm setting up a new project in the program, I am incorporating several of her recommendations into the new novel and am looking forward to the time and effort these ideas will be saving me.
"Scrivener for Dummies" by Gwen Hernandez is a handbook for the revolutionary software used by so many writers today. I've been a Scrivener for Windows user for a little over a year, and this book had tips and tricks for features I had yet to use.
It would have been useful to have printed an icon beside sections that were for Mac only. The author does mention certain parts are unavailable for Windows, but there were a few features I tried to find on my version, only to learn they were Mac only.
The author wrote this manual in an easy-to-follow conversational tone and included plenty of screen shots. "Scrivener for Dummies" is my go-to reference when I need to figure out how to customize the program.
The book is written for Mac users, so if I were to base my rating on just this, I would have to give it a 5 star rating. But as I have a PC, and not much was included for it in the book, I have given it a 3 star rating.
Unfortunately because of the books lack of PC direction and information, I spent a lot of valuable time searching for menu equivalents and so on to get the same or similar results from the program that a Mac user would. Therefore, I think it would have been very helpful if the author had noted if PC users could or could not find these in the PC version of the program.
Nonetheless, I think Scrivener For Dummies is a good book that offers the reader some extremely useful information and advice.
I love Scrivener. LOVE. But I have a PC. The main thing this book showed me is that the Windows version is awesome, but the Mac version is SUPERawesome. I would recommend this book to anyone who has the Mac version of Scrivener, and to new Scrivener Windows users who need to learn the basics. I borrowed this book from the library, and once Scrivener updates the Windows version to be as functional as the Mac version, I will DEFINITELY buy Scrivener for Dummies. And I will change my rating to 5 stars, because it really is a fantastic resource and extremely well-written.
The book is written for Mac computers. I have a PC. That noted, the book was useful; I learned a lot from it; I'd definitely recommend it.
That said, it would have been very useful to note which parts of the book were not yet PC-enabled as it would have saved me much searching of the manual accompanying the program (which wasn't written in a style that I found useful), or searching the Internet.
My use of Scrivener is very much improved after working through the book. I'd have just got through it faster if the Mac-only sections had been labeled.
I really, really tried with this book. I find it unhelpful for basics, such as managing images on a regular page, or setting page size. I feel as if there needs to be a manual to explain this one. It's too dry, too cumbersome and not nearly well-enough indexed to be useful. I am finding the Scrivener user manual far more useful (it's available as a PDF on the Literature & Latte site). Plus, there's a wealth of resources online to help with Scrivener. I would turn to those first before buying this book.
Great informative book written in clear and precise manner. Really helped me to come to grips with the program and I now use Scrivener to write. Bought the paperback as I found it far easier to mark and find passages for reference. It's a large book and a bit cumbersome as an ebook; but that's just my preference. If you have just bought the Scrivener program, or if like myself you have bought and are struggling to get to grips with it, this book really will help. Highly recommend.
I got this book after a week of brain damage trying to learn Scrivener via forums and videos. Gwen made it clear which options are available in the Windows version, so I didn't waste any more time thinking I could do things that only the Mac users could. My second book was so easy to finish having Gwen's book at my fingertips. Her website also has many helpful tips.
A great introduction to Scrivener whether you are a beginner or more advanced user. Gwen Hernandez takes a difficult subject I was loathe to learn and makes it simple. Pure genius.
I would be lost without it. There is little doubt, I will comb through these pages over and over again. Learning Scrivener is essential for the writer.
I find this book a bit annoying. It's a really good book that is slightly reduced in its effectiveness by making us Windows users feel like second class citizens. I do realise that it isn't the latest book on Scrivener, and the program was originally developed exclusively for the Apple Macintosh, but since it is now also for Windows then there should be a second book exclusively for Windows. It is somewhat annoying to see Mac keys being used that don't exist on Windows keyboards. After all, there are 4 times as many Windows users as Mac and Mac and Apple wouldnt even exist without Gates's financial intervention. So just give us equal consideration. It is a great and interesting book spoiled by an air of superiority.
This helped me more than the Scrivener quick tutorial. It's a comprehensive, well written, and nicely organized resource book. Because it's written for a Mac (and I'm a PC) and there have been a few updates since it was written, not everything in the book matched what I saw on screen, but for the Scrivener tools I most wanted to learn about, this book did the trick.
This does not support the current Scrivener version: 3.2.2. I think it addresses the older version 2 of the software. And several references within it are nowhere to be found in the current software, at least not by the names identified in the book. The book does help explain how to use Scrivener to handle and arrange the structural elements of a book.
I’m not sure this is a recommendation. I didn’t hate this book, but I also already have a help manual so....did I need this book or walk away better for having read it? I don’t think so.