Plottr and scrivener - what are your thoughts?

[Michelle]

Hello everyone,
I came across two tools - Plottr for outlining and Scrivener as enhanced version of Word.
I wonder if any of you is using them and what is your opinion. In what way are they better comparing with an old-fashioned pen and paper/Word ?
Thank you
Michelle Ann

[Penelope]

I don't outline. I take a character for a walk in the world. I'm mainly interested in what writing does to my heart and my head. Will take a look at Scrivener.

[Margaret]

I been using Scrivener for over a year and have come to really like it. There was a huge learning curve, in my opinion anyway, but once I powered through, I uncovered a lot of features that really help me.

- Writing is easily organized into chapters, scenes, parts, however you want to section your manuscript.

- It's easy to add notes as you're writing. I don't outline much, just start writing, but always find ideas for scenes later in the story pop into my head and with Scrivener I can easily write the entire scene, if I want, or add detailed notes and then later, insert that writing into the story.

- It's easy to add in cover images, all front matter, etc. as there are templates already set up to make it easy.

- Formatting the book for print/ebook output is easy and is one of the best parts of Scrivener as far as I'm concerned. I've battled for hours, if not days, to get my document properly formatted to satisfy requirement for Kindle or paperback version but with Scrivener, it's a matter of selecting the type of output you want and the program takes care of the rest. For each manuscript. you can have a print version and an e-book version so it's possible to make them slightly different; for example. including hyperlinks in your ebook version.
**I did have trouble formatting to satisfy IngramSpark, however, and this was beyond frustrating. After exhausting other options, and reading countless suggestions, I ended up having to use the premium version of Adobe to get it done.

- I also use ProWriting Aid and it's possible to open the Scrivener doc using ProWriting Aid and have all the corrections and revisions made after running the editing program automatically updated in your manuscript. It's very easy to do.

Overall, I can't imagine going back to Word now that I've gotten familiar with Scrivener and all its advantages.

Best of luck to you!

[Michelle]

Margaret wrote: "I been using Scrivener for over a year and have come to really like it. There was a huge learning curve, in my opinion anyway, but once I powered through, I uncovered a lot of features that really ..."
Thank you very much for that Margaret, this is exactly what I was looking for, someone using the product so I could get an opinion.