review: Scrivener
This is Scrivener. It’s a word processing and organization tool for writing long pieces, novels, scripts, etc. I’m on Day 20 of my 28 free days. It’s supposed to be amazing. But here's what I think. ;)
The good…
1. It is really easy to see all the pieces because of the Binder feature, which shows all of your documents and folders along the left side of the screen. I have long created separate documents for everything, each chapter, notes, files, what-have-you in Word, but it’s more than a little cumbersome to go back to things quickly.
2. I love that you can link web pages for research. For those of you who don’t know, I’m kind of a research junky. I can get completely lost in research in fact so I love that I can easily get back to web pages I’m using. As a bonus you can use the web from the Scrivener program.
3. If you put a bunch of pages in a file or in order, you can click on the folder (or top page) and see all of the documents (pages) like it’s one document! (and this is what is currently selling me on the whole thing, btw.) So I can create a file folder for each chapter and pages for each scene and still easily know what my word count is, how the whole reads, all sorts of fun things!!!
4. Also there’s this really cool Corkboard view where you can see each page document and write little notes on top, which I really like, but I know I’m not using to its full potential. Which leads to the less good…
The less good…
1. I know I am not using Scrivener to its full potential. This isn’t a huge deal because I’m generally happy, but I found the tutorial long and kind of confusing. I am however, one who learns by doing and not by reading really long documents on my computer. So I’m good with discovering as I go. YMMV.
2. Scrivener creates its own documents so I have to convert back to Word to back up my story on my preferred cloud space. Annoying but ok.
3. This is kind of the biggest one. I don’t love it as a word processor. I can’t get it to not default to Courier every time I create a new document. (I prefer sans serif fonts.) If there is an autocorrect I haven’t’ found it yet. (And I’m not the greatest typist.) And I’m still getting used to the spellcheck. (Not only am I a questionable typist, I’m an awful speller.)
But the good out ways the bad (or not so good) for $40. So, likely I will purchase Scrivener in about a week. ;)
The good…
1. It is really easy to see all the pieces because of the Binder feature, which shows all of your documents and folders along the left side of the screen. I have long created separate documents for everything, each chapter, notes, files, what-have-you in Word, but it’s more than a little cumbersome to go back to things quickly.
2. I love that you can link web pages for research. For those of you who don’t know, I’m kind of a research junky. I can get completely lost in research in fact so I love that I can easily get back to web pages I’m using. As a bonus you can use the web from the Scrivener program.
3. If you put a bunch of pages in a file or in order, you can click on the folder (or top page) and see all of the documents (pages) like it’s one document! (and this is what is currently selling me on the whole thing, btw.) So I can create a file folder for each chapter and pages for each scene and still easily know what my word count is, how the whole reads, all sorts of fun things!!!
4. Also there’s this really cool Corkboard view where you can see each page document and write little notes on top, which I really like, but I know I’m not using to its full potential. Which leads to the less good…
The less good…
1. I know I am not using Scrivener to its full potential. This isn’t a huge deal because I’m generally happy, but I found the tutorial long and kind of confusing. I am however, one who learns by doing and not by reading really long documents on my computer. So I’m good with discovering as I go. YMMV.
2. Scrivener creates its own documents so I have to convert back to Word to back up my story on my preferred cloud space. Annoying but ok.
3. This is kind of the biggest one. I don’t love it as a word processor. I can’t get it to not default to Courier every time I create a new document. (I prefer sans serif fonts.) If there is an autocorrect I haven’t’ found it yet. (And I’m not the greatest typist.) And I’m still getting used to the spellcheck. (Not only am I a questionable typist, I’m an awful speller.)
But the good out ways the bad (or not so good) for $40. So, likely I will purchase Scrivener in about a week. ;)